A Difference in the Family: The Snape Chronicles
by Rannaro
Summary: We have the testimony of Harry, but witnesses can be notoriously unreliable, especially when they have only part of the story. This is a biography of Severus Snape from his birth until his death. It is canon-compatible, and it is Snape's point of view.
1. Chapter 1 – Prologue

_**In Principio**_**… – Prologue**

_Thursday, April 9, 1959 (the day after the new moon)_

"Well, look who's here!" Ted Heseltine looked over from the game of darts as the door to the local opened. "If 't ain't the bridegroom! Wha' cha doin' here, Toby? Run outta petrol?" General laughter greeted this comment.

"Shut yer gob, Ted, and watch yer language. Got the missus here."

There was general movement as the men gathered in the local – in that sweet hour between leaving work and going home for supper – realized that the smaller figure behind Toby was the very new Mrs. Snape. They swept nut shells off the table, dabbed up a bit of spilt ale, and dusted off a chair, for everyone knew that Toby 'd up and married a girl from a country cottage, used to gentler ways than the ones found among the workers in a shabby east Lancashire mill town.

"Beggin' your pardon, Missus," Ted said, offering the now clean seat to the thin, sallow, long-faced woman that Toby'd taken to wife. She was no beauty, but then neither were any of them, and men in their walk of life didn't marry for beauty, but for companionship, a home, and children.

"Thanks," said Mrs. Snape quietly, and condescended to join them, making her instantly popular with the men.

"Lads!" Toby cried. "Drinks all 'round! This 'ere's m' new wife. Eileen, these are m' mates at the mill, the lads what I spend m' days with." The pints came, and they toasted Toby's wife.

"So Toby, wha' cha doin' back from Blackpool early?" asked Thurstan Garnett. "Y' got another day comin'. Thought you might like to stretch it out... Beggin' your pardon, Missus."

"We come back early," proclaimed Tobias Snape with some drama, "because we been informed we've a house. A dome-ee-sile. End o' Spinner's End, it is, and we're settin' up housekeeping. M' grandad's hired a couple o' men to bring some things from 'is house and m' dad's, and me and 'Leen decided t' take the three days and move in proper. So I ain't back yet, not official. You'll see me at the mill come Monday."

Eileen Snape said nothing as the men exchanged gossip and chatted about the latest news of the job – "fired Fred just like that, and 'im with four kids t' feed" – but she watched their faces as they talked, and her restless eyes took in every detail of the pub. Toby had two more pints and was getting boisterously chummy.

Then it was time to go home – the other men to their wives and to supper – and the little group broke up. Toby and Eileen walked together, hand in hand, through the maze of brick Victorian worker's cottages, soot blackened, the few visible curtains dingy from the grime-filled air. Toby's hobnailed shoes rang loud on the ancient cracked cobblestones as they approached the last little house at the very outskirts of the town, on a street under the shadow of the mill chimney that dominated the whole skyline. The last little house on Spinner's End.

It was dark inside, dark and empty, and their footsteps echoed slightly in the empty rooms. Eileen went directly to the kitchen, where she'd already started preparing supper with one skillet on a coal grate because the gas and electricity hadn't been turned on yet.

Tobias stomped around the little house. The ground floor had a sitting/dining room and the kitchen. The upper floor had a large bedroom and a smaller room that Toby planned to divide into a tiny second bedroom and a storage space. There was also a narrow room with a toilet and a sink wedged onto the upper floor sometime in the last fifty years, but no proper bathroom. It was all right. They weren't any la-di-da Londoners. Hot water and soap in a basin was all you really needed. They'd make do.

They camped for supper, eating Eileen's simple meal on two cracked plates while sitting on the floor in the front room. "Could ya ever witch us up a coupla drinks and some posh dessert?" Toby joked, but Eileen frowned.

"You know it doesn't work with food," she said.

"Aye," said Toby. "Seems there's lots it don't work with."

In addition to the skillet and the plates, and two stools in the kitchen, there was one other thing in the house – an old lumpy mattress in the sitting room. The next day they would get some small pieces of furniture, but for tonight this was the bed.

"Come on, 'Leen," Toby coaxed and, even though it was early and the sun barely set, Eileen smiled and joined her very new husband. They were, after all, still on their honeymoon.

_[Many miles away, more than an ocean away, on exactly the same day at almost exactly the same time, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration announced the names of the seven men, the Mercury Seven, who would be the first western pilots to become astronauts in their country's space program. One of them, John Herschel Glenn, Jr., would be the first American in outer space. Neither Tobias Snape nor his new bride, the former Eileen Prince, were ever aware that this had happened, but the coincidence is an interesting one.]_

By the time Eileen woke the next morning, Toby'd left, but he was still with her as she moved around the house. She put on her dressing gown and found a note on a sheet from a tiny pad of paper – 'Ye'r the greatest.' Another note was in the tin of tea – 'I'm the luckyest man alive.'

Eileen smiled her tight, quiet smile. She wasn't one for talking and had never had many friends, certainly never a beau to go out walking with. Toby made her feel special, important, and he was always telling her sweet things. He did like to go out with his mates of a Friday night, and had a fondness for gin, and sometimes the fondness gave him a ready fist, but these were common traits among working-class men in both small town and big city, and Eileen thought nothing of it.

A knock on the door made her jump. It wasn't Toby – Toby'd walk right in. Eileen didn't want to greet strangers on her doorstep still in her night clothes, so she walked quietly to the front door and, instead of opening it, said, "Who's there?"

"Your mother, 'Leen. Who else are you expecting at seven-thirty on a Friday morning?"

The door opened, and Eileen nodded to her mother and slipped quickly back inside, conscious she was wearing a dressing gown on a public road. "Come in, Mum, and have a cuppa. We got no furniture yet, but at least we got a house. How'd you get here? How'd you know?"

"Believe it or not, that old muggle scoundrel Wensley dropped by yesterday to tell me he'd found a place, and Sam and Emily Dyson are visiting their daughter in Colne, so they gave me a ride." Mrs. Prince stood in the sitting room looking around at the dingy walls. "It's rather old, isn't it? And small."

"I'll be doing a load of cleaning, that's for sure, and 't ain't big, but it'll be better when the furniture comes, enough for two at any rate."

"Two?" Mrs. Prince's gaze lingered a moment on Eileen's face. "Are you sure?"

Eileen blushed. It didn't suit her and made her face look blotchy. "Mum, please. We are married. And you can't never be sure."

"We can," Mrs. Prince replied. "show me the kitchen now, and we'll have that cuppa." She waited until they were sitting and sipping the hot tea before continuing. "There's going to be trouble, 'Leen. It's not just the money, though children are expensive. That man of yours won't stand being second, and babies have a way of grabbing all the attention."

"Toby'll be fine, Mum. He'll be proud t' have fathered a child."

"He'll be jealous. It's bad enough, both of you Moon in Aries, but to get married when it's swinging through Aquarius and now having it in Aries again for this... I never did see a couple so willing to have a fight, with both of you wanting to control everything and him wanting no rivals. You might at least have waited 'til you were settled in."

"We'll be fine, Mum. And you know Toby sets no store by all that..."

The front door opened, and Eileen jumped up to greet her husband. Mrs. Prince followed more slowly and paused in the kitchen doorway when she saw there were two men in the sitting room. The older of the two, cap already in hand, gave her a nod that was almost a bow.

"Good morning, Constantina. Come to have a peek at the new digs?"

"Good morning, Wensley. I suppose it was good of you to be looking out for them like this."

"Proud to do it, proud to do it. Well, 'Leen, you're looking fit. Got a bit of a glow. Has my grandson been doing his duty? Am I going to be a great-grandfather before I die?"

Toby started to stammer something about waiting until everything was settled with the house and they were sure about the jobs continuing at the mill, then noticed that both Eileen and Mrs. Prince were very quiet. Wensley Snape had already noticed.

"You got news for us, Constantina?" Wensley asked. "Your people got ways of knowing?"

His mouth still open from an unfinished sentence, Toby turned to his wife of less than a week. "Is it true, 'Leen? D' people like you... D' ye know?"

Eileen nodded. Toby let out a whoop, and began dancing her around the empty sitting room. "A dad!" he bellowed. "A dad! And it'll be a boy, I know it. You've made me the happiest man..."

Then the laborers arrived with furniture gleaned from the houses of several different relatives – sofa and chairs, lamps, table, bed, and all the important things – not many, but enough – to start a home with. As Toby and Eileen busied themselves with telling the workmen where to put these used but serviceable treasures, old Wensley Snape watched Eileen with a keen, almost hungry expression. Constantina Prince was one of the best-known witch healers and potion brewers of the Pendle countryside, and more than anyone else, Wensley had supported Toby in his courtship of her daughter. It was something he'd wanted most of his life.

There are dreams that are never fulfilled, and others that come true. Wensley Snape was lucky in that, of all those near to him, his was the dream that was about to come true. If all went well, in nine months' time, he would have a wizard in the family.


	2. Chapter 2 – The Perfect Baby

_**In Principio…**_** – The Perfect Baby**

_Saturday, January 9, 1960 (halfway between first quarter and full moon)_

Exactly nine months later, at one forty-six in the afternoon on Saturday, the ninth of January, 1960, Eileen Snape gave birth to a tiny baby boy in that small mill town about fifteen minutes drive from Colne in the Pendle district of Lancashire. There was no doctor present, and no licensed midwife either, the birth being assisted by the new baby's two grandmothers. If the child had been born in a hospital, he would have been taken from the room and placed in a crib in an infant ward, swaddled and removed from real human contact except for the short time each day when he would be allowed to be held by his mother. At home, however, he was washed and placed immediately in Eileen's arms, so that the first thing he ever really noticed in his life, blurred and unfocused though they were, were his mother's eyes.

His father Toby was so overcome by the proxy pain he felt for his wife's travail, that he spent the whole morning in the local pub, together with his own father, Edward Snape, and only returned home, boisterous and joyful, after he was assured he was the father of a reasonably healthy son. Wensley spent the entire time in the sitting room or bringing water and towels to the women. He couldn't go into the upper room itself, for that was women's domain.

"Look a' that!" Toby chirped when he saw his son for the first time. "I told ye no son o' mine 'd be born bald! Chip off the ol' block, 'e is. Chip off the ol' block. Thought all babies 'ad blue eyes, though," for the newest member of the family had wisps of dusky hair already, and his eyes were so dark as to look black.

"You can't ever tell a baby's eye color when he's born," admonished Nora Snape, Toby's mother. "Give him a couple of months and they'll change. Ned, don't breathe the smell of whiskey in the boy's face."

"Maybe," said Constantina, looking at the child thoughtfully and still talking about his eyes. "We'll have to wait and see."

Wensley reached out a tentative little finger and touched it to the baby's palm. The tiny fist clutched it with surprising firmness. Constantina sniffed at the expression on the older man's face. "All newborns hold on tightly," she said. "That grip 'll weaken soon."

"You think so?" said Wensley wistfully. "I was kind of hoping he might be a strong 'un."

"He may still be, but not because of the way he's hanging on right now. Everybody out, now. You've all seen him, and 'Leen needs some rest." The three men went downstairs to plan the boy's future and toast him, his mum, and everyone else they could think of, while upstairs the older women began to prepare mother and baby for the first feeding. There was some tension between them, since Constantina's ideas of what was necessary did not coincide with Nora's. In general, the witch's will prevailed.

The boy was not immediately named. Eileen, true to her education, wanted him to be Septimius Severus, but Tobias wasn't going to have any Septimius in his family, by God, and insisted the baby be named for his grandfathers, either Edward Richard, with Tobias's father first, or Richard Edward, giving pride of place to Eileen's. The eventual compromise was Richard Severus, Toby allowing the Richard since Richard Prince had died some years before, and Toby had never gotten along well with his own father anyway. Not unless they were in a pub.

With the logic inherent in all families who spend an inordinate time choosing names, the little boy was never called any variant of Richard, everybody for some reason settling on the nickname Russ. The neighbors, in fact, labored all his life under the misconception that his name was Russell.

Russ Snape was, from the day of his birth, a changeling child. His father put it down to superior intelligence.

"Ain't he the smart one, though, 'Leen. He knows when I come home from work I need it nice and quiet. He don't never bother, does he? Quiet as a parson. Look at him pushing his head up to look around. Won't nobody never put nothing over on him."

Eileen watched the development of her son with tigerish pride as he stretched and kicked and explored his little world and, when put on his stomach, pushed himself up to watch her. She didn't tell Toby that the child never cried. It made things easier if Toby felt that was a baby gift just for him. She also didn't tell Toby that the sharp, quick, black eyes lit up and sparkled more for her than for his father. There was no reason reminding her husband that children always have a closer relationship with their mothers.

Eileen's own mother had other things to say when Eileen and her son came visiting.

"What do you mean, he doesn't cry? All babies cry sometimes. When they're hungry, or tired, or they need their nappies changed. He must cry sometimes."

"No, Mum. He doesn't cry. He never has. He has other ways to tell me he needs something." She leaned over the infant. "Russ knows how to tell me things. See? Now he wants me to pick him up and hold him." She lifted the child from Constantina's sofa into her arms. "You want to walk around the room and look at things, don' cha, Russ?

Constantina, however, had a new worried look on her face. "Eileen, are you reading that baby?" She stood behind her daughter and peered into the great black eyes in the tiny face. "He's closed to me. Not that I could ever read anyone anyway, but I didn't think you could either. No wonder he doesn't cry, if he can just look at you and you know what he wants."

Toby, meanwhile, rapidly became less enchanted, more ambivalent about the child.

"Didn't know as a baby'd cost so much money," he told Eileen. "Bottles and nappies. And can't you just leave 'm a bit to come sit by me? He don't need all your attention. A woman's got to take care of her man."

_Friday, November 4, 1960 (one day before the full moon)_

There was a little group of women that got together of an afternoon while their husbands worked in the mill. Kate Hanson was widowed by a fire in the cotton shed six years earlier and had no children, but the insurance settlement had allowed her to keep her house, and her skill at needlework – plus taking in boarders – kept her independent. Her younger sister was Polly Heseltine, whose third child, a daughter named Peggy, was two months older than Russ. Other women in the group – they were five altogether – also had small children of preschool age. When they got together, in whosoever house, the children played while the mothers gossiped over a cuppa in the kitchen.

"Peggy 'ad a new word this week," Polly told the group jammed into the Snape's tiny kitchen, clearly proud of her little girl. "Just a year old now, and she says 'water,' and 'bye-bye,' and just Tuesday she said 'pram' as clear as can be." (What Peggy had said was pam, but her meaning had been clear.)

"They're such fun t' watch at this age," chimed in Sarah Catlow. "My Bobby's askin' for biscuits and milk. He said 'mama' when he was eight months, y' know. How's Russy doing, 'Leen? He'd be getting close."

Eileen poured more tea for Polly. "He ain't started talking yet. Still too young. He'll be walking soon on his own, though." She glanced through the kitchen doorway to where little Russ teetered on his newfound legs, clinging to the sofa. He got around rather quickly now, moving from piece of furniture to piece of furniture, and she had to keep a constant eye on him.

Sarah smiled at the tiny boy, so much frailer than her own sturdy children. "You'll get something soon, 'Leen. His babbling' ll be words 'fore y' know it."

"He doesn't babble either," said Eileen. "He's a quiet one."

"My cousin Jane's girl never babbled," said Edith Phillips, whose son Neil was now using one of Russ's blocks to pound Russ's toes. "They kept a pacifier in 'er mouth t' keep her quiet, and she never said a word 'til she was near three years old, then started talking like a bleeding solicitor. You never can tell."

"Neil," said Eileen from her chair in the kitchen, "don't hit Russ. Neil..."

Neil suddenly let out a howl of pain and rage and sat down plop in the middle of the sitting room. He continued to scream as his mother ran in from the kitchen to pick him up and cuddle him. "What did y' do, love?" Edith crooned to him. "Did you hit your fingers with the old block? That's what naughty little boys get when they hit other people with blocks, y' know. They hit their own fingers." To the other women's expressions of solicitude she replied matter-of-factly, "I don't think he's hurt. Just one of those things, y' know."

Little Russ swayed insecurely where he clung to the sofa, his black eyes intent on the squalling Neil. He hadn't reacted either to the attack with the block or to Neil's tantrum. Eileen kept an eye on him for the rest of the afternoon, but nothing else happened.

The next night was Bonfire Night. Toby loved Bonfire Night because it was his birthday, and he'd grown up with the idea that the fires and the fireworks were for him. He was thirty now, three years older than Eileen, but that put no damper on his enjoyment of the evening.

In fact, Toby spent a good part of the afternoon looking for serviceable pieces of combustible junk to put into the front area, then as dusk gathered he waited in the darkened sitting room, peering through the closed curtains. A group of teenagers came prowling with the first stars, spied the junk, and lifted it carefully and quietly over the low area wall. Toby let them get a ways down the street before he came out yelling at them for thieves. The boys jeered and threw a couple of small stones, and Toby chased them to the town center. It was all in good fun.

Then Toby returned home to collect Eileen and baby Russ, and together they went to watch the bonfire and the burning of the Guy. Eileen made the traditional black treacle cake called parkin, and Toby brought potatoes wrapped in foil to cook in the fire. They 'oh'ed and 'ah'ed at the fireworks while little Russ watched everything with wide, intent eyes, then went home to feast on potatoes and parkin.

"You got a present for me, 'Leen?" Toby grinned across the lamplit sitting room as the clock ticked past nine.

"I gave you your present," said Eileen. It was a warm winter sweater she'd knitted.

"I 'ad a different present in mind," Toby leered, "seeing as it's m' birthday and all," but Eileen wasn't watching him.

"Shh. Look, Toby. Look at Russ."

Toby looked. Little Russ had clambered to his feet with the help of the sofa. Now, oblivious to the attention he was getting, he released his grip and, holding nothing, staggered toward the front door.

"...two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight..." Eileen stopped counting as Russ lost his balance and sat suddenly on the sitting room floor. He made no sound "There y' go, Toby! There's your present!" Eileen cried as Toby hugged first her and then the little boy who had him beaming with pride. "Your son's walking!"

_Saturday, December 24, 1960 (ten hours before the first quarter)_

For some reason passing human understanding, Toby decided to have the whole family over for his, Eileen's, and Russ's first Christmas as a family. Everyone would stay the night, and wake up together for Christmas breakfast and the opening of presents. Since the house was small, they had to split up Toby's parents, for Nora and Constantina had to share the second, smaller bedroom while Wensley and Edward bunked in the sitting room. Ordinarily Toby and Eileen might have given up their bedroom to his parents, but they had Russ's crib there and felt that with all the noise and disruption, the baby should at least be able to sleep in a place that was familiar.

All had arrived by four o'clock Christmas Eve, Wensley, Nora, and Edward in the latter's car with a Christmas tree tied to the top. Nora guarded boxes of fragile ornaments that had been in the family for ages and had graced every one of Toby's Christmases. "Thought it was best for you to have these," she told her son, "now that you're the one with the child."

The men stayed in the sitting room putting up the tree while the women busied themselves in the kitchen preparing supper. Nora watched Constantina and Eileen with barely concealed curiosity. When Constantina raised her eyebrows, Nora admitted. "I was just thinking to see some… you know… I never saw you do any."

"What are you expecting," said Constantina a bit huffily, "an ice sculpture?"

"Plum pudding?" replied Nora.

"That's in the oven already," Eileen said. "I got it this afternoon."

"Oh," Nora sighed sadly. "Just like everyone else."

"That," Constantina said, "is a typical muggle attitude. We can't make anything permanent out of thin air. Magic fades, it dissolves. Magical food doesn't nourish. Magical money turns to dross. Magic is for temporary things, like this…" She set a knife to peeling a potato and a whisk to beating eggs for the eggnog. "Silly muggle idea, using magic to make food."

"Mum!" Eileen hissed. She looked nervous.

"We're inside a witch's house doing simple household tasks," Constantina replied. "Nobody cares. I swear, that school of yours…"

Nora was abashed, though also pleased by the display. "Wensley was always so sure," she said, "but he never could give me a concrete example. Do you think Russy…"

"We don't know," said Constantina. "It's too early to tell."

"Maybe not," Eileen whispered, and the two older women bent closer. "Beginning of November, I was hosting a little group – we all have young children – and one of the boys was hitting Russ with a block, not hard, but hitting and… well all of a sudden he acted like something hit him and pushed him back, but Russ didn't move. I don't know if that was anything, but I've been wondering ever since."

Nora went over to Russ, who was playing in the corner with a toy telephone made of cardboard, holding it to his ear but not imitating talking into it. "Are you gra-gra's little wizard, Russy?" she cooed. "Did you do magic on that naughty boy?" She reached out an arm that had bruises on the wrist. Nora always had bruises on her wrists or arms. It was normal. Russ stared back at her with intent, guarded eyes.

"'Leen," Constantina said suddenly, "you go talk to him. Ask the same question."

Unsure but willing, Eileen took Nora's place. "Russ," she said, "did you do magic on that naughty boy?" and she held the memory of that day in her mind.

Something behind the dark eyes opened then, like doors opening into a lighted hall, sparkling with comprehension and a trace of mischief. Eileen stepped back, puzzlement now on her face.

"He doesn't understand the question," she said, "but he thought 't was funny when Neil fell down."

"That's not just hunger and wet nappies, 'Leen. That's true reading." Constantina pulled a chair away from the table and sat down in it. "All these years," she said, shaking her head. "All these years you had the gift of reading and I never knew. Your own mother, and I never knew. It's because I didn't have the gift. No one in my family had it. There were some in your dad's family, though not him. I suppose that's why I never looked for it in you. My daughter is a reader."

"Does that mean she can read minds?" Nora asked.

"In a way," Constantina said after considering a few seconds whether or not to answer. "She can look in your eyes and know what you're thinking at that moment. Some have it stronger than others."

Nora turned to her daughter-in-law. "What am I thinking now?" she demanded.

Eileen looked. She kept looking. "I don't know," she said at last. "Maybe about a car."

"Close enough," Nora said. "I was thinking about going in the car to get the Christmas tree. There was a car in there. But why," this was addressed to Constantina, "can't she read me better?"

"Maybe it's the baby," Constantina admitted. "Maybe it's just between the mother and her child."

"What's between the mother and her child?" asked a new voice. Wensley Snape was standing in the kitchen doorway.

"'Leen has the gift of reading Russ." Constantina explained. "That's how she always knows what he needs, and probably why he never has to cry to get it. He just lets her see it. It seems now she can read much more than that, though."

"Would he let me see it, too?" Wensley asked. He was an old man, eighty or more, and though he wanted to crouch down at the child's level, he couldn't. Instead he brought a chair and sat next to the boy, leaning forward so that they could make eye contact. "Nothing," he said. "I can't read anything in that little brain."

"That's because you're a muggle, and muggles can't read anyway," Constantina stated flatly, but she'd seen something else. She seen the baby's dark eyes lose the light, as if the door behind them had closed. It opened, apparently, only for Eileen.

"What're y' all doin' in th' kitchen?" Toby asked, now sticking his head in the doorway, his father right behind. Father and son had both been hitting the Christmas cheer rather heavily, and both had reached the 'jolly' stage.

"We're experimenting with 'Leen's ability to read your son's mind," said Wensley. "It seems to improve communication. Imagine just thinking what you want without having to say anything."

"Wait a mo,'" said Toby. "Is 'at why he's slow? 'Cause 'Leen's doin' somewhat to his mind?"

The three women and Wensley were taken aback. "Your son," said Constantina firmly, "is not slow."

"Ted Heseltine says Polly says Edith Philips says 'e might be slow 'cause 'e ain't talkin' yet."

"That's rubbish. No baby his age is talking yet."

Toby was beginning to get steamed, and made an effort to enunciate clearly. "You know wha' I mean. I mean he ain't talkin' baby talk. I ain't heard a wa-wa or a goo-goo out o' him in his entire life. He's nigh a year old. How come he ain't prattling? There's some beginning to think he's slow."

"He's not prattling, as you call it," Constantina retorted, "because he's smart enough to know he doesn't have to. Why learn to talk when all you have to do is think about what you want and you get it?"

"Well then she's got t' stop doin' it. She's got t' make him 'ave t' talk so 's the neighbors don't get the idea he's slow. Once they start thinkin' y're slow, they've got y' pegged for the rest o' yer life."

"Now Toby, don't be so harsh!" Eileen cried.

"The lad may have a point," said Wensley.

"You'd better be awfully sure of yourselves before you go messing in my grandson's head…"

"Nobody's gonna call my son slow!"

As the exchange heated toward argument level, no one noticed that the child in the corner was watching and listening intently, the place behind his eyes sealed shut, guarded and wary. He didn't understand the words, or what the argument was about, but he knew that the people in the room were angry, and it had something to do with him.

Nora made them stop before it went too far. "For crying out loud, it's Christmas Eve! Toby, you take the chicken, Ned the potatoes, Dad Snape the peas. It's time for supper!"

"But we got to..."

"Toby! Not one more word. Tomorrow. We'll discuss it tomorrow when we're calmer." She thrust the platter with the roast chicken into his hands, turned him around, and pushed him into the sitting room where they'd set up card tables for their Christmas Eve feast. Wensley'd brought a bottle of wine for Toby to open. The plum pudding and eggnog were for later.

There was even a little plate with his special favorites for Russ, who could not yet eat everything they were eating. Eileen held out a hand to him and, since the adults were no longer arguing, he solemnly got to his feet, grasped her outstretched finger in a small fist, and let her lead him into the sitting room. That was when he saw the Christmas tree.

As the rest busied themselves setting the tables, Russ, his eyes wide and wonder-filled, crossed the room on his short little legs and reached out a hand to take one of the pretty, sparkling ornaments. "No, Russ. Don't touch," Eileen called to him, and he put the hand down. She turned back to the table, confident that he would obey.

He did obey. She said he must not touch. Russ again held out his right hand to within two inches of the ornament. Slowly, gently, the gaudy ball of blue and gold moved, arcing lazily outward on its hook as if drawn by a magnet, until it reached the waiting fingers. He had not touched the ornament, the ornament had touched him.

The only one in the room to notice was Wensley, who held his breath as he watched the little pointed face with the glittering dark eyes and soft black hair concentrate on the fulfillment of its desire. _Slow, Toby? I don't think so. There's a brain inside that head, whether he talks or not, and whatever else they may think, no one's ever going to think he's slow._

The next morning, after a fine breakfast, the seven gathered around the Christmas tree to open presents. These were mostly small practical things – a warm pair of gloves, a new cap – because they were poor working-class people who had to take care of each penny, shilling, and half crown. (Not farthings, of course. Eileen was going through every pocket and drawer in the house to find all the farthings, which she would spend in her shopping during the coming week, for with the new year they would become worthless.)

The only one in the house who got frivolous presents in addition to the more practical clothing was Russ. He opened his own gifts, with a little help from Eileen, and was soon playing on the carpet with a toy car that his grandfather had given him. He was the subject of midmorning discussion.

"Much as I hate to admit it, 'Leen," said Constantina as she helped pour the tea, "Toby may be right. If the boy isn't making any attempt to communicate with other people because he can communicate so well with you, then maybe he needs a little push."

"But Mum, he's so young. He won't understand it's for his own good. There's never a day in his life when he ain't connected with me. Can I just take that away?"

"There, dear, it isn't really so bad as that," Nora soothed. "It's not like you don't talk t' him every day, too. Just keep talking t' him. He won't lose that. Talk t' him and cuddle him…"

"Not too much," Toby butted in. "No son of mine's gonna be a mollycoddle."

"Be quiet, Toby," said Wensley. "The child's not a year old yet. This is women's business."

"And remember, 'Leen," her mother added, "we only know that you can read Russ. We don't know if Russ can read you. He listens when you talk and doesn't need eye contact to follow your instructions. You're not removing yourself from him, only the crutch."

"Yes, but he's so little…"

"Sometimes," Wensley said, "you have to be cruel to be kind."

They started that afternoon, after the older Snapes had left. Constantina insisted on staying a few days to help Eileen get through the worst of it, and for once Toby let her have her way because in this she was supporting him.

The battle started at three o'clock when Russ toddled into the kitchen and pulled at his mother's apron. She looked down, smiling but avoiding his eyes, and said, "Wha' cha want, dear?"

"Keep it simple," Constantina warned. "Any way he can show you that doesn't involve reading."

Russ continued to tug at the apron, clearly puzzled that he couldn't make his needs understood. Eileen decided to give him a choice. She patted his nappies. "D' ya need changing?" A quick check showed he didn't. She brought two little bottles, one of water and one of juice. "Are you thirsty, Russ? Show mum what you want."

None of it worked. Eileen was bending down closer, trying to prompt, when Russ suddenly grabbed her hair and pulled. Hard.

"Ow! Hey! Lay off, now you…" Eileen cried.

"What's he doing?" Toby was at the kitchen door watching.

"He's trying to pull my head around so I'll look at him."

Toby grinned in spite of himself. "Knows what he wants and not afraid t' try t' get it, eh?" He turned to Constantina. "He ain't really slow, is he?"

"Toby Snape, your son took his first steps when most babies are still crawling. I think he's going to fight for what he wants right now because he doesn't want to give up the easy life. My grandson isn't slow."

"That's all right then," said Toby, and went back into the sitting room.

Meanwhile, Eileen picked Russ up, but he kept reaching for her hair and eyes. For the first time, she and her son had a true difference of opinion, and for the first time it really struck her how odd it was to have a baby who made no noise except for grunts and coos without meaning. Right now, the most natural thing would be for him to be squalling, but he wasn't.

After a while Russ buried his face against Eileen's arm and lay in her lap, rigid and resentful, while Eileen rocked him, calling him a good boy and asking him to show her what he wanted because if he could do that, she would get it for him. Just show her what it was.

The battle went on for days. Russ clung to Eileen's skirts, reaching up to her, or let himself be carried around the house while he pulled at her hair and nose, and stuck his fingers in her eyes. Other times he lay on his stomach on the sitting room carpet, unmoving and unresponsive, a pathetic, lost little figure who couldn't understand what was happening to his once secure world.

_Monday, January 9, 1961 (nine hours before the last quarter)_

They didn't celebrate Russ's first birthday. It was too soon after Christmas for any extra expense, Russ did not understand birthdays in any case, and the boy was still being withdrawn and resentful.

"Is 'e bein' sullen?" Toby demanded when he arrived home from the mill by way of the local. He was later than usual, and gin was clearly the reason why. "A boy's s'posed to be a comfort n' support for 'is dad. Ain't s'posed to be sullen."

"Don't be hard on him, Toby. He doesn't understand."

"Some 'un should make 'im understand. Where's m' supper?"

Supper was a source of tension, too. "Why don't 'e eat? A man works 'ard for th' food on 's table and th' sullen witch brat don't eat."

"He hasn't eaten anything all day. I don't know if it's 'cause he's upset or he's sick."

"You don't go t' no bleeding doctor! Bloody National Health can't put a doctor in a man's town, 'e pays taxes and still 'as t' pay a bleeding doctor!"

"What if he's sick?"

"Ain't that wha' cher mum does? Wha' good's a witch, she can't physic 'er own kin?"

After supper, Toby pulled a partial bottle of gin from a cupboard, a bottle left over from Christmas, and after he'd poured a drink or two the problem became worse, but clearer. "That bleedin' horse's behind Evans come down from 'is la-di-da office t'day t' tell us we ain't com-pe-ti-tive. We got to ee-co-no-mize, or the mill's closin'. Askin' us t' do same work in shorter hours. 'T ain't right. A man works 'is whole life 'til he gets where 'e can afford a home 'n a wife 'n family, 'n they ups and takes it away from 'im." He poured another glass and downed it in a gulp.

Eileen froze. "You ain't redundant, are you, Toby?" She was trying to think of a way to take the bottle from him.

"What's th' difference? Less hours, less pay. Bleeding managers ain't takin' less pay, I'll wager!"

"We can still make do, Toby. I can clean and sew…"

"Man's s'posed t' provide for 'is wife! 'E can't do that, 'e ain't a man!" Another drink.

"You're a man, Toby, and a good one. 'T ain't your fault the mill's on hard times."

"Wha's a man t' do, 'Leen? Got a wife 'n kid t' take care of…" Toby looked across the room to where Russ was sitting on the floor, toys abandoned, quiet and resentful. "Com'ere son," Toby called to him. "Come t' yer dad."

Russ didn't move. Worse, he turned his head away. "It's all right," Eileen said quickly. "I can put him to bed in the small room. It'll be just you and me."

"No, I want m' son. Get over here, boy, 'n comfort yer dad." When Russ still didn't move, Toby rose, Eileen trying to restrain him, and stomped over to the boy. He bent down to take Russ's hand, saying, "Y' come to yer dad now," but Russ pulled the hand away and shrank from his father.

"Y' ungrateful little brat!" Toby roared. "I'll teach you what for!" He seized Russ and lifted him, holding him tightly while the toddler wriggled and squirmed and pushed with tiny fists.

"Toby! He's just a baby!" Eileen screamed, trying to break his grip and pull the child away. "Leave him be! Give him to me!"

"'Shut yer gob, woman! E's gonna sit with 'is father like a proper son, and not a sullen witch's brat!" Toby yelled back. "'Ere I thought you was a wife, 'n you been teachin' 'im 'gainst me all this time!"

Russ was kicking now, twisting and squirming as his parents shouted at each other, his face reddening and his fists flailing. Suddenly he, too, was screaming – howling and wailing with infant rage and fear. The sound was so shocking to Toby that he staggered back against the little table next to the sofa, tipping over his glass, and released the child to Eileen.

"Wha's 'at?" Toby stammered.

"It's your son," Eileen replied. "He's crying."

"Thought 'e didn't cry."

"He does now." She looked deeply into the dark eyes, saw the need, and carried Russ up to his crib where she crooned to him and settled him down with his teddy bear and his favorite soft cloth, then went back down to comfort the stricken Toby, who had to face the cold outside world alone. Toby was staring at the floor by the cupboard where the shattered gin bottle lay. "Didn't know I knocked into it," he said by way of an apology as she cleaned up the mess.

After that, Russ had no trouble making his needs known. The next morning he clambered into Eileen's lap and patted her mouth with his hand, opening and closing his own mouth in a pantomime of speech. She started speaking baby-talk to him, and he watched her lips intently, mimicking their movements. Two days later he said, "Mama," and Toby was in transports of joy.

"You're going to regret wanting him to start talking," Eileen told Toby the following week, and it was true they could no longer get the boy to be quiet. He babbled and prattled and talked nonsense on his cardboard telephone the way he saw people talk on the public phone in the market, and on the day he mastered the sound 'g,' he went around the house crowing, 'Ga-ga-ga-ga," all day long. He said 'da-da' and 'wa-da' and 'tey' (which meant teddy), and 'pu' when his nappies needed changing. Toby had to agree that he was not slow.

The neighborhood was changing. Most of the men at the mill had their hours cut, and it was hard to make do on less than eight pounds a week. Ted and Polly Heseltine had enough saved that they were able to move to Manchester where he could find work. Most of the other wives started walking long, dusty miles to other villages and towns looking for chores to supplement income.

Toby took up an old refrain. "Why can't ya magic us up something, 'Leen? What good's it being married to a witch if she can't help with a coupla pounds here and there? Y' give me the expense of a baby and then don't help out. 'T ain't fair to a man."

With Polly gone, Kate Hanson suddenly became available to watch Russ while Eileen went seeking day employ, and luckily she asked only a meal in return. They decided it would be better if Kate came to the Snape house so that Russ would still be in familiar surroundings. The first day she had to leave him, Eileen was edgy.

"You know Mrs. Hanson," she told Russ as she crouched down at his level and straightened his smock. "You be a good boy and don't give her any trouble. I'll be back for supper."

"Don't you fret, Eileen," Kate said. "I may not have had any of my own, but I've taken care of all three of Polly's. We'll get along fine."

How fine, Eileen found out late that afternoon when she returned. Mrs. Hanson was sitting by herself in the front room knitting.

"Where's Russ?" Eileen asked.

"He's been hiding," Kate said calmly. "Practically the moment you left, he crawled into one of the lower kitchen cabinets and hasn't been out all day. He's punishing you for leaving him. It's normal, believe me. It took Georgy a week before he'd come out of the upstairs wardrobe, and I'm his aunt."

"I got to let him know I'm home."

"I'm sure he knows. He'd have heard the door open. Now, Eileen, he's not going t' come rushing into your arms. He's going t' punish you. He'll retreat, and push you away, and scream like a banshee, but that's because he's been saving up all day just t' let you know how unhappy he is. Let him get it all out, and stay calm."

Mrs. Hanson was right. Eileen couldn't let the boy stay in the cabinet with Toby due home in an hour, so she pulled him out, and he let out a wail that must have been heard clear down the street. He screamed, and kicked, and fought his way off her lap, and tried to get back into the cabinet, and it was all she could do to stay patient, for she was tired, too, so Kate came into the kitchen, and Russ went to her instead of his mother, and Eileen was finally able to fix supper.

Russ continued to punish Eileen after Toby came home. He did this by pushing away from her and snuggling up to his father on the sofa. "What's this?" Toby asked, clearly pleased. "You two 'ad a tiff or something?"

"He's sore at me for leaving him today," Eileen said. "We're not talking."

"Smart boy," Toby chuckled. "Women 're fickle. Y' got t' stick with your mates."

It was only a matter of time, of course, before Kate and Russ reached a _modus vivendi_, and he began to accept her arrival as normal, and to run to greet his mother when she got home. Kate did express some concerns, though.

"Did you ever notice how distant he is from everyone," she said one day. "Like he's outside watching, but never wants to get close?"

"No, I can't say as I have," Eileen replied. "Did something happen today?"

"No, not really. Maybe it's just because Polly's children were different, more outgoing. Never the same for two minutes. They'd be giggling, and then crying, and then so rapt in something they'd never hear you call, and then fighting, and then loving. Russ, except when he's hiding in cupboards, well he's always so… detached."

"He's always been a quiet child," said Eileen, putting on her apron and starting to prepare supper.

Several months later, Kate greeted Eileen at the door with an apologetic air. "I don't know how it happened, 'Leen, but Russ got out the back door and out onto the moor before I noticed the door was open. I was sure that door was latched."

Since Russ was now sitting on the kitchen floor playing with his toy car, Eileen calmly removed her coat. "I see you caught him."

"When it comes t' it," Kate laughed, "I'm faster than he is."

After Kate had left, Eileen sat herself down next to Russ. "You went out by yourself today."

"I went for walk," Russ replied, not looking at her.

"How'd you open the door?"

Russ thought for a moment. "Didn't. Door just opened."

"Why'd it do that?"

The little boy grinned. "I said please."

Eileen sighed, thankful that childish magic set off no alarms. "Russ, you must never go out of the house alone. Always stay with Mrs. Hanson. If the door opens again, run and tell her. Do you understand?"

"Yes, Mum." And as always, having been given a direct order, Russ obeyed.

Things went on like this for another couple of years, and then in 1964 the mill finally closed. Men like Derrick Philips and Harry Evans got work in Colne and managed to stay in the town while they commuted. Others, like the Catlows and Garnetts, moved to Manchester and Birmingham. Toby got a job in the mine in the next town and came home drunk more often. Things, which had been bad, gradually got worse.


	3. Chapter 3 – School Days

_In Principio…_ – **School Days**

Nineteen-sixty-four was also the year Russ's family began talking about school.

"He'll be going to Hogwarts." Nana was saying. "Eileen was the first of the family to go, but her son should be admitted as well. He's shown he's magical. They can't refuse him." Eileen was Russ's mum, and Nana was her mum, and Nana almost always got her way because she was the most powerful witch around. Russ had not yet come to grips with the fact that Nana and Mum were the only witches around. He thought being the most powerful was pretty good.

"Right," said Dad, who almost never agreed with Nana. "Can y' see me telling m' mates that my son goes to some school called Hogwarts? Y' know what they'll all say."

"You would impress me more, Tobias, if you were worried more about your son's education and less about what your 'mates' would say."

"I don't see 's it makes much difference right now anyway," continued Dad. "He can't start that la-di-da school 'til he's eleven. We're talking about right next year, when he's five."

"He should," Nana said, "be home-schooled."

"She's right, Toby," said Wenny. "The boy needs to be prepared for Hogwarts. A primary school isn't going to give him that." Wenny was Dad's dad's dad. Dad didn't have a dad because he was dead – killed in a mine cave-in. Russ knew a mine was where his dad worked, a cave-in was a bad thing, killed meant making someone dead, and dead was when you had to go away and you could never come back even though you wanted to. Mum's dad was dead before Russ was born. He had no memory of either of his grandfathers.

Mum spoke next, and she agreed with Dad. This made Russ happy because when Mum agreed with Dad, Dad was usually in a good mood about it. "No, Wensley," she said, "Toby's right. Who's going to home-school him? I can't. I have to look for jobs. We ain't got the money to pay for it. Are either of you going to pay for it? If you aren't I don't see as you've got any say in the matter."

They were always talking about money. Russ didn't understand a lot about money. He had a collection of five coins: a farthing that used to be able to buy things but couldn't anymore, a ha'penny, a penny, a tuppence, and a thruppence. The other coins were too important for him to have, they needed to be spent. He figured home-schooling must cost a lot of sixpences if none of the adults had the money for it.

The school talk ended. Wenny bent down where Russ was drawing with a piece of charcoal on a scrap of butcher's paper. "You want to come spend the afternoon with me, Severus? I think your mum and dad want to be alone." Wenny was leaning on a cane. He used a cane to walk with, which Russ thought was neat since Wenny's canes always had interesting figures on them. This cane had a dragon's head. It came from a place called Wales.

Russ nodded and got at once to his feet. Whenever he visited Wenny because his parents wanted to be alone, his Dad was always in a good mood when he got back. He also loved going to Wenny's house because it had so many interesting things. He scampered to get his jacket and cap, then ran out the door with a quick "Bye, Mum. Bye, Dad."

Walking down the street with Wenny was fun, too. Men Russ didn't know would tip their caps and say things like, 'Afternoon, Cap'n.' Sometimes they noticed Russ. 'Is this the young 'un?' they'd ask, and Wenny would say, 'Aye, m' great-grandson. Greet the gentleman, Severus.' Then Russ would hold out his hand and say solemnly, 'How do you do?' and the men would tip their caps to him, too.

Wenny lived a short ways outside the town, in an old, old cottage with an overgrown, rambling garden. Nana's garden was neat and orderly, and she told him the names of everything and what it was good for, but Wenny's garden was wild and full of things with no names. Russ could pick and examine anything he wanted, as long as he didn't put it into his mouth. He loved both gardens, but Wenny's garden was more fun to play in.

Even more fun was the inside of Wenny's house. It was full of things that nobody else had. There were real human heads so small they'd fit in your hand, and dolls that if you stuck pins in them they could make people sick. There were pig knuckle bones and painted cards that told the future, and blowguns with poison darts that Russ couldn't touch because they could still kill you if you pricked yourself. There were statues with eight arms, and snake skins, and a dinosaur claw. There was the dried-out eye of a creature that lived on the highest mountain in the world, a vial of dirt from a vampire's grave, and the tooth of a man-eating shark. There were drawers and chests full of these things, and Russ loved them all.

The best were the books because they all had pictures. Russ couldn't read yet, but he knew which pictures were the vampires, and which the zombies. He could recognize werewolves and ghouls, harpies and gorgons, banshees and dragons, gremlins and basilisks, the Cyclops and the minotaur, centaurs and satyrs. He could lie for hours on his stomach poring over one of the musty old volumes that smelled of salt and mildew.

Russ was, in fact, not yet five years old, yet he already knew more about herbs and potions, dark arts and magical creatures, than any other student who at the age of eleven had crossed the lake to Hogwarts on his way to being sorted.

_Wednesday, September 1, 1965 (day before the first quarter)_

Russ stood in front of his mother and father on the first day of school dressed in his brand new school uniform. It was too big for him. This was partly because there were no premade uniforms his size, but partly also because his parents expected him to grow into it.

The uniform was short gray pants and white shirt, a dark blue tie and blazer, a gray cap and socks, and black shoes. All these garments hung loosely on Russ, giving him a scarecrowish appearance. He didn't realize this. His mum and dad were proud.

"There he is," said Dad, almost teary. "M' son's going off to school."

"Now," Mum asked, "What are you supposed to remember? What's your name?"

"Richard Severus Snape."

"Where do you live?"

"End of Spinner's End, down by the mill."

"Parents?"

"Tobias and Eileen Snape."

"Dad's work?"

"Collier."

"Your numbers."

"One, two, three..." he rattled them off all the way to a hundred.

"Alphabet."

"A, B, C…" that one was easy.

"All right, Russ, let's go."

Dad went off to the mine while Mum took Russ's hand and went with him to the school building at the center of the town, a half mile away. Just as they got to the bridge over the river, Mum bent down to adjust Russ's tie.

"And what's the most important to remember?" she asked quietly.

"Don't make nothing happen," Russ replied. It was a rule he'd learned to follow so long ago he couldn't remember. Never make things happen where people could see.

They crossed the bridge and went up the hill toward the school. Other students were going, too, some of them with their mums. Russ was excited and a little bit scared.

Mum left Russ in a big room with desks and tables and chairs. The teacher, a tired young woman with curly blonde hair who introduced herself as Miss Donnelly, showed him where to sit, and soon the room was full with nervous five-year-olds. Russ hunched down in his seat because he didn't want them to look at him. Most of them had uniforms that fit.

The teacher began to call names and to ask the children questions. Some of the questions were easy, like 'What do you call the big light in the sky?' or 'Count from eleven to twenty.' Some were harder, like 'Tell me the names of three animals with four legs.' Russ knew lots of names of plants, but his acquaintance with nonmagical animals was almost nonexistent. Then the teacher called the name of a student who didn't answer.

"Richard?"

The children looked around. Russ looked around. Richard wasn't there.

"Richard?" the teacher said again, then she stood up and walked over to Russ. "Richard Snape? That's you, right?" The class giggled.

Russ looked down at his hands, mortified. "Y's 'm," he muttered, hating himself for not remembering his full name.

"Good, Richard. Now tell me, what country do you live in?"

Russ thought. His parents hadn't given him the answer to this one. "Pendle," he said after a moment. The class giggled again.

"It's England, Richard," the teacher said. "Do you know what the capital of England is? Capital means a large, important city."

Russ thought hard about cities, trying to remember a name. One came. "Blackpool," he answered. More giggles.

"Don't worry, Richard," the teacher said. "We'll have time to learn about London."

It was a terrible day. Russ was confronted time after time with things he did not know. He didn't blame or resent the teacher, he blamed himself. He blamed himself for being too stupid to know these things that everybody else knew. There was something wrong with him. Nana and Wenny were right. He should have been kept at home because he was not good enough to go to school.

When Mum came to pick him up, Russ was silent and miserable.

Russ remained silent after they got home and Eileen got him a glass of water and a piece of bread for tea. "How did it go today?" she asked him finally, sitting beside him at the kitchen table with her own cuppa.

"Okay," Russ answered glumly. He didn't know the name yet for the feeling of shame inside him, but it was new and unpleasant. He didn't want his mother to know about it. She'd been so sure he would do well.

"It doesn't sound so good," said Eileen. "Let's have a look-see." She leaned forward to bring her eyes closer to his.

Russ panicked. For the first time in his life, he did not want to show his mum what he was remembering, what he was thinking. He wanted her to be proud of him, and if she saw, she wouldn't be. Suddenly, not by his own effort, but by a kind of reflex, like pulling your hand away from something hot, he was remembering a half hour in the late morning when he was drawing a picture. That had been nice.

"Oh, drawing," Eileen said. "What did you draw?"

"Nana's garden with the flowers," Russ replied. He'd wanted to draw Wenny's shrunken heads and voodoo dolls, but he didn't know how. The teacher 'd liked the flowers.

"Show me something else."

Russ found that if he left out the bad parts, there were things he could let his mum see. The teacher reading a story, for example, and the song she wanted them to learn. Children running around the play yard. He pushed his own failure down into a place where she would never look for it and… he didn't really understand, but it was like the kitchen door out to the area yard that if you didn't latch it, the wind could blow it open. Russ latched it.

By the time his dad got home, Russ had the story ready. He told all about the drawing, and the music, and the class learning ABC together, and Toby was satisfied.

"Mum, what's a country? Is it like Nana's house?" Russ asked later while Eileen did the washing up.

"What? No, Russ. That's a different word. When we say Nana lives in the country, we mean the countryside. Out of town where there's no other house but Nana's, and all's moor and open land. A country is a big place with lots of villages, towns, farms, and cities inside it."

"Is England a country?"

"That's right. We live inside England. Remember last month when we went to Blackpool with Gra? All the time we were driving, and in Blackpool, we were still in England. We could drive for hours, and we'd still be in England."

The next day in school, the teacher didn't ask about England or London, even though Russ now had the right answers to give her.

As the days and weeks passed, school became at least predictable, even though it continued to be a torment. Russ soon discovered that almost anything he did made the other children giggle, and he hated being called on for any thing. Even if he knew the answer, he couldn't get it to come out of his mouth properly, and he would say things like 'L… London,' or 'I don't… know.' That was really funny for the others.

Play time was good because the other children ran off to play games, and he could find a quiet place to sit and think. Wild flowers poked their way up through the cracks and around the edges of the play yard, and Russ found old friends – pimpernel, heart's ease, and toadflax.

Books were another good thing, and Russ learned to form the letters into words, and to add and subtract, and more about England and Lancashire. He learned to look at a globe and find his own country, and how the sun made day and night while the globe turned, and about temperature, and that plants make their own food.

On the bad side, he learned that he was poor, and that the part of the town he lived in wasn't a nice place for the other children to go. Most of the families with small children had left his neighborhood when the mill closed, so there weren't too many others from his area, and everyone could tell where he came from just by looking at him.

And he knew that the one thing he must never, never talk about to anybody was about witches, wizards, magic, or Hogwarts. They were all muggles, and they wouldn't understand.

After the first week, Eileen stopped taking Russ to school or bringing him home. He knew the way, and she needed to work or they wouldn't have enough money for food on the table. Russ understood that money was important, so this didn't bother him. Besides, this was when Russ started exploring.

The most important thing about exploring was not to stay on the same side of the river as the school. If you stayed there, people stared at you and warned you off because they could tell you were from the other side. On the school side there were flowers in the yards, and the mothers didn't have to work, so they had time to keep their curtains clean from the dirty air. On the mill side, it was different.

The river had a stone bridge wide enough for a car to cross on it. The river went past the old, closed mill, and the water smelled bad. Russ wasn't supposed to go in it, or drink from it, or even touch it. People threw things there like it was a long, wet rubbish bin.

There were places along the bank, though – mostly on the school side – where scraggly trees grew. It was nice to sit under a tree on a quiet afternoon as long as no one saw you. There were a few children at school who lived on the mill side of the river, all older than Russ. Russ didn't like them to see him because they laughed at his badly-fitting clothes, and they all knew his dad spent too much time at the local. Besides, Russ had learned that you didn't want people talking and looking at you too much because if they looked in your eyes, they could steal your thoughts. Russ's mum could, and Russ now assumed other people could, too. It was okay if it was your mum.

At first it was easy to get lost on the mill side because all the streets were the same. All the houses were grayish brown brick covered with black soot. All the cobblestones were cracked and broken. All the streets and sidewalks were narrow, with gutters running down the center, and there were no trees or flowers anywhere. When Russ started noticing which houses had boarded up windows, it got easier to remember which street he was on.

Soon Russ knew all the important places. There was a shop where his mum bought tea and sugar, and a bakery for bread, and the butcher's shop. They were all small and didn't sell many things. Russ knew from walking through the school side that the shops there were bigger and had more things for sale. This didn't bother Russ because he knew they were different, and he didn't question that this was the natural order. It might have been otherwise if he'd suffered real want, but for all his dad's complaint about putting food on the table, Russ had never been truly hungry. He was small, and didn't eat much. There were even rare occasions when his dad would bring home fish and chips wrapped in newspaper on an Friday evening. Life had its pleasures.

Russ also knew where the pub was. He had to be careful his dad never saw him there because Russ wasn't supposed to be mucking around in the street after school, so if his dad stepped out of the pub, Russ had to run home like the dickens to get there before his dad did. His mum would look up from cooking, tired after a day charring or laundering, and say as he raced into the house, "He's on his way, is he? Good thing supper's nigh ready."

After a month of exploring, Russ discovered the old mill. He had a vague memory that a long time before, maybe a year ago, his dad 'd worked at a place called the mill. That was before the mill closed and everyone had to work at another place called the mine. The mill was all boarded up and surrounded by a fence, but Russ found a place in the fence where it was broken and he could squeeze through. He started prowling around every day after school trying to find a way into the building. He didn't find it because something else happened.

Suddenly, in the third week in October, all the mothers were shepherding the children more closely than usual. Children who'd walked to school on their own now came with a parent. Women talked to Russ's mum in the evening, and she walked him to school as well. The teachers patrolled the play yard at play time, and when Russ wanted to go off in a corner by himself, he was told to stay close to the others. Gossip among the second and third year students was frightening.

"They did bad things to her, and then they killed her and buried her on the moor," was the general story, and some of the boys demonstrated how you could be strangled. On Thursday the body of a boy was found on the moor, too, and Eileen lectured Russ about not talking to or taking rides from strangers. The deaths were in Manchester, not in Pendle, but one never knew. The world was a dangerous place.

One aspect of having to stay closer to the other children during play time was that several of the older ones had little battery-run radios, and Russ could overhear some of the songs and listen to the students talk about the singers. He never did it in school, but at home he started singing some of the words. Those he knew, at any rate.

He wasn't a good singer, so the first time Russ did "Help! I need somebody! Help! Not just anybody!" Eileen came running thinking he really wanted assistance. "Hey! You've got to hide your love away!" was another favorite. Over and over again.

Russ wanted his hair longer, too. "No son o' mine is going t' have hair like a girl!" Toby insisted, but eventually he had to give in because so many of the young people had been growing their hair long for more than a year now, and he wanted his son to be 'normal.'

Shortly after Christmas, in spite of frantic hand waving and stop signals from Toby, Eileen asked if Russ wanted to invite some friends over for a birthday party. "Nah," Russ answered, "bunch o' stuffed shirts," a remark that made Toby tousle his hair and say, "That's m' boy!"

In fact, no one was much concerned that Russ didn't make friends at school. He was the son of a poor miner who had to travel to another town for work, and he came from the side of town where boarded up windows and lifeless streets were signs of the decay that had set in after the closing of the mill. It would have been more surprising if the boy had shown signs of wanting to form friendships outside his social class.

The summer of 1966, Russ went to spend several weeks with Nana. He was six and a half now, and his fingers were much more controllable than they'd been when he was five, so Nana set him to weeding and pinching off flowers in her herb garden. At first he tried witching them out of the ground, but Nana told him not to use magic around her potions herbs, so he stopped. Then he also had to pick off caterpillars and aphids, and anything else that liked to eat leaves or suck juices. The pollinators he was supposed to leave alone. Nana didn't believe in using nasty sprays.

"Don't be afraid of that bee, child!" Nana would call to him across the garden. "It won't sting you unless you force it to. A sting 'll just hurt you for fifteen minutes, but it'll kill the bee. Move slowly and give it time to clear out."

That was the time of Russ's first encounter with stinging nettles, too. At first he thought it was a bee, until Nana checked, found no sting, then saw the plant he'd touched. "We can have nettle soup tonight," she said, and laughed at Russ's expression. "Don't worry. Nettle soup is good and healthy, and cooking takes away the sting. In fact, if you grab it instead of just brushing against it, it hurts but not as much. Sometimes if you want something, you have to be willing to let it hurt you for a bit. It depends on how bad it hurts, and how much you want it. You'd better wear gloves, though, if you're going to be pulling nettles." The nettle soup was delicious.

Nana had an tawny owl named Nelson. Nelson was older than Russ by a year, and Nana warned Russ that if he wasn't careful Nelson would live longer than Russ would. Russ thought this was funny until Nana explained that a tawny owl residing with a wizard family could easily live to be twenty or thirty years old. "I know of wizards dead before thirty because they weren't careful with their spells."

It was Nana who now started teaching Russ about magic in earnest. Russ's mum couldn't do it because first his dad was uncomfortable about magic, and second because they lived in a place where there were too many muggles. You weren't supposed to do magic where muggles could see, unless like Gra they were members of the family, and so Mum just never used it. She told Russ she'd never been that good at it anyway.

Nana was good at it. She got out her husband's old wand and showed Russ how to hold it. "Mum says I'm not supposed to use wand magic," Russ told her. "I'm too young."

"Your mother picked up some strange ideas in that school of hers," Nana retorted. "And the Ministry's a bunch of officious busybodies. You're in my house, and nobody can tell if it's you or me doing it. A wizard should start his magic young. How else is he going to be good at it? Now you hold this like I showed you, and you're going to learn how to fix something that's broken. It only puts pieces together, so if you don't have all the pieces, it won't be properly fixed, but if you use it the moment you break something, then it's fine. Just move the wand downward 'til it points at the thing and say the name of the thing you want fixed and _Reparo!_"

That was Russ's first introduction to magical language because you couldn't just speak English. If you wanted to fix a bottle (he practiced on a bottle that he could break and repair over and over again), you had to say _Ampullam reparo!_ because magic for bottle was _ampulla_. And you had to know that you couldn't use it on living things because they didn't 'fix' the same way.

"You're better at this than your mother was," Nana said thoughtfully after he managed to fix the bottle several times in a row. "I'm not surprised. I never knew a Rossendale or a Prince who wasn't good at magic until your mother came along. Maybe it just skipped a generation."

"What's a Rossendale?" Russ asked.

"I am. My name was Constantina Rossendale before I married Richard Prince, and then I became a Prince by marriage."

"Am I a Rossendale, too?" It was an interesting concept.

"You certainly are. A Rossendale and a Prince, just like your mother." Nana fingered the wand. "This works pretty well for you. Maybe when you're older, you can have it."

_Thursday, September 1, 1966 (one day after the full moon)_

Life became more tense that fall. The most important factor was Russ's dad. Toby suddenly hated Americans. It wasn't really about the war in that country south of China that Russ had trouble finding on the globe, even though his dad was always saying how the Americans shouldn't be there. No, the real problem was coal. Russ had the idea that if it weren't for the coal, his dad wouldn't care about the war.

The Americans were selling their coal cheaper than the English were selling their coal. That meant everybody wanted to buy American coal instead of English coal. If nobody bought English coal, then Dad would lose his job. If the English sold their coal cheaper, then the mines wouldn't have as much money, and Dad would still lose his job. To make matters worse, somebody in London was talking about joining Europe. If England did that, then the Germans would sell their coal in England, and Dad would lose his job.

Toby Snape was getting drunk more often now, and it wasn't the jolly kind of drunk. He was coming home roaring with rage against the world, furious and frightened, and striking out at fate. The first time he hit Eileen was the night after the first day of school. He staggered late into the house calling for Russ. "Where's m' boy! The whol' worl's 'gainst a man, but 'e's go' 'is son t' comfort 'im. Bleedin' 'ope f'r th' future! Russ! Come sit wit' yer dad!"

Eileen tried to stop him from going up the stairs, where Russ had already gone to bed in his room. "Get yer 'ands off me, woman!" Toby yelled, and punched her in the shoulder, sending her back against the wall. He advanced up the stairs bellowing "Russ! Get out 'ere!"

Russ had been startled awake, and came out of the room, his father's drunkenness by now a matter of common occurrence. One look at Toby's wrathful face, however, and he shrieked in terror and darted back in, grabbing the door and trying to shut it. This only infuriated Toby more, and he lunged for the door, thrusting it open and seizing the boy by the upper arm. "Shut me out, will ya, ya witch's brat! Where's th' magic when a man needs it? Laughing at me, both o' ya, but y 'd never lift a finger t' do a bit t' help! You don't run from me!"

He'd loosened and removed the belt from his waist and now brought the strap down on Russ. The boy didn't wear pajamas – they couldn't afford unnecessary things – and was dressed in underpants and undershirt. The strap caught the flesh at the back of his thighs, and he screamed, more in fear than in pain for Toby was too drunk to do a proper job of it. The strap went up and came down again as Russ shrieked bloody murder, and then Eileen was behind them yelling _"Expelliarmus!"_ and the belt flew out of Toby's hand. Toby's grip relaxed in the surprise of finding himself beltless, and Russ was out of the room and down the stairs as fast as he could run.

The wand disappeared, and Eileen was soothing the astounded Toby. "Nothing happened, Toby. Y're dreamin' or something. It's all right, come to bed. Y're tired." Russ didn't hear any more. He ran through the kitchen and crouched in the area yard, shivering in the cold.

Twenty minutes later, Eileen came looking for Russ. "It's okay, dear, you can come inside. He's asleep. Russ padded into the kitchen, his face wet with tears. "Let's look at you," his mum said, examining the still red skin on the backs of his legs. "Does it sting?"

Russ shook his head, but she put cold compresses on the marks anyway and then held him until he stopped whimpering and relaxed in her arms. "It's a cold world for a working man, Russ," Eileen tried to explain. "You work hard for every little thing and then the world takes it away. Sometimes a man just explodes from all the pressure."

Beginning to remember, Russ asked, "Did you use magic on him?"

Eileen stiffened. "No. I did not use magic on him. I used magic on the belt and made it go away. I did not use magic on your father." She sat him up in her lap to lock eyes. "Russ, a witch must never, never use magic on a muggle. It isn't fair. It isn't right. We have all the weapons muggles have. We have words, and fists, and everything else. There's no reason why we can't fight them fairly. Magic in the nonmagical world isn't fair."

"But you used magic upstairs."

"On the belt, not on the person. And only because I didn't want to punch him in the nose."

Russ giggled. Eileen put him to bed then, down in the sitting room on the sofa. She lay down in the boy's bed upstairs while Toby sprawled in their bed in the large bedroom. By the time Toby woke up the next morning, Russ was already in school.

School was no better. They had drawing just before lunch, and Russ took the last full packet of crayons. "Hey," said Neil Philips behind him. "I wanted those."

"Well, I… got them… first." said Russ, and took the crayons to his desk.

At lunch time, Russ found a bench off to one side where he sat to eat the sandwich his mum made for him. Three older boys, about nine years old, came up to him, Neil right behind.

"Hey, funny-looking," the first boy said, "I want to talk to you."

Russ got up and tried to leave, but they blocked his path.

"I said I wanted to talk to you. Is it true you didn't know your own name 'til you were six?" The boys all laughed. "I'm Brian. Neil's my brother. I want you to stay out of his way."

Russ didn't answer. He tried to move sideways, but there wasn't enough space to get away.

"Do you understand me, funny-looking?" Brian looked around at the others. "Not too bright, is he? What's your name?"

"R…ru… Richard," Russ said quietly.

"Well, Ra-Ra-Richard, people like you are supposed to wait and let people like us go first. That's why we live in nice houses and you live in pig sties. Got it?"

"Y…es," Russ answered. There was nothing else he could do. They were bigger, and there were more of them. Probably no one even saw he was in the middle of them since he was so much shorter.

"Good," said Brian. He reached out and fingered Russ's blazer lapel. "And tell your parents to get you some clothes that fit. You're an eyesore." The boys left, laughing.

Russ sat back down to finish his sandwich. He was seething. _Wait,_ he thought, _just wait 'til I'm old enough to do magic. I'll show you. I'm better than you are, and you'll have to wait for me._ A new thought came. Muggles. _That's all you are – muggles. Just muggles. I'm a wizard! And I don't have to care what you think because when I'm eleven, I'm going to a different school that wouldn't even look at people like you. And I'll learn to do great magic, and I'll be just like everybody else, and we'll all laugh at you. Who needs muggle friends? When I'm eleven, I'll have wizard friends._

The thought carried Russ through the rest of the day and gave him an inner dignity that he could see, even if no one else could. He paid no attention to Neil making faces at him behind the teacher's back. He did his exercises and turned in his papers, and when school was over he walked calmly out of the building. He was once again allowed to go home by himself, and now he noticed even more how the houses changed, got older, more uncared for as he crossed the stone bridge over the river. And when he saw his mother wave from the front area yard, she really was dressed more shabbily than the other mothers. It didn't matter. She was a witch, and that made her better.

His dad was shamed-faced and apologetic. Toby didn't remember what he'd done the night before, but he'd been sick enough to know that he was likely out of control. Eileen told him he'd tried to beat his son, and got a couple of good licks in before she could stop him, so Toby was all over trying to make it up to Russ in any way he could.

After dinner, Toby said, "They teach you figuring in that school, right?"

"Yeah," Russ answered.

"What's eight and seven?'

"Fifteen."

"What's six and nine?"

"Fifteen."

"You want me to show you that game your great-granddad and I play all the time?"

"Isn't he a bit young?" Eileen asked.

"That'll just give him more time to get good at it. How about it, son?"

"Okay," Russ said, and watched carefully as his father showed him how to deal the cards, count the hands, and peg. It was a complicated game, and Russ couldn't learn it all in one night. Toby didn't go to the local all weekend, but stayed sober and taught his boy cribbage. By Bonfire Night, Russ was good enough that from time to time he could even skunk his father. They didn't go to the bonfire that night because there was nothing in the way of junk to put in the yard for the lads to scavenge. Even junk was worth too much. Without that, there was no point. Toby stayed home with his family and played cribbage with his son.

Wenny died on Christmas Eve. He was in a shop buying a gift for Gra when he had a massive stroke and was dead in minutes. The funeral was well-attended by older men with a nautical air who'd shipped out on one of Wensley Snape's voyages when they were young, for he really had been a sea captain. Two men even came from as far away as Liverpool.

It turned out, though, that Wenny had lived somewhat above his pension, and that when all was settled, there wasn't much to leave to his daughter-in-law, grandson and great-grandson. Toby got a bit of money, much of which he spent celebrating the fact that he'd gotten it. Russ got a few boxes.

When they opened the boxes, they found the voodoo dolls and the poison dart blowers, and all the other wonderful, dark things that Russ loved so much. Another box had the books with the fascinating pictures, books that Russ still couldn't read because they had words in a language he wasn't learning in school. There were some books in English, though, and Russ was particularly charmed by one on different things witches could do to curse someone. He sat up several nights going over the hexes and the jinxes, wishing he was at Nana's with his grandfather's wand so he could try them.

It wasn't until after Russ's seventh birthday that the full impact of Wenny's death hit. Russ's effective routine human contact had narrowed by a third. He saw Nana and Gra only rarely, but Wenny had lived in the same town, and while Russ hadn't visited every week, he'd generally seen Wenny two or three times a month at least. Now, that was impossible, and the only people Russ talked to outside of school were his parents in the evenings, if his father was sober.

Wensley's death affected Toby, too, in subtle ways. Of the three, Toby had the largest circle of acquaintance, for he had his mates at the mine, and the lads at the local pub. Some of the men were in both circles, for several of them made the same trip each day from home to mine and back, stopping to unwind over a couple of pints at the pub on the way home. But Wensley had been something more. He was Toby's port in a storm. Toby had always known that if worst came to worst and he had to strike out into parts unknown looking for work, Eileen and Russ could stay the while with old Wensley. Now that security was gone, and Toby had no one to look to for help but himself.

Even more subtle, and something Russ was far too young to understand, was that with Wensley gone Toby and Eileen had far less chance to be alone together. Toby's temper became shorter and shorter, and he tended more and more to take it out on Russ, who was now a serious, if subliminal, rival for Eileen's attention. Toby was far more apt now to lash out with palm or fist or belt when drunk, and Russ was far more apt to be the target. Russ was beginning to sport bruises on his wrists, arms, back, and legs, and it was a good thing his sleeves were long.

Then there was the whole battle over baths.

The house was an old one, and while a toilet had been put in, a bathroom had not. Toby did most of his ablutions at the mine, where there was a big washroom for the men to clean off the dust and grime at the end of the day after they came up out of the 'hole.'

Eileen washed at the sink, and had the daily privacy of an empty house when she got home to take care of her needs. Russ washed his face, hands, and neck daily, but a couple of times a week he stood naked in a washtub on the kitchen floor, water halfway to his knees, while his mum soaped him down and poured water over his head to rinse him. At the age of seven, this ritual became deeply humiliating to him, repugnant, shameful.

"Mum, please," he begged as she unbuttoned his shirt and began to undo his pants. "Let me do it myself. I'm not a baby!" He didn't know how to tell her that he couldn't bear the thought of undressing in front of her, even though he'd been doing it all his life.

"You're not old enough yet to do it proper. You'd give a lick and a promise and be off."

"Please, Mum, don't. I can do it," She whisked off the clothes despite his efforts to impede her, and he tried to cover himself with his hands. Eileen shook her head and tsked with her tongue, but she did the washing as quickly as possible so he could wrap the towel around him and be decent again. This sudden newfound modesty puzzled her; she could understand neither its origins nor the suddenness of her son's intense embarrassment.

_Tuesday, April 4, 1967 (three days after the last quarter)_

On the first Tuesday in April, when Russ arrived home from school, his dressing gowned mum met him at the door with a bag that had his play clothes and a change of underwear. "Go over to Mrs. Hanson's, Russ. You're going to spend the night there. She's expecting you. She'll explain." Russ could see past her that his dad was already home, something very unusual as it was at least four hours earlier than normal. Russ didn't argue. He took the bag and left.

Mrs. Hanson was, indeed, expecting him. "We're going t' have so much fun, Russy," she gushed. "It's been so long since I could take care of you. My, you're quite the little man now. Come on in and have some milk and a scone."

"What's wrong with mum and dad?" Russ demanded as soon as he was inside. "She said you knew."

"La, child, there's nothing wrong and everything right. Did you know that on this day eight years ago your mum and dad got married? So it's like a birthday for them. Except on your birthday you want your friends over for a party, but on the anniversary of your wedding, you want t' be alone."

Russ let pass the whole reference to birthday parties. "You mean they're not angry with me? Or with each other?"

"Heaven's no, boy. They're happy as clams, and the more we leave them alone, the happier they'll be. Your dad even went t' the foreman this morning and begged the afternoon off without pay so 's he could be alone with his missus, and Eileen thought t' make it the whole night. She come running over here so excited, and I'll guess Toby's pleased as punch. He was hoping for just the afternoon."

Russ still didn't understand, except that he already knew being alone was good. Mrs. Hanson at least was a vaguely remembered familiarity from his babyhood, so he decided to make the best of it. "Where can I put these?" he asked, showing her the bag.

Mrs. Hanson was, as she described it, a double-pensioned widow. Her first husband was a sergeant who married just before D-Day and died fighting in France. Her second husband was killed in a mill fire less than a year after they were married. She lived in her late parents' house and got both pensions. The house was quite nice.

To begin with, it had more rooms than Russ's house had – though two of them had paying boarders living in them – and Russ found himself in an honest-to-goodness spare bedroom on the ground floor. Second, it had a real bathroom with a claw-footed tub. Third, it had a television. Supper was early, and Russ kept very quiet because the two boarders were eating at the same table. He kept his eyes down on his plate because he was afraid they would want to look inside him. The door behind his eyes was latched. After supper, thankfully, the two men went to their rooms.

That evening, Russ did two new things. First, he took a bath in a real bathtub in a real bathroom where he shut the door and was all by himself behind a curtain. Second, he watched the first two television shows of his life, both from America. Mrs. Hanson turned on the television five minutes ahead of time because it had to warm up first, and then the shows came on. The first show was about a married couple. The wife was a little crazy, and she had a job in a factory where she was supposed to put chocolates into boxes, except the belt kept going faster and faster, so she was eating the chocolates to keep up. Russ laughed at that one.

The second show was harder to understand because of the strange accents, but in a way it was better because it was about poor people who suddenly got rich. They left their poor house and moved into a big mansion, but they still acted the same, not stuck up. They were smarter than the rich people, too. It was something nice to dream about – getting rich suddenly.

The next morning Russ left for school from Mrs. Hanson's house, and when he got home, his mum had made a cake. Dad got home at a good time after only two pints at the local, and he and Russ played cribbage. Everybody was happy. Russ thought about the television a lot, and went around the house occasionally singing, "Oil, that is. Black gold. Texas tea." He thought that was funny, too.

After that Russ started spending occasional Saturday nights at Mrs. Hanson's whenever his parents got a bit of money saved up. Saturday night was a good night because after his bath he could watch television shows like 'Dixon of Dock Green,' and Russ finally saw what London looked like. He also watched the Avengers, and thought Mrs. Peel was a great fighter. His favorite, though, was Doctor Who and the TARDIS time travel ship. He wanted to travel in time, too, but Mrs. Hanson explained that it wasn't possible.

The last weekend in June, when summer break was starting, Russ went to spend two nights with Mrs. Hanson. The first was the normal Saturday night, but Sunday night was really special. On Sunday night, Russ was going to watch 'history in the making,' for it was the first time in the whole world when there would be a live television broadcast from every country to every country at the same time, and Russ was going to watch it. So were the two boarders.

"It's because of those satellites they have up in space," Mrs. Hanson explained. She didn't understand them completely, but one of the boarders knew that they floated up there in space so far away that you couldn't see them, and they could now beam radio and television shows to each other and then back down to earth so that everybody could watch the same show at once, and Russ got to watch the very first one.

All Sunday afternoon, while he played in Mrs. Hanson's little area yard, Russ kept looking up at the sky, hoping he could see the satellites, and wondering how they could stay up there and not fall down.

That night, with everybody helping him understand what he was looking at, Russ watched the rest of the world. There was a shopping district in north Africa and the traffic speeding by in Paris. They got to see the house where the Presidents of the United States and Russia were meeting, and there were a bunch of people talking that Russ didn't understand. Then he watched a real cowboy in Canada.

It was tomorrow in Japan and Australia, nearly five o'clock in the morning, and men were working on the Tokyo subway, and the trams were taking people to work in Melbourne.

Then they showed the great outdoor disc of the telescope, and Russ was entranced. He couldn't believe that he was not only watching tomorrow morning, but that he was also looking at something that could see millions of miles away. Satellites and telescopes, and he was in love.

The last thing on the broadcast was the Beatles. Russ had heard their songs, but not seen them. Their names appeared on the screen, so Russ knew which was Paul, and which was Ringo. They were recording a new song with a lot of people and an orchestra. Russ especially noticed that John's nose looked just like his dad's nose, and when it was all over went to bed humming "All you need is love..."

The next day, Russ didn't describe the whole show to his parents because there was a lot he didn't understand, especially when the serious men were talking about serious things – that had been boring – but he managed to give them an idea of Paris streets, and the beach in Canada, and he even tried to draw what the great Australian telescope looked like. Toby wasn't sure all this exposure to the outside world was good for a working class boy; it made you discontented with life. Eileen was better pleased.

That summer, while Toby was at work and Russ wasn't in school, Eileen started to talk to Russ about Hogwarts.

"It's a great castle on a hill, with a big lake – there's a squid in the lake, so nobody swims there – and the students can fly on broomsticks and play a game called Quidditch. Everybody lives in four different parts of the castle called houses. You'll probably be in the same one I was in – Hufflepuff. You'll like it there. There's all different kinds of people there, and they all work together."

"Did you play Quidditch, Mum?"

"La, no, child. I was never good on a broomstick. I was captain of the gobstones team, though."

Then, in August, Eileen and Russ went to visit Nana for three days, and everything changed.

Eileen and Russ worked together in Nana's garden, weeding, picking off bugs, and pinching back some of the flowers to prevent plants from going to seed. Eileen was talking about Hogwarts.

"The head of Hufflepuff house is Professor Mullein. He's the Herbology teacher, too, so you should get on well with him. He even knows about Nana by reputation, though she never went to Hogwarts. Hufflepuff house is in the lower levels, and you enter through a wall near the kitchens. That's where the house elves work. I never saw or heard of house elves before I went to Hogwarts…"

"'Leen," Nana called from the edge of the garden. "Can I talk to you for a moment." The two women stood near the kitchen door, but Russ could still hear them in the quiet summer air.

"You'd best not get the boy too excited about Hufflepuff," Nana said in a warning tone of voice. "He might not be sorted there."

"Of course he will," Eileen said. "Children 're always sorted into the same house as their parents. Since I was in Hufflepuff…"

"I went to see Tabitha Pollard yesterday. She did a chart for 1971."

"I checked that already, Mum," Eileen said. "Mercury's in his fourth house and it's in Virgo from July twenty-seventh to October first. He'll be fine."

"No, 'Leen. Mercury is retrograde beginning August thirteenth. It goes back into Leo on August thirtieth, and doesn't reenter Virgo until September eleventh. It will be in Leo on the day he's sorted."

There was silence, and Russ could tell from the quality of the silence that his mum was trying to cope with sudden, bitter disappointment. "They can't put him into Slytherin," she said. "A little half-blood boy like him… They'd eat him alive."

"Don't tell him that. There must be other half-bloods in Slytherin. I don't think we have that many pureblood families left. If he's at least prepared to accept Slytherin, he may be fine there. Just don't get his heart too set on Hufflepuff, and make sure he's ready for Slytherin."

From that day, things changed. Eileen began talking to Russ about the other three houses at least as much as about Hufflepuff, and about Slytherin most of all. She said that in Slytherin everybody was ambitious and eager to get ahead in life. Slytherin students stuck together more than the other houses, and if Slytherins were your friends, they'd watch your back and stick up for you. The Head of Slytherin house was Professor Slughorn, who taught potions, so Russ should do well there since he would go to Hogwarts already knowing so much about potions.

It was also from that day that Eileen began to teach Russ how to defend himself. They brought grandfather Prince's wand back home with them, and she and Russ would go out onto the moors to practice, out where the magic they did wouldn't register with the place Russ's mum called 'The Ministry.' She began to show him how to read other people.

"Look in their eyes," she told him. "You'll see the attack in their eyes before they move, before they say anything." She also told him he had to close his mind to the person he was fighting. "Don't let them read you," she said, "or they'll know what you're going to do."

That part turned out to be easy. Russ 'd always known how to close his mind. It was what he did to everyone but his mother, and sometimes he even hid things from her. Nobody knew it, of course, because they didn't know how to read him. Now, on her orders, he closed his mother out completely when they practiced dueling.

"Great!" she told him. "You catch on fast. Let's work on reflexes."

That fall, Russ started getting into fights at school. The first time, the school couldn't call his mum because she didn't have a telephone. Instead, they gave him a note to take home to her.

"What happened to you?" Eileen exclaimed when Russ walked in with a bruised jaw and a cut on the side of his mouth.

"Neil Philips wanted to fight with me," Russ replied, and handed her the note.

The note said that Russ had started the fight, that he'd attacked the Philips boy without provocation, and that naturally the Philips boy had been forced to defend himself. The note asked Eileen to come to school the next day with Russ to discuss the matter.

The meeting was highly unsatisfactory. Mrs. Philips was there and not only said that boys like Russ shouldn't be allowed in school, she insinuated that Russ's mum was a slovenly housewife, which as she used to come over when Russ and Neil were babies, she knew to be untrue, so Eileen called her a liar and the mother of a bully. Russ insisted that Neil had been about to attack him, Neil denied it, and several of Neil's friends came forward to testify that Neil was the victim. Since Russ had no friends to testify for him, the case was decided then and there. Russ was to stay home for three days. Neil was triumphant.

When Toby learned what had happened, he took off his belt and gave Russ six sharp licks with it for starting a fight and giving the family a bad name. Then he began teaching Russ how to box.

"Nella Tarleton," Toby told Russ gravely. "Y' got to think like him. Featherweight champion of Britain, and th' whole world. I saw him once, his last fight as it turned out, in Manchester when I was fourteen. M' dad borrowed and begged for th' tickets so I could see a master just once. Nel was thirty-nine, and Al Philips was twenty-five. Nel, he'd lead with his left, get several jabs in, and be back out of range 'fore Philips knew what hit him. So quick he was, no one ever could lay a glove on him. Didn't have a mark on him from a gross of fights except from th' ropes. He could sure use th' ropes! A right scientist he was. Always thinking, always planning. After he retired, come t' find he only had one good lung! Imagine going th' distance in all them fights with only one lung. M' own dad used t' tell me the only way they could get Al Foreman t' fight him was t' limit th' fight t' twelve rounds, 'cause if Nella beat Foreman in fifteen, he'd be lightweight and featherweight champion at th' same time!"

Russ was learning how to punch – jabs and hooks – but he wasn't very good at it. What he was good at was dodging and feinting. If you could dodge and feint enough, then land one or two good jabs, you had a chance of winning. It was fun sparring with his dad, and it gave him more confidence about facing larger boys in the play yard.

"Now you remember," his dad cautioned, "don't never start a fight, but if they mess with you, you give 'em what for!"

It was to his mum that Russ expressed most of his animosity. "They're always pushing me around and calling me names. I could see in Neil's eyes that Geoff was behind me and he was going t' push me so Geoff could grab me. But I got him first! And I'm ready. He comes for me again and I'm going t' tie his legs together. I'm going t' glue his tongue t' the roof of his mouth."

Eileen looked at her son with concern. "How are you going t' do that?" she asked.

"_Locomotor Mortis!"_ Russ told her. "And there's a tongue-tying curse…"

Eileen seized his wrist in a painful grip. "Where did you learn those curses?" she demanded. "Where! I told you, you don't ever use magic against a muggle! I catch you using magic against a muggle, and I'll skin you alive! Where did you learn those? You tell me now!"

"There's a book that Wenny had. It's in the book." Russ was scared now. His mother seldom got this angry.

"I'm going to lock those up. Imagine you learning things like that! You promise me you'll never use magic on a muggle."

"Promise," Russ said, but his heart was with the curses that could prove to people like Neil and Geoff that he was stronger than they were. He concentrated on the boxing.

Russ was now exploring farther and farther afield. Instead of sticking to the mill side of the river where everything was familiar, he started going out onto the moors. He circumnavigated the town and found there were other ways to get to different areas besides walking openly down the street. He discovered where Neil Philips lived, but he didn't do anything about it because Neil was just a dirty old muggle and not worth the effort.

Sometimes, when his mum was busy putting his dad to bed after a bad night at the local, Russ would go out onto the moors for the half hour she needed instead of staying in the kitchen or area yard. If the night was clear, you could see for a billion miles. He started to read books about stars in the little school library and was captivated by the pictures taken by the Russians the year before he was born of the 'other' side of the moon. Both the Americans and the Russians were trying to get there, and Russ tried to find out as much as he could about their space programs. Given who he was and where he was living, that wasn't much. Russ longed for a telescope, and treasured with something close to hunger the thought that at Hogwarts he'd be able to study astronomy.

Over the next couple of years things continued on a downward spiral. Britain devalued the pound, which helped coal, but also made things harder in other ways. Petrol became more expensive, and Mum could no longer afford anything that wasn't made or grown in England, and not much of that. Toby worked just as hard for less reward, and drank even more. His belt became more active because Russ was getting into more fights, though now he made sure he never threw the first punch. Mrs. Hanson's house was a refuge, and Russ looked forward to those rare Saturdays he was able to spend with her, but it didn't quite make up for everything else.

To make matters worse, Russ was finally growing. At nearly nine, he finally looked like he was six or seven. If he tried hard to act grown up, people believed he was eight. That was the good part. The bad part was that his clothes went overnight from being too big to being too small. It wasn't that he was fatter, it was that he was taller. He was now more than three and a half feet tall, still the smallest in his class by far, and nearly the smallest in the whole school, but bigger than his worn old uniform. His knees stuck out, his ankles stuck out, his wrists and neck stuck out. His play clothes were better, but even his jeans and jacket were rapidly getting too small.

By this time, Russ actively hated the other children at school and had long realized that he was strange because nobody would be his friend. The others were always talking about things he couldn't share, like 'best friends,' and birthday parties, and even little things like passing notes when the teacher was writing on the blackboard. Things Russ wasn't permitted to join in on. He resented their friendships and hated the air of superiority they used whenever they couldn't avoid contact with him, and he told himself again and again that it didn't matter. He wasn't like them. He was a wizard, and they were just muggles. And one day he'd show them all.

On his ninth birthday, Russ's mum gave him a special present. She let him have the books she'd used at Hogwarts. There were books on the History of Magic, and on Charms, books on Transfiguration and Arithmancy and Muggle Studies. But the books that Russ loved most were the books on Potions, Defense against the Dark Arts, and most especially, Astronomy. Russ remembered that although half of him was a Snape, the other half of him was a Prince – a half-blood wizard. On the back of each volume he carefully inscribed in his tight, cramped handwriting: _This Book is the Property of the Half-Blood Prince._

Russ also had a passion now, the first true passion in his life, and the passion was named Apollo. The satellites and telescopes of his seventh year of life, the stars of his eighth, were making way for a love of Saturn rockets and the capsules they carried into space. One good thing about school was that he now understood why the satellites didn't fall down, and what an orbit was, and he knew not only that the Americans were going to the moon, but when. Russ scavenged used newspapers out of rubbish bins looking for articles on the American space program. He treasured in his heart the possibility that he himself might go to the moon one day.

And then, in May of Russ's fourth year in school, a miracle happened. It was such a miraculous miracle that at first Russ didn't believe it, even though he'd seen it happen. The miracle happened at school.

Russ was doing his maths work when a small click caught his attention, and he looked up to see that three rows ahead of him a girl had dropped her pen on the floor. She bent down to retrieve the pen, and the miracle occurred. Her hand still inches away from it, the pen suddenly leapt upwards and into her grasp. Russ couldn't believe his eyes. A muggle had just performed a wandless summoning spell. A red-haired muggle girl of no account whose name, as Russ knew, was Lily Evans.


	4. Chapter 4 – A Friend

_In Principio…_ – **A Friend**

The shock of Russ's discovery was so powerful that his reaction was physical. His heart was beating hard, not fast but hard, so that he could feel it. He had trouble breathing. He felt lightheaded and his hands began to tremble. It was all he could do to concentrate on the maths work and write something, even if it was wrong.

At lunch Russ watched Lily in the play yard. He watched stealthily, his face turned away, his eyes darting restlessly, so that no one could accuse him of watching. Lily Evans was one of the muggles he hated, hated because she had a best friend and birthday parties, because everyone talked to her and she passed notes in class. At lunch she was part of a group of four girls that always ate together and played little games that Russ didn't know the rules to.

The walk home seemed endless, and Russ was so impatient that as soon as he got to the part of the town where the gardens got lost and boards appeared over the windows, he ran.

"Hold on, young man!" Eileen exclaimed as Russ came careening through the door and burst into the kitchen. "Is there a fire?"

"Mum," Russ said breathlessly, "how many kinds of wizards are there?"

Eileen frowned. "As many different kinds as there are people. All wizards are different from all other wizards."

"No, I mean like how I'm half and half, muggle and wizard."

"Oh, that," said Eileen, and she didn't seem any happier. "Well first, there are purebloods. They have a wizard father and a witch mother. Some purebloods like to think they're one hundred percent magic, but I don't think anyone really is. Generally if all four grandparents are magic, then the grandchild is pureblood. They don't really look back further than that. Then there are part-bloods. That would be both magical parents, but maybe one of them is a half-blood. True half-bloods like you have one magical parent and one muggle parent, so magic on only one side of the family. And then there are muggle-borns."

"What are muggle-borns?" Russ tried to conceal the urgency he felt about the answer to this question.

"For some reason, occasionally a magical child is born to a nonmagical family. Everybody is a muggle, and 'bang' there's a wizard in the mix. We don't know why that happens. The opposite can happen, too. Sometimes a nonmagical child is born into a magical family. They're called squibs."

"So you could have someone you thought was a muggle, and it turns out she's a witch?" Russ asked to confirm what he hoped was true.

"Why are you asking about this?" said Eileen, turning to catch her son's eyes.

"Nothing," Russ answered, meeting her gaze calmly, all thought of the girl and the pen latched away where she couldn't see it. "I was just thinking about it this afternoon."

"Have a piece of bread and a glass of water then, and do your homework."

Russ's desk in his small upstairs bedroom was really an equipment crate turned on its side so he could stick his feet in the crate while he wrote. Now he sat at this makeshift desk while his mother baked downstairs, kicking his feet against the wood and pretending to do schoolwork. He had a lot of thinking to do.

All his life he'd known that he was the only magical child around, and that he must never talk about it or show it to anyone. This made him different, isolated and friendless, the only child in town doomed to have no friends until he was eleven and could leave. But that was more than two years away, and Russ didn't want to wait two years. He wanted a friend now. Even if she was a girl.

Russ held his feelings down, pushed them into the latched part of his brain where they couldn't bother him because he had to think carefully about this. What if he was wrong? What if there'd been no magic, just a trick of the light? After all, Lily Evans had been in the same class as him for four years, and he'd never caught a glimpse of magic before. Nor had anyone else, or they'd have talked about it. There was no reason to get excited over something that might not be true.

But he so desperately wanted it to be true. Up until that morning he'd been fine, he accepted his fate and set all his hopes on Hogwarts. Now, suddenly, the desire for a friend, for someone to share things with, welled up in him like a hunger, twisting his stomach and making him sick with longing.

He had to be sure. He couldn't afford to act on information that might not be true. Instead of doing his homework, Russ was forming a plan – a plan for watching Lily to see if she ever did any other magic. If she did, if she truly was a muggle-born witch, then Russ could find a way to talk to her, to explain to her, maybe to show her some more magic as proof – and then they could be friends.

He went to bed that night planning how the future was going to be.

Russ became a spy. He was secret agent Drake, he was John Steed and Emma Peel. He found ways to move within earshot of Lily Evans and her friends while making it look perfectly casual. He started having to kneel down and tie his shoes a lot. He began dropping pens. He started walking around with his nose ostensibly in a book, and pausing when he got to 'interesting' bits.

He found out that Lily had an older sister named Petunia who was about to take her Eleven Plus examination. He found out that Lily had a sweet temper and a gentle way about her. He found out that Lily was born in January, just like he was, except he was Capricorn and she was Aquarius.

He asked his mother about this, and she told him, along with the other signs that Russ asked about to mask his real interest, that Capricorn and Aquarius did not go well together. Capricorn was organized and Aquarius was not. Capricorn would be jealous of free-spirited Aquarius. Better be friends than look for a life together.

That suited Russ fine. He wasn't looking for a life together anyway, just a friend.

Russ discovered that Lily and Petunia lived on the eastern side of the little town, far from the area where his house was, a place of nice gardens and newer automobiles. He couldn't follow them there because he would be noticed and most likely chased away. He had to, as his mum put it in her training sessions, get his bearings and learn the lay of the land.

It was June, and the school term was nearing its close. The summer days were long. This was good news for Russ, since it meant he didn't have to be coming and going in the streets at the same time as everyone else. He could go early and wait, and then come home later. He wanted to see Lily away from school anyway. His spying was becoming frustrating. He had still not seen her perform any more magic.

The last week of school, Russ left home early every day. On Monday he waited behind a gate at the last house where he saw Lily disappear every afternoon, and from this vantage point he was able to see the direction she came from. The next morning he hid further on, and discovered more of her route. By Thursday he'd located the house. He had to wait until all the other children had gone by before he could follow them to the school building, so all that week he was late to class, but he didn't mind.

On the evening after the last day of school, Russ lay in bed planning. He had it all worked out. He would wait until he saw more magic, then he would show himself and reveal to Lily that she was a witch. She would be excited at the news and want to know more, and he would be able to teach her and tell her all about Hogwarts. Hogwarts! Maybe Lily could go there, too.

The next morning, Russ was out of the house before seven o'clock. He hid amongst some rubbish bins a ways down the street from Lily's house and waited. He would do a lot of waiting over the next few days, but the hunger inside him was ravenous now. He no longer even considered the possibility that Lily was not a witch. The bitter disappointment that would entail would, by this point, have destroyed him.

Lily and Petunia frequented a playground near their house. Sometimes there were other children there, and sometimes there were not. Russ began going to the playground instead of nearer to their house so that no one would see him in the street. There were bushes and hedges he could hide behind and under, and no one ever noticed him.

A week and a half into the break, Lily and Petunia were alone, Petunia revolving lazily on a carousel, and Lily in a swing. Lily kept going higher and higher, and Petunia stopped to watch. "You're going too high, Lily. It can be dangerous," cautioned the older sister.

"No, it's fun," Lily crowed. "It's like flying through the air. I bet if I try hard enough, I can really fly!"

"Lily!" Petunia cried. "Don't you dare!"

Lily dared. She reached the top of her arc and launched herself into space. Instead of falling, as Petunia clearly feared, she hovered for a moment, then glided lightly to the ground. "See," she said to Petunia, "I can fly."

It was Russ's moment. It was what he had been waiting for, planning for since May. He tried to get to his feet to go to the two girls, but his courage failed him. Instead, he remained, hidden and miserable behind his bushes.

Petunia started for home. "I'm going to tell Mummy you've been doing wicked things again." she called behind her. "You're going to be in so much trouble!"

Lily ran after her. "I wasn't doing anything bad. Look, I'm not hurt. There's nothing wrong with it. Tuney, come back."

Russ dragged himself home, crushed and defeated by his own timidity. His opportunity had been there, within his grasp, and he had failed to seize it. He might never have another chance.

Back at home he found that another opportunity had slipped like water through his fingers.

"You won't be going over to Mrs. Hanson's this weekend or next," his mum told him as she fixed supper. "She's taking two weeks to visit her sister in Manchester."

Russ nearly spilled his glass of water. "She can't!" he cried. "Not now! The Americans are going to the moon next week. How can I watch it if she's in Manchester?"

The following week the whole world watched the Apollo 11 moon landing except Russ. The whole world got to hear, "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind" except Russ. The bitterness of his disappointment was capped by the news that Mrs. Hanson would be staying in Manchester with her sister for several months, and the boarders were taking care of her house. No moon landing, no further television, no baths… The pleasures in Russ's life were narrowing to nothing.

_Friday, July 25, 1969 (four days before the full moon)_

"He can't wear that jacket any more," Eileen told Toby the day after the Apollo 11 splashdown that Russ didn't see on television. He was already withdrawn and miserable about missing 'history in the making,' and at first didn't register that his mum was talking about him. "It's gotten far too short for him and there's holes in the elbows. He needs new shirts, too."

"A boy needs t' take better care of his togs, and not go wasting a man's hard-earned money," Toby complained. "You was just telling me yesterday as he needed a school uniform, too. You know we ain't got the money."

"He can't go 'round naked."

"He don't have to dress like the Marquess o' Queensbury neither. Can't help the uniform, but ain't we got togs in the house he can wear?"

Russ woke up then to the fact that they were discussing his clothes. The uniform was good news. It'd be big so he could grow into it over the next two years, but that would be better than what he was wearing now. The part about his play clothes was less important.

Mum went upstairs and started hauling things out of the makeshift storeroom. There weren't many of them – they generally used things until they were worn so bad they weren't good for anything but rags – but there were some. Some of them had belonged to Wenny. Most of them were still far too big.

"What about this?" Mum held up a strange kind of blouse or smock with a high collar and wide sleeves. The collar and sleeves had embroidery on them. Toby and Russ protested at the same time:

"No son of mine's gonna dress like a girl!"

"I can't wear that, Mum, they'd laugh at me!"

"Don't be silly," said Mum. "Wensley wouldn't have any woman's clothes. He musta picked it up in one of those countries he sailed to. Maybe China or Russia. And we ain't got anything else. It's this, or buy, or go without. What if I take the embroidery off for you, Russ? It wouldn't look so girlie then."

There were a couple of the strange smocks, one white and one blue, so Russ had one to wear and one to wash. They couldn't do anything about the pants, so he had to keep wearing his too-short jeans, but Mum did find him a jacket – sort of.

It was an old sailor's jacket, a navy-blue pea coat in worn, shabby wool. It was meant to go part way down a grown man's thigh, but on Russ it reached below his knees. The shoulders were too wide, and the sleeves far too long. Mum rolled up the cuffs to make it fit better. "I might be able to sew that," she said.

"Don't go cutting it," Toby insisted. "If he grows more, he'll need the sleeves long. That's a nice coat, that is. It'll do."

At least it was obviously a man's coat, Russ reasoned, and it would hide the funny smock.

Russ continued for the rest of July into August observing the children at the playground near Lily Evans's house. More than four weeks after his first failed attempt, Lily and Petunia were once again alone, both today on the swings. The other children had gone home.

Lily was again swinging as high as she could, and Russ held his breath, knowing she was planning to fly again.

"Lily, don't do it!" Petunia cried, but Lily just laughed and launched herself into the air, just as she had the first time, landing lightly and easily after her flight, not far from the bush where Russ was hiding.

"Mummy told you not to!" Petunia yelled at her. "Mummy said you weren't allowed, Lily!" She stopped swinging and was now trying to assert older-sister authority.

Lily was laughing at her. "But I'm fine," she said, as if that was the only problem with flying. She picked up a flower from the ground. "Tuney, look at this. Watch what I can do." In her hands the dead flower began to open and close its petals like some cartoon space creature. This didn't calm Petunia in the least.

"Stop it!" she screamed.

Lily threw the flower down, and there was a hint of resentment in her voice as she said, "It's not hurting you."

"It's not right," Petunia said. Then, unable to completely hide her fascination, she added, "How do you do it?"

There it was. The moment Russ had waited for, planned for, anticipated for nearly three months. If he didn't have the courage to act now, he would never have it. He steeled himself and forced himself to rise, stepping out from behind his bush and addressing Petunia's question.

"It's obvious, isn't it?" he said, and regretted it immediately because Petunia acted as if he was some kind of wild dog and ran toward the swings. Lily didn't run, but her expression was probably the same one she wore when she took medicine. Russ could feel the color mount in his face and wished he were anywhere else. _Idiot! Fool! This was never a good idea._

After a moment Lily asked, "What's obvious?"

Russ's heart was pounding again – she wanted to talk. He didn't want Petunia to hear, so his voice, when it came out, was nearly a whisper. "I know… what you are."

"What do you mean?"

"You're… you're a witch."

"That's not a very nice thing to say to somebody!"

She huffed away, just as snooty as the rest of them. Russ hurried after her, Wenny's coat hot and heavy as it hung past his wrists in the sunny August afternoon, but Russ wasn't thinking about how he looked. "No!" he insisted, and they let him get near enough to the swings to listen to what he had to say. "You… are. You are a… witch. I've been… watching you for a… while. But there's nothing… wrong with that. My mum's… one, and I'm a… wizard."

Lily said nothing, but Petunia howled with laughter. "Wizard! I know who you are. You're that Snape boy!" and the way she said 'Snape' made it sound evil, obscene. She turned to Lily. "They live down Spinner's End by the river." Then she wheeled on Russ, who was suddenly aware how much taller she was than he. "Why have you been spying on us?"

Russ looked down, away from her accusing eyes. "Haven't been… spying. Wouldn't… spy on you anyway. You're a… muggle." That was when he realized how he must look – Wenny's pea coat loose around his shoulders and swinging past his knees, the silly foreign smock, his outgrown jeans, his hair damp and sweaty on his forehead. Like a clown.

"Lily, come on, we're leaving," Petunia announced, and it was some small revenge to note how shrill and ugly her voice sounded. The two girls stalked out, leaving Russ standing alone and defeated in the playground.

He slunk out away from the houses and onto the moor to go home along the periphery of the town. He didn't want anyone to see him. He wanted to crawl into the earth and never have anyone see him ever again.

Russ was trying to figure out what had gone wrong. Lily knew she could do unusual things. She should have been pleased to learn she was magical. She should have wanted to know more.

It was Petunia's fault. Petunia had acted as if he was dangerous, Petunia 'd made fun of his poverty and his family with her sneers and smirks. She was probably laughing about him even now with Lily. Petunia had called his honest desire for a friend 'spying,' and made it seem criminal. Now she'd probably tell all the other students at school, and they'd all laugh at him even more. Neil would have a great time with that. Instead of better, life had gotten worse, and Russ wished he was dead.

That evening he picked at his food at supper, then went straight to bed, to lie on his side facing the wall. He didn't want to see anyone or talk to anyone or go anywhere… He just wanted to lie there forever.

And the worst thing was that all he had to look forward to were two long, cold, barren, empty years. Years of enforced loneliness and silence, and he didn't think he could bear it.

"You sick?" his dad asked from the doorway.

"No, just tired. 'S hot outside. Made m' head hurt."

"That's all right then. Don't you go gettin' sick. Can't afford no doctor."

His dad left. Russ thought bitterly that there was no doctor who could help him anyway. The hunger that had nothing to do with food twisted his insides, and there wasn't any medicine for it. What he needed was someone to talk to, someone to listen, someone who'd talk to him that he could listen to…

The pain inside him was so great that Russ thought he'd burst from it, and then a strange thing happened. The painful things started to go away. Not the pain, but the things that caused the pain. One by one, the loneliness, the bitterness, the humiliation and shame all retreated from him, as if his mind suddenly said, 'I don't want you any more.' They went – he had no other way to explain it – down into the cellar of his mind and found a door Russ didn't even know was there, and they latched the door behind them.

Russ just lay in bed and let it happen, and when all the bad things were latched down, he felt curiously calm and detached from everything, like it was all just a television show, but nothing to really get upset about. He didn't feel anything – and that was a lot better than feeling pain.

The sense of calm and detachment didn't go away. The next morning Russ got up and ate breakfast – tea and toast was all – then went out exploring while his dad went to the mine and his mum went off looking for day jobs. He went out onto the moor. He had no desire to go over to the playground to watch for the two sisters. It was as if that was another person, that boy who'd been so disappointed the day before.

Instead Russ wandered for miles. The moor area wasn't large, and gave way from time to time to farms, pastures, and sparse woodland with here a tiny village and there another decaying mill town. Colne and Barrowford had many mills, mostly closed. A few other towns had mines or quarries, though Russ usually gave them a wide berth. By now he was old enough and had explored enough to have his bearings and know the lay of the land. He knew the bulk of Pendle Hill was to the west, and Yorkshire but a stone's throw to the east and north.

As he wandered Russ got to thinking that he probably ought to be of use to somebody in his life, and began to figure how he might be useful. He was too young for a real job, and the shopkeepers on the mill side couldn't afford to hire a boy. The shopkeepers on the school side would never even look at him except maybe to keep an eye out that he didn't steal anything. Odd how people expected your clothes to show how honest you were.

Around midmorning Russ found an outcrop of rock and just sat, not really thinking of anything in particular, when he noticed that as long as he kept still, there was a lot of movement around him. There were mostly birds, but some other animals as well, such as a very surprised fox that rose from the ground where it had been resting and slunk off, and a coney, its nose wiggling to pick up odors in the breeze and… a grouse.

_What day is it?_ was the first thing in Russ's mind, for he did know about the 'glorious twelfth,' the day the men went out to drive the grouse in the open moors, the beginning of hunting season. He thought about it all the way home.

A glass of water, a slice of bread, and Russ sat in the kitchen watching his mother as if she was a total stranger and he was a scientist observing her behavior. It was a curious feeling. He knew all about her, remembered everything he should remember, but there was no emotion attached. It made things more interesting because he found he noticed more detail, like the way she held her fingers around the handle of the knife she was chopping with, or the limp, straggling locks of hair that strayed on the collar of her dress.

When his dad came home, Russ waited patiently until he was settled, then went into the sitting room.

"Dad, d' you know how t' throw."

"Throw what, son?"

"Rocks."

Toby regarded his son carefully. "Wha' cha want t' be throwin' rocks for?"

"Huntin' season starts Tuesday. Saw a grouse out on the moor."

Toby chuckled. "'Leen! This boy thinks he can put down a grouse with a rock. Ain't that a kick?"

"Y' always did want him t' be ambitious, Toby," Mum called from the kitchen.

They started that day, in the lingering August evening, Toby showing Russ how to select stones and how to throw them, not overhand or underhand, but sharp and quick from the side. Russ found his new sense of cool apartness helped. He noticed every detail of his father's stance and movement, and copied each one with care and accuracy. Before they went in to bed, he was hitting fence posts more times than not, and Toby was beaming with pride.

Eileen took him out training on the weekend, and was impressed. "You been practicing, ain't cha?" she said. "Couldn't get past your eyes not once the whole time. Come 'ere. Let's have a look-see."

She peered into his eyes, and Russ gave her the moors and his satisfied tiredness after the hard work, and the fact that he was hungry for supper… but the other things, the fears, the failures, stayed latched away and she never even looked for them.

"Good," Eileen said at last. "You're learning right fast. We'll start with some real spells tomorrow."

On Sunday, Russ learned Expelliarmus and Protego. There was some trick to the way you held and pointed the wand for each one, so it took some concentration, but now he had three wand spells that he could actually do, because he remembered how to do Reparo. It was a shame he could only do them on the moors, and not in the town because of the muggles. Russ was always thinking of the neighbors as muggles now.

Just before school started, Russ brought down his one and only grouse. It was the first thing larger than a spider that he'd ever killed. He studied it for a while, clinically, dispassionately, then put it in the bag he now carried everywhere and took it home for his mum to cook. That was, after all, why he'd learned to throw.

_Monday, September 1, 1969 (two days before the last quarter)_

By September first, Russ was willing to acknowledge that the first day of his fifth year at school was likely to be different from previous first days. It wasn't just that he was older. It wasn't just that for the first time he was wearing a new uniform that was neither clownishly big nor embarrassingly worn and small. No, it was more that there had been two important changes. The first was his expectation that Petunia Evans had spread through the entire school his claim to being a wizard, which the other students would find ridiculous and would tease him for. The second was his mastery of two fighting spells that gave him more self-confidence, combined with a continued total separation from any emotional connection to the school at all.

It wasn't until he was crossing the bridge over the river that Russ remembered something – something that altered his whole perception of the coming day, and that he could have kicked himself for not remembering earlier. Petunia Evans was no longer going to his school! She'd taken her Eleven Plus exams the previous spring and, depending on how well she'd done, was even now on her way to a grammar school or a technical school in Colne or, if she'd done poorly, to a secondary modern. She wouldn't even be at his school to tell stories about him.

That left Lily, of course, but Russ hoped she would be less interested in ridiculing him about the witch idea, and more interested in talking about it.

At first that didn't seem likely. Lily started and stared at him when she saw him in the play yard before school, but she didn't approach. On the good side, nobody teased or laughed at him. Neil tried to get at him by holding his nose and talking about 'river stench,' but Brian was gone to secondary school, too, and Neil had no backup. Russ ignored him.

The breakthrough came at lunch time.

"Is this taken?" Lily asked Russ, indicating the far end of the bench where he was sitting.

"Nah," Russ replied. "Go ahead." They ate their sandwiches in silence for several minutes. When they started talking, they allowed long pauses between sentences so that no one else would notice.

"What you said in the playground, about me, was it true?" Lily asked.

"Sure. You know most people don't do stuff like that." Russ was calm and cool. The hunger was latched down.

"Do you do 'stuff like that?'"

"Fly off swings? Nah. Don't got no swings on th' other side o' th' river. I do other things."

"What kind of things?"

"You got something broken you want fixed? I can fix it. Don't have to touch it."

"Now you're fooling me!"

"Okay, if that's what 'cha wanta believe."

There was an extended silence, then Lily said. "Can you prove it? Fix something now."

"It's not allowed in front of muggles."

"What you really mean is you can't."

Russ paused, but the latched down feelings didn't hinder his evaluation of the situation. "No. I mean I'm not allowed. If you want, I can show you. Just not here and now."

"When and where then?"

"Can you go after school t' the trees just north of the bridge? Wait for me there? Then I can show you."

"I'm not supposed to go near the river."

"Well, if you can't, you can't."

"Okay, I'll try."

"Give me a few minutes. I'll have to get m' wand."

The whole rest of the afternoon was tinged by a magic spell. If all went well, Russ was going to meet Lily by the trees just north of the bridge on the school side shortly after school. There he would show her what being a wizard meant. And yet, there was still that curious detachment, as if this was happening to another person.

Right after school, Russ ran home. He took the stairs to his bedroom two at a time and extracted his grandfather's wand from under his pillow. Tucking it carefully into his sleeve to preserve it from unworthy eyes, he ran back to the bridge and, hopefully, to Lily, the greater part of him still detached and cool.

It took a moment to see where Lily was, but she'd gotten there before he did. From the way she was crouched down by the tree, it was clear she didn't want to be seen any more than he did. Russ coughed before joining her on the grass, not wanting to startle her suddenly.

"This is my wand," he said, holding it up for her to see. "It was my grandfather's, but he's dead, so my grandmother gave it to me."

"Fix something, then." Lily was prepared to be skeptical.

Taking a small bottle from his huge pocket – a bottle he'd rescued from the rubbish and kept to practice on – Russ handed it to her and said, "Break this."

Lily examined it carefully. It looked like a normal, unbroken bottle. "How?" she asked.

"Hit it on something. Hit it on the tree."

It took several hits before Lily used enough force to break the glass. It would have been more dramatic if the bottle was shattered, but Russ was willing to take what he could get. "Now you check it and be sure you think it's really broken."

"You sound like one of those trick magicians on television."

It registered that Lily's family had a television, but Russ didn't dwell on the thought. "I just don't want you to think this isn't real," he said, and for good measure turned out his pockets and then took off the pea coat, patting the full sleeves of the smock to prove there was no second bottle hidden there. Then he brought his wand down to point at the bottle and said, _"Ampullam Reparo."_

The glass sprang together and the bottle was fixed. Lily didn't want to touch it. Instead, she stared at it and examined it from a short distance as it lay on the grass. "That was pretty good," she said. "How did you do it?"

"The same way you make flowers open and close. Magic. That's why I said you were a witch. It wasn't anything bad, just a name for a girl who's magical."

"Are your parents magical, too?"

"Just my mum. My dad's a muggle – an ordinary person."

"So why are you poor? If you can do all this, why not make yourself rich?"

Russ thought about this. It was something he asked himself sometimes, even though he knew the answer. "Magic doesn't create stuff," he said. "If I make money or food, it isn't like real money or food. It doesn't last. If I have real stuff to work with, I can break it, or fix it, or make it move – once I learn how – but I can't make things that aren't there."

Lily nodded. Apparently it made sense. She looked straight at Russ. "What else can you do," she asked. "Could you fix my watch?"

Her eyes were green. Russ had never noticed that before. Green, and though round in the middle, they were pointy at the sides… A breeze inside his head was blowing the unlatched doors open, and the things that were supposed to stay down there were floating back up, and Russ was suddenly confused… He turned his head quickly away, letting the doors close again.

"I don't know," Russ answered. "I don't know the magic word for watch yet." He saw a figure move by the houses on the other side of the bridge. Panic rose – it was his mum! "Get down!" he whispered to Lily. "We shouldn't be seen together."

"Russ!" his mum was calling, and she sounded angry. "Richard Severus Snape, you come out right now!"

Russ stood up and ran for the bridge, hoping Lily kept her head down. "I'm here, Mum!" he cried out to her.

"Who're you with?" Eileen demanded. "Did you take something from the house you're not supposed to have?"

"No, Mum, I…" but she grabbed his pea coat and found the wand in the pocket.

"You did! Do you know I just got an owl from the Ministry? You used this where muggles could see! Muggles! You march home right now, young man, because this time I'm going to give you what for!"

Eileen took Russ's wrist and pulled him away from the bridge. A quick glance behind told him that Lily'd either left or was hiding. Russ knew he was in serious trouble, but with all his doors once again latched, it didn't really bother him. It was like Nana said. Sometimes you had to take a little pain to get something you really wanted. It just depended how much pain and how much you wanted it.

That afternoon, for the first time, Eileen whupped her son and whupped him good. And she was a lot better at it than Toby was.

_Tuesday, September 2, 1969 (one day before the last quarter)_

The next day, Lily's behavior toward Russ remained unchanged. She sat in her seat in class and never looked at him. She stayed with her friends during play time and lunch. She giggled with the others when Russ was called on to recite and stammered his answer. And she also managed to drop a tiny scrap of paper near him that contained the one, indecipherable word 'tree.'

Russ didn't wait by the tree, he waited in the shelter of the underside of the bridge. When Lily came and sat down under the tree they'd sat under the day before, Russ came out from his hiding place and joined her.

"Were you in trouble yesterday?" Lily asked.

"Yeah. I'm not… supposed to do wand magic 'cause I'm… too young, and doing it… with a wand where muggles can see is… worse. The Ministry sent an… owl."

"An owl? The Ministry?"

"We use owls as… messengers. There's this Ministry of… Magic that has laws and… rules, and they get after you if you… break them. I broke a… rule, and 'cause I'm nine it's my… parents who get in trouble… for it. Mum was pretty… angry."

"Did she spank you?"

"She used a… hairbrush. Dad uses a… belt."

"That's terrible!"

"Not… really. There's worse they could… do."

Lily didn't reply to that. Instead she changed the subject. "She called you by a different name. Is that why you didn't know your name in our first year?"

"I didn't… think people… remembered that."

"Neil joked about it for the longest time. It was like he had something personal against you."

"My mum says we used to… play together when we were… babies. That's before the mill… closed."

"Neil's from the other side of the bridge?" Lily giggled. "Maybe that's why. He doesn't want people to know."

"Are you going to… tell?"

"Why cause trouble? So what's your real name? The one you use?"

"Severus. My parents… call me Russ."

"Severus…" Lily repeated, rolling the name in her mouth in a way that made it sound important. "What do wizards do when they grow up?"

"Don't know. When I'm… eleven I'm going to the wizard… school. It's called… Hogwarts. That's where I'll learn the important… magic. Mum says in sixth year they… start talking about careers. By then I'll… know what I'm good at."

"That'd be fun, going to a magic school."

"But you're… magic, too. That means you could… go. Heck, they probably already… know about you from the time you… did your first magic trick."

"You think so?" Lily sounded pleased at the idea of going to a magical school. "I don't think my parents would let me, though."

"Just wait 'til they… find out. They've gotta be… pleased." Russ thought about Petunia. "Don't know about your… sister, though."

"Tuney? She'll be fine. She just doesn't like me doing things Mummy and Daddy said not to. She's bossy. She likes to boss me around."

"Good job she's going to a… different school then."

"True. If she was still here – I wouldn't be here." Lily looked over at Russ. "Could you tell me all about what it's like to be a witch?"

"Sure. Right now?"

Lily looked down at her watch. "It's late," she said. "I have to go or they'll get worried and Tuney'll get suspicious. We'd better not meet every day either." She got up and brushed herself off. "See you tomorrow, Severus," she said, and was gone.

Russ went home practically floating on top of the world.

Right after finishing his homework that evening, Russ went up to his room and took his Hogwarts textbooks out from under his bed. That was also where he'd put Wenny's books on dark creatures and hexes, and he brought them out as well. There was a new importance to these things because not only did he have to be ready for Hogwarts, Lily had to be ready as well. They had only two years, and there was no time to waste.

All of his mum's books had been bought second hand. Some, like _The Standard Book of Spells (Grade 1)_ had the name of the previous owner written on one of the front pages, and Russ wondered who people like Atticus Fringillida and Cassius Varve were. Mostly, though, he was interested in the subject matter.

For the next several days, Russ pored over _A History of Magic_ and _Astronomical Charts for Beginners_, over _Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them_ and _The Dark Forces: A guide to Self-Protection_. On Friday Lily slipped him a note – 'tomorrow, 2.'

Russ took this to mean two o'clock, and arrived at the bridge at one forty-five.

"I don't think this is a good place," was almost the first thing Lily said when she showed up at two-ten. "At least not on the weekend. Too many people pass by here."

Russ agreed, and suggested a place just outside the town, on the river above the old mill, where there was a sheltered thicket of trees and brush that was more shielded from passing view. They split up immediately, Russ following the west bank of the river upstream, and Lily following the east. Where the thicket was, Russ waded across because the river here was shallower.

"You didn't tell them about me, did you?" Lily asked when they were settled.

"No. My mum wouldn't want me… meeting someone she wasn't… sure about… magic, you know." Russ answered. "She doesn't… want another owl from the… Ministry."

"I can't tell my family about you either. My daddy was a supervisor at the mill. He doesn't trust the laborers on the other side of the bridge. They didn't get along."

"Who's your… father?"

"Harry Evans. I guess yours is Tobias Snape."

"Your dad… talks about my dad? Mine doesn't talk… about yours."

"No, it's just that Tuney asked if Daddy knew the families of any of the students at school. I guess she was really asking about you, but she didn't make it too obvious. She named a whole bunch of people, and Daddy told us." Lily paused, clearly embarrassed. Then she took a deep breath. "Is it true your dad's all the time in the boozer?"

"Your dad said… that?"

"Yeah. Tuney loved it. She gave me this see-I-told-you look that made me so angry. Is it true?"

Russ wanted to change the subject, but somehow asking 'Do you want to learn the history of magic' would've sounded hollow at this point. "Yeah," he said. "Him and Mum are always… arguing. On bad… days, that's when he… hits me."

"Phew, that's all right then," said Lily. "Tuney bet you'd lie about it and said if you did it'd prove I couldn't trust you. Now I can tell her how silly she is."

"D' rather you didn't… talk to her 'bout… me. She doesn't like me."

"It's all right. She's okay once you know her."

"She thinks I'm… rubbish 'cause I'm on the wrong side… of the river."

Lily's silence confirmed the truth of this statement. She changed the subject and asked about Hogwarts, and Russ began to tell her all about the courses they'd be taking – Herbology, and Transfiguration… It seemed like only a short time before Lily had to leave. They agreed to meet in the same place the following Saturday. During the week it would be as if they didn't know each other.

On arriving home, Russ thought to try Petunia's trick on his dad. He asked about the different families of his classmates.

"What 'cha wanta know that for?" his dad asked.

"Got to know who's decent and who ain't," Russ replied. "Don't wanta mix with no stuffed shirts or college puddings."

"That's m' boy," Dad said, and that was how Russ found out that 'that rat, Harry Evans' was one of his dad's least favorite people. There was no doubt now that his friendship with Lily had to be kept secret.

A secret friendship wasn't as good as a best friendship, but it was so many steps higher than anything Russ 'd had before that he wasn't going to quibble. He didn't see Lily every Saturday (though he was at the tree every Saturday), but the chances he had to talk to her quickly became the most important thing in his life.

_Saturday, November 15, 1969 (the day before the first quarter)_

Russ paced impatiently by their tree. He was fairly sure two o'clock had come and gone, but he didn't want to pass up this particular meeting and was willing to wait until dark if necessary. He glanced at the sun in the southwest. Two-thirty maybe? Two-forty-five? The he saw her, and sat down so that no chance observer would see two young figures by the river.

"Hi," Lily said as she sat down next to him. She was bundled up more warmly than he, with scarf and hat as well as her winter coat.

"Did you see it?" Russ asked, ignoring the formalities.

"No, but it was on the news. It got hit by lightning."

"What! They're not... It didn't..." he couldn't even say the words.

"No, they're all right. Just after takeoff a bolt of lightning hit, and I think it damaged something because they were taking about how the information was garbled or something, but everything else seems to be okay."

Russ sighed deeply. He knew Lily wasn't as interested in this as he was, and it was kind of her to relay reports. Certainly better than the Apollo 11 landing when he had to scrounge newspapers for any kind of information. He was still going to scrounge newspapers, but there was more a sense of immediacy with Lily watching her television.

"What about the lunar landing?" he asked. "That's… Wednesday morning about seven. Are you going to be able to… watch that?"

"I'll try," Lily promised, and the conversation switched to school and Lily's most recent tiff with Petunia. Russ wished he had a brother or sister to have a tiff with. It seemed to make life more interesting.

Wednesday morning, Russ was at school early. Lily gave him a surreptitious thumb's up when she came in, then left a note wedged between her books for him to retrieve on the way to recess. The note said, 'TV not working. Nobody can see it.'

It was a grim sort of satisfaction to learn that the well-off with their televisions were in exactly the same position as he was without. His poverty – he knew the word now and accepted the reality it represented – was not a disadvantage at this moment. Nobody was watching the Apollo 12 moon walk.

There was one more important moment, maybe the most important of all, and Russ and Lily had to arrange that the following Saturday.

"It'll be about nine o'clock at night. Will you be able to… watch?"

"I think so. I don't know if they'll show it, though. I can have a radio on, too. They'd announce something. How do I let you know?"

Russ had that already planned. "I'll sneak out and go around and be… waiting out in the dark. Do you have a flashlight?"

"You mean shine it out the window? Like a signal?"

"Yeah. One flash if something went… wrong, two if they're okay."

"Okay. Are you going to have trouble getting out?"

"I don't think so. I've been practicing."

Monday evening, Russ said goodnight to his parents and started up to his room at eight o'clock.

"You got more homework tonight?" his dad asked. "That school ain't turnin' you into no pudding, is it?"

"Nah, Dad. Just showing 'em I ain't no dummy. I'm going to bed right when I finish, though. See ya in the morning."

From there it was easy to arrange his bed to look like he was in it, then to sneak into the small store room at the back and out the narrow window. He had a length of rope there that he could tie and lower to help him down and back up. No one would notice it hanging there in the dark.

Russ also had a flashlight, since he couldn't be sure how long it would take him to get to where he could see Lily's house and the window to her bedroom. If she didn't see his answering gleam of light, she was supposed to repeat the message in fifteen minutes. By the stars, it was around nine o'clock when he took up his position on the cold moors.

He didn't have long to wait. About ten minutes later, there was a flash of light, followed by a second flash. He let his own light shine for a few seconds, then carefully picked his way back home across the moors and let himself in through the window. His parents were none the wiser.

As he got into bed, Russ considered that life was pretty good. Apollo 12 was back with a safe splashdown, and he had a friend who could tell him about it. Life didn't get much better than that.


	5. Chapter 5 – Waiting for Hogwarts

_**I Principio… – **_**Waiting for Hogwarts**

_Tuesday, December 2, 1969 (the last quarter)_

At the beginning of December, Toby's hours at the mine were cut. He came home that night roaring drunk.

"Ge' yer 'ands off me woman!" he bellowed at Eileen as she tried to get him upstairs to bed. "Where's m' son? Russ! Ge' out here n' keep yer father company. Where's m' boy!"

Russ was outside in the cold area yard where a steady rain had already drenched him to the skin. The door was ajar, and he could hear everything.

"Come to bed, Toby. You're tired. You got to get some sleep…"

"Wha's a man to sleep for if he don't got a job t' go to in th' morning? Russ! Ge' out here!"

The silence mirrored Russ's own shock. His dad didn't have a job? There was nothing worse that could happen. He waited, scarcely breathing.

"Toby," Eileen whispered, "you're not redundant? Not now with winter coming on?"

"Good as… Take a man's hours away, take 'is pay. Where's m' boy?" There was another silence, then… "Whyn't y' witch 'em? 'Ere I'm saddled wi' a witch 'n a witch's brat, 'n she can't witch me up a decent job 'r decent pay. What good are ya, woman! Take a man's money 'n give 'im nothing!'

"Toby, come upstairs. It'll be better in the morning. It'll…"

"Ge' yer 'ands off me!" There was the sound of a fist hitting flesh, and a thump as someone fell against the wall.

Russ was through the kitchen and into the sitting room at once. Eileen was on the floor, but already starting to rise. Toby swayed near the foot of the stairs. "Mum!" Russ screamed and made to cross over to his mother, but Toby grabbed his arm.

"You b'n keepin' away from me, y' ungrateful brat! You 'n yer useless mam! I'll give you what for!"

His belt came down, buckle end this time, and Russ kicked and shrieked as it struck, his arm held in a viselike grip. Eileen moved in, and Toby swung at her; the buckle caught her ear and drew blood. Russ kicked and connected with a knee cap, making his dad turn and strike him backhand across the mouth. Eileen grabbed Toby's left arm, and the grip on Russ eased. He wriggled out of his dad's grasp, Toby lunged for him, stumbled on the threadbare carpet, and fell. He struggled for a moment to rise, but he was too drunk, and then he was asleep.

Eileen looked down at her husband sprawled on the floor. "Bloody mine," she hissed. "Bet the managers aren't going hungry. Here, Russ, help me get him on the sofa." Together they hauled Toby over and dragged him onto the sofa, then Eileen took Russ into the kitchen to check his mouth, back and legs. "He gave you a couple of good ones, then, didn't he?" she said as she dabbed at the spots where the buckle 'd broken the skin a little. "Stopped bleeding, though."

"Mum, your left ear's bleeding." Russ helped his mum wash off her ear and neck where there was a small trickle. A bruise was just starting on her jaw.

"I've half a mind to send you to Nana," Eileen said, "even if it means missing school. We're in for a rough stretch."

"Why don't we both go to Nana?" Russ asked. "She'd make him stay away."

Eileen shook her head. "Who'd take care of him?" she said quietly, glancing toward the sitting room. "Your dad ain't one that can live alone. He wouldn't last a week." She reached out a hand and touched a welt on Russ's shoulder. "He's not a bad man, Russ, just one that muddles through the best he can, but sometimes he can't even do that. It ain't easy working in a mine, the dark, the dust, the hard work, and then they take even that away. And he lies in bed of a night fretting and worrying and sick just thinking about the future. At least with a bit of gin in him he can sleep…"

"Can't you just use your wand? It'd be…"

"You don't. Use. Magic. Against. Muggles. Not ever. And if we go around breaking the rules about magic in a muggle community, they can keep you out of…" Eileen looked at Russ, then grasped his face between her hands, her own face fierce and determined. "You listen to me," she said. "You don't ever get in the middle of that ever again. I can handle your dad, but you got to stay out of it. We got a year and a half to make through, and then you're going to Hogwarts. You'll be safe in Hogwarts. And I'm not doing anything to give them a reason to keep you out. We can do magic out on the moors where no one can see us or identify us, but not in town. Promise?"

"Yes, Mum."

The following day, Russ went to school as tightly locked down as he had ever been in his life. His dark eyes were cold and empty, and no spark of feeling bubbled up through the latched doors. His teacher asked him how he came by the cut and bruise on the side of his mouth, and he looked her straight in the eyes, knowing she would never be able to read him, and answered, "Accident," in a cool, collected voice. The fact that her knowing smirk implied that she suspected a drunken, working-class father bothered him not at all. He cared nothing for her or for any of the other students. Today he didn't even care for Lily. That, too, was locked away.

That night, Russ sat up with his mum waiting for his dad to get home. When they heard his hobnailed working shoes staggering along the cobblestones, Eileen ordered Russ out of the house, not to come back until Toby was in bed. Still locked down, still cold and detached, Russ obeyed. He obeyed night after night for two weeks.

He couldn't bear to stay in the area yard in the back listening to the same scene played over and over again. When his dad came home, Russ went out onto the moors. He no longer got undressed for bed, but wore his clothes at all times, so that outside at night, with the collar of the pea coat turned up to protect his ears, he could still be warm in the winter cold. Sometimes it rained. Sometimes there was a light dusting of snow. Once the sky was clear and glittering with a million stars.

Term ended, and school let out for the Christmas break; Lily's family went to Hampshire for three weeks. Then, two days before Christmas, there was a cave-in in an old section of the mine they'd decided to reopen and try to work again. Toby came home that night crazed with grief and anger. Russ heard the lamp smash just as he was closing the kitchen door, and stayed, afraid now to leave his mother alone, trying to decipher from the sounds what was happening in the next room

"Toby, no! Put that down, we can't afford more if you…" The sound of a plate breaking against the wall. "Ge' off me, woman! Bloody murd'rin' swine e'ry one o' 'em!" A chair thrown across the room. Russ cowered by the door, trembling as his mum's pleas, his dad's roars, the crash of objects to the floor told of violence spiraling out of control.

Russ couldn't stand it any more. He eased the door open. His parents were yelling at each other, Eileen trying to restrain the furious Toby, whose back was turned to Russ. Russ took a deep breath and slipped past his dad up the stairs.

Toby saw the movement. "Get back here, you brat!" he yelled, and made a grab that missed. He started up the stairs after the boy.

"Toby!" Eileen shrieked. "Russ, get out of here! Toby!

Russ rushed into his room and out again, wand now in hand. In the face of his father's ferocious charge and his mother's cries to stop, he pointed the wand and said, loudly and clearly_, "Stupefy!"_ Red light spurted from the wand, Eileen screamed, and Toby crumpled there on the stairs and fell backwards, crashing down the steps to the floor and lying motionless.

"You've killed him!" Eileen screamed, dropping to her husband's side. "My wand! Get my wand now!"

Russ, horrified at what had happened, raced for the kitchen drawer where Eileen kept the wand and brought it to her, then crouched miserably in a corner as she began the low healing chants to repair the damage he had caused. Even as she worked, there was a bump and flutter against the window. Not wanting his mum interrupted, Russ rose and crossed to the window to open it and take the heavy official envelope from the owl. All around him the world was crumbling, and it was his fault. And still Eileen chanted, and still Russ waited.

When Toby was finally sleeping safely, Eileen rose and walked over to Russ, her face pale and furious. She held out her hand, and Russ gave her the letter. She opened it, glanced at the contents then, white with rage, handed it to Russ.

It was short and to the point. Two spells, one an attack spell and one a healing spell, had been performed with two different wands in a home with only one adult witch in an area where they might have been seen by muggles. They were reminded that wizards under the age of eleven were not allowed to use wands, and that continued violation of the Magical Secrecy Act and the Restriction on Underage Magic might result in the confiscation of the wands and the revocation of the privilege of attending Hogwarts School.

"Why didn't you leave like I told you?" Eileen said coldly. "A mate of his was killed today. He needed to blow off steam. He didn't touch me, just furniture. You used magic against a muggle. You dropped him on a staircase and near killed him. You brought the Ministry down on us and now they're talking about Hogwarts. Nothing is going to keep you out of Hogwarts. Especially not your own stupidity."

She seized his wrist and dragged him after her out onto the dark moor. There she stripped off the coat, pulled up the smock and with a murmured _"Flagello,"_ wielded her wand like a whip. When she was done, she wrapped her son in the coat and carried him back into the house.

Russ spent the next three days in bed while his mum tended the lash marks on his back. They stung like fury, but Eileen couldn't risk using magic with two counts already against them at the Ministry, so Russ had no recourse but to endure. It was then, with the constant prodding of pain, that he began to exploit, without even willing himself to do so, the inner recesses of his own mind.

The first thing he realized was that a total emotional lockdown made the pain easier to endure. The pain didn't go away, and it didn't lessen, but he didn't care about it as much. He could accept the pain as simply there, and was able to concentrate on other things in spite of it. Then he realized that, separated from any emotional reaction to what had happened, he was able to understand both the necessity for and the justice of what his mum had done. Russ had broken the rules.

One of the rules was that you never broke the rules of people who controlled what you wanted or needed. You had to figure out first what you needed, then what you wanted, and then you had to learn who, if anyone, controlled it. Their rules were the important rules. Russ had to get into Hogwarts. The Ministry controlled that. The Ministry's rules couldn't be broken, not by him and not by his mum. The Ministry controlled nothing that Nana needed or wanted. Their rules didn't affect her.

Another rule was that there were different levels for the concept of unfair. A lightweight fighting a featherweight was basically unfair because of the weight difference, but as Nel Tarleton proved, the odds could be evened out by applying other physical talents that reduced the advantage. Magic, on the other hand, was an irreducible advantage. A nonmagical person had no chance against a magical person, and there was no nonmagical talent that could even the odds. To use magic against a muggle was more intrinsically unfair than to use magic against a weaker wizard. The weaker wizard could compensate. The muggle couldn't.

Still another rule was that you never interfered with someone who'd decided that the goal was worth the pain. His mum had decided that protecting him and giving his dad a way to 'blow off steam' was worth the pain of an occasional black eye or bruised jaw. He'd tried to take that decision away from her, and thereby negated the freedom she needed to control her own life.

Russ was, in fact, beginning to learn that pain and disappointment are two of the most profound teachers in a person's life. If you never have to learn to deal with pain and disappointment, then you don't have the tools or the defenses to survive. Russ was a survivor. He would learn from his disappointment, and he would learn from his pain, and locking himself down was a way to do both.

In this fashion, Christmas came and went with no one in the Snape household even noticing. There was, in any case, no money for a tree, presents, or special foods. Just having enough food was a gift.

With the new year, Russ returned to school, his being locked down now the most natural of states for him. The first Friday of the new term was his tenth birthday, an event notable for its lack of celebration. The following day he went to the tree by the river to see Lily privately for the first time in a month.

_Saturday, January 10, 1970 (halfway between the new moon and the first quarter)_

"What happened?" was the first thing Lily said when she arrived at the tree Saturday afternoon, all bundled up against the cold. There wasn't any snow, but the shallow places on the river had a thin crusting of ice.

"Nothing, why?" Russ replied.

"Severus Snape, you're lying to me. You've changed, gotten all… distant and turned off."

"I'm always distant and turned… off. There's no one at school for me to… turn on for. Except you, of course."

"How's your mum?"

"Okay, I guess."

"And your dad?"

Russ didn't answer. Instead he looked across to his side of the river, the side with no trees. "I suppose he's okay, too," he said after a moment.

"Do they fight?"

"They argue a lot." It wasn't really a lie, because he hadn't said no about the fighting, and they did argue.

"Don't take it to heart," said Lily and reached into her pocket. "I brought you something." It was a little square of gingerbread with icing on it. Lily also fished out a tiny, partially burnt candle. "I can't light it because I can't use matches, but you can pretend to blow it out. I know it's late." She stuck the candle into the icing and handed the gingerbread to Russ. "Happy birthday," she said.

Russ stared down at the little square that he knew would be sharp and sweet at the same time because he'd had gingerbread at his grandmother Gra's house, and occasional other sweets at home when times were good. He thought of them as something special, to be treasured, and wondered if Lily felt the same way. "Thanks," he said, and looked into her eyes.

This time he was expecting it, and it didn't frighten him as much. As he looked into the green eyes, the locks began to unlock and the latches to unlatch. The part of his brain that had been detached and clinical for so many weeks analyzed the phenomenon and wondered if this always happened between friends or if it was something about Lily in particular, and then he realized that the surfacing feelings were too many to cope with at once, and he glanced away. The latches clicked back into place.

He had, however, learned something else. It wasn't as clear and definite as seeing an attack spell in his mum's eyes when they practiced out on the moor – more of a vague, partly defined impression – but he knew, with certainty, that Lily would never willingly hurt him. "How did you… know?"

Lily giggled. "I'm not telling," she said. "My secret."

"I know yours is at the end of… January. What day is it?"

"Not telling that either. How do you know?"

"Miss Wade last year had a list of months and… birthdays, and our names in order, but I couldn't see the… dates. How can I say 'Happy Birthday' to you if I don't… know?" Russ looked at her again, and the fresh breeze of her gaze blew through the unlatched doors. He realized he could control this by looking up and down, maintaining a balance.

"You just wait 'til you know it's past, then you say 'Sorry I'm late, but happy birthday.' Just like I did. There. That's my secret." Lily was laughing now.

"You mean you really didn't know… yesterday was my birthday?" Russ wasn't laughing exactly, but his smile had a liberating feeling.

"Wow. I got really close, didn't I?"

The ground was too cold to sit on, so they stood next to the tree and shared the gingerbread. Lily told Russ all about Hampshire and her visit to the Isle of Wight and Portsmouth, and the two days she'd been in London. Russ couldn't tell her about his Christmas break, so he just said, "I was sick for a few days," and "Nothing much. The usual. Kind of boring, really."

Then Lily told Russ some silly jokes her cousin in Hampshire told her. Things like 'What does a five hundred pound mouse say? – Here kitty, kitty,' and 'Why aren't you ever hungry on the beach? – Because of the sand which is there.' Then she had to explain to him about 'sand which is' and 'sandwiches' because Russ wasn't too good at jokes, but he got the last one all by himself. 'Where does a five hundred pound gorilla sleep? – Anywhere he wants to.' By then both of them had reached a point where they'd giggle at anything.

After that, Lily had to go home. They said, 'see you in school' knowing they couldn't talk there, and they arranged to meet the following week, knowing it might not be possible, and then Russ went home, and as he crossed the river and made his way past the derelict mill, the doors began to close and latch again, and the locks made everything secure. He didn't make it happen, it just happened.

The feeling of openness and lightness of being was gone, and would not return until Russ was able to look again into the green eyes, but he didn't really mind. What he felt – or rather didn't feel – at that moment was quite normal to him. He was under no illusions about life. Most of it was muddling through, or dealing with hardship, or surviving storms. Every now and then, if you were lucky, there were some happy moments. Russ was lucky. Sometime in the next few weeks, maybe as soon as the very next Saturday, he'd have another happy moment. It was something to look forward to.

Winter melted into spring, and Toby got his hours back at the mine where a new shaft held some promise of steady work. Life at home calmed down, and once again father and son played cribbage of an evening after Russ was done with his homework. Eileen found a place in a town seven miles away that gave her needlework, piecework that she could bring home and embroider and return when she was done for decent pay, the little label 'hand embroidered' being something the company used to charge more from the tourists who bought the table linen they manufactured. Sometimes Eileen would take the things to Nana's house and embroider with magic. It went faster that way, and brought in more shillings.

As April opened with its new leaves and first shoots that would be flowers by May, and the world began to look fresh and green again, Russ once more turned his eyes to the heavens. April eleventh was the day he was waiting for. April eleventh would bring the reenactment of another important part of his life. The Americans were planning their third lunar expedition, and this time Russ and Lily were conspiring to see if they could find a way for him to finally watch it on television.

Russ hadn't seen the first moon walk, and no one had seen the second, but he had high hopes for the astronauts and lunar excursion module of Apollo 13.

The Saturday before, on the fourth of April, Russ went over the terminology with Lily: launch, splashdown, lunar orbit, liftoff, command module, reentry, and all the other useful facts she'd need to follow what was happening. Launch was from Cape Kennedy just after eight o'clock at night, and Russ planned to be out on the moors waiting for Lily's signal that all had gone well, that the rocket hadn't blown up. "Although," Russ assured her, "the Saturn rocket's never failed. It has a perfect record."

"I think it's great you like this space business so much."

"You're interested in it, too."

"Not as much as you," Lily said, "but when you talk about it, you forget to stammer."

"That sounds like you think I… stammer on purpose."

"You know I don't mean that!"

"Okay," said Russ, the stammering immediately forgotten again, "liftoff is on the eleventh. The lunar excursion starts the sixteenth and goes into the seventeenth, reentry and splashdown are on the twentieth. Now we have to find out when the BBC is broadcasting because they won't do it for the whole thirty-three hours they're on the moon."

The launch went as planned the evening of the eleventh, and Lily's flashlight beam told Russ that all was well. All continued well for the next two days, but Tuesday morning the rumors began to fly.

"There was this big explosion, and the whole spaceship was torn apart!"

"I heard the ship's like a big coffin and they're going to stay up there forever."

"A meteor hit it and all the air escaped into space!"

"It's going to fall into the sun!"

"Don't be an idiot! It isn't anywhere near the sun!"

That afternoon, the teachers dedicated themselves to rumor control and science lessons. Russ's teacher was loaded with details. She referred constantly to a piece of paper as she drew a diagram of the different parts of the 'spaceship,' the modules Russ already knew as the Odyssey and the Aquarius, and explained.

"There's been an explosion, but they don't know what caused it since they can't go back there to look. They've lost a lot of electrical power on board, and now they have to save the batteries to get back to earth. So they turned everything off in this big part of the ship, and moved into the little part where they use less electricity. When they get back close to earth, they'll turn everything on again."

That was all right, but then over the next two days the teacher was talking about carbon dioxide and temperature, and something called 'trajectory.' It was very clear that these brave men, these astronauts, could die at any time.

It was a living nightmare, and Russ found his heart and soul linked with the flight crew of Apollo 13. They were young. Only Lovell was older than Russ's dad, and Haise was younger than his mum. That was old in one sense, but still far too young to die. They had children Russ's age. Luckily the whole rest of the world was caught up in the drama, too, and for once Russ didn't have to scavenge for information. It was all around him.

As he learned of all the different ways to die, Russ died with the astronauts. First was losing the air, being suffocated in carbon dioxide, struggling just to breathe. Then there was cold, as your fingers lost their feeling and you kept on trying to work instruments with hands too numb to manipulate the controls. Then there was the fear of ricocheting off the atmosphere, to careen into empty space and slowly die of cold, thirst, and hunger. And all the while knowing that no one, no one could ever come help you. That in the end, you were alone.

Russ longed for the chance to go into space, to heroically save the astronauts of Apollo 13, and knew that he was as helpless, as impotent as everyone else. There was nothing he could do.

The Odyssey and Aquarius went around the moon, and then they sped back towards earth, and suddenly reentry wasn't April twentieth, it was April seventeenth. Right around seven o'clock in the evening. Russ left an emergency note in one of Lily's books, and they met by the tree Wednesday afternoon after school.

"It's tomorrow. It's tomorrow around seven o'clock. I have to know if they get back all right. The heat shield, you know. It might've been damaged."

Lily frowned. "Dad's got an interview with a company in Birmingham. I don't know if it's tomorrow or Friday. If he goes tomorrow, Mum'll go with him. Don't know about Tuney. Maybe you could sneak in. They may not be showing it, though."

"How could anybody not be showing the splashdown? How could people not care?"

"Okay. Be outside hiding in the garden at six thirty. If Mum and Dad are gone, I'll try to keep Tuney upstairs. She's not so interested in this 'space' stuff. She'll stay there if she's got school work to do. I'll see you tomorrow night."

It wasn't easy getting to Lily's house on the seventeenth. It was right around supper time, and if Russ was seen in that part of town in his poor clothes he'd be taken for a prowler or a thief. He started early and made his way cautiously from street to street in order to be hiding under a bush in Lily's yard ten minutes ahead of schedule.

At six thirty, Lily opened the kitchen door, and Russ slipped into the house.

"Shh," Lily said. "Mum and Dad are in Birmingham, but Tuney's listening to records upstairs." And indeed, Russ could hear "Gimme Shelter" from the upper part of the house as Lily led him into their sitting room where the television was already on and tuned to BBC1.

The Evans house was an intimidating place to be. Larger and filled with newer and more expensive things than Mrs. Hanson's home, it made Russ feel very dirty and uncouth. He was afraid to touch anything for fear of leaving finger marks, and when Lily invited him to sit down, he shook his head. He pretended that he preferred standing. In reality, he didn't want to touch the sofa.

"They're not broadcasting it," Russ said, for the normal Friday night show was on.

"They'll switch over soon," Lily replied. "They've already alerted us that as soon as the capsule is close enough, they'll pick up the transmission of the splashdown."

Sure enough, at about a quarter to seven, they started getting a picture from a big American ship in the Pacific Ocean. The BBC announcer was explaining that the spacecraft was about to begin its descent, and that there would be a radio blackout due to ionization of the hull. Normal blackout was about three minutes; this one would be longer because of the shallow angle of entry.

Blackout began, and Russ and Lily waited. Three minutes seemed an eternity, and while they were waiting the announcer explained that there was the possibility that the spacecraft would just burn up in the atmosphere because a heat shield may have been damaged, or the parachutes might not open and the capsule would be destroyed in its freefall crash into the ocean. It was terrible to listen to.

Three minutes was up, and nothing happened. The announcer explained again about the shallow angle. Thirty more seconds… still probably okay… thirty more… they were obviously worried now, and Russ began to shut down… another thirty seconds… and suddenly there was a crackle on the radio, and the astronauts were talking to Houston, and they were safely through the blackout… And Lily let out a whoop, and hugged Russ right there in front of the television.

"What are you doing down there?" Petunia called. "Why are you making so much noise?"

"It's just the television Tuney," Lily called back. "I'm watching that moon thing, and everybody's happy because it looks like they're going to make it home."

"Oh, that thing. Don't yell like that, please. I'm listening to something."

Lily put her finger to her lips, and she and Russ turned back to the television because it wasn't over yet. The spacecraft was still falling, and Russ wouldn't be satisfied until it was in the water and the astronauts climbing out.

It took nine minutes for the rest of the long plunge to earth. Russ and Lily heard that the parachutes had opened long before they could see the capsule, and then it came into view and hit the water, and they knew the worst was over. They couldn't see any more after that, because the ship was too far away from the capsule. A helicopter was on its way to them, and then the BBC interrupted its coverage to return to normal programming. It would be a while before the ship reached the astronauts, but they would keep their viewers informed.

That was it. Russ knew he couldn't stay until the recovery of the capsule. He had to leave Lily's house and go home. Lily had other ideas.

"Would you like a glass of milk and some gingerbread before you go?" she asked. "I ought to have asked you earlier, but we were too interested in the splashdown."

Russ was going to say no, then remembered how good Mrs. Hanson's milk tasted. "I don't want to be any trouble for you," he said.

"No trouble. We can eat in the kitchen."

"Who are you talking to?" Petunia shouted from upstairs.

"It's the television," Lily shouted back. She and Russ scurried into the kitchen, where Russ felt more comfortable about sitting on the chairs, and Lily got him some milk and a little plate of gingerbread. "That was scary," she said as she settled into her chair. "I thought for a few minutes they weren't going to make it. It seemed like such a long time."

"In a way, it probably wasn't as hard for the astronauts," Russ replied. "They knew they were still alive. It's us who didn't know what was happening that felt it was long."

"I don't think I could ever do what they did," Lily said. "I mean asking for a job where I knew I might die like that, all alone up in space with no one to help me."

"There are worse ways to die," said Russ. "At least they were able to keep working on it, keep trying to solve their problem, right up until the last possible moment. Even if they did die, they'd have been thinking of something else when it happened. It'd be a lot worse to be in some kind of accident, like a mine cave-in, where you're trapped for hours or days in the dark, and there's nothing you can do to keep your mind off dying. Or do you remember our first year in school when they found those bodies in Manchester?"

"Yes, I remember that."

"My dad says if that'd been a year or two earlier, they'd have been hanged. Imagine walking out to die and you have to stand there while everyone's watching you, and nobody's going to help you because they all want you dead. That'd be worse, too."

"Do you think about dying a lot? It's like when you talk about the astronauts. You're not stammering."

Russ shook his head. "Not a lot, but sometimes. My dad works in a mine, and there was a cave-in last December and one of his mates died. It messed him up for a while, and when I thought about it I could see…" Russ paused because of the look on Lily's face.

"Your dad works in a mine?" she said.

Russ looked down at his hands, at the dirt under the fingernails and around the cuticles, and thought of his dad's hands, grimy and calloused from working with the tools and the slate. He'd bet anything Lily's dad didn't work half as hard. "Yeah," was all he said.

"But if your mum's a witch, can't she do something?"

"Nah. I… told you. We can't make… anything that doesn't already… exist. And we can't do… magic where… muggles can see."

"What would they do to you if you did?" Lily picked up a piece of gingerbread and nibbled the edge, her head cocked to one side.

"They could keep me out of… Hogwarts, and there's other… things they could do."

"Like what?"

Petunia unwittingly came to the rescue. "Lily, you're talking to somebody down there. You're not supposed to have people in the house when Mum and Dad are away." They could hear her footsteps on the stairs.

Russ was up immediately and out the back door. He didn't run, though. He needed to be cautious getting back out to the moors, and besides, he wanted to hear what Lily and Petunia would say.

Petunia's voice got louder with the kitchen door no longer muffling it. "Who was here with you?"

"No one," Lily answered. "I was playing a game."

"How come there's two glasses of milk?"

"I poured one, then forgot I had it. Then I poured another. Don't worry, I'll finish both of them."

"I don't believe you!"

"I don't care if you believe me or not. You're not my mother."

"It's that boy, isn't it? You had that strange Snape boy over didn't you?"

Lily laughed. "That's silly. How would he get here? Everybody'd chase him off. I'm going to tell Mum and Dad you're imagining stuff. Besides, you're just trying to scare me so you can bring your boyfriend over."

Twelve-year-old Petunia was incensed. "I don't have any stupid boyfriend!'

"Sue Hodges said her sister Mary said you were sweet on Brian Philips."

"That stupid git? I'd rather be sweet on a ferret!"

"Tuney lo-oves Brian… Tuney lo-oves Brian…"

Satisfied that Lily had the situation well under control, Russ ducked away from the bushes around the house and made his way stealthily to the moors and thence back home. It was still early enough that his parents hadn't been the slightest bit concerned as to his whereabouts.

"Mum," Russ asked later that evening, "what do they do to wizards who break the rules?"

"They have a prison, Mr. Nosey Parker, just for rule-breakers. It's called Azkaban."

"Is that a bad place?" Russ asked.

"Oh, very bad. It's guarded by dementors who'll steal all your happy thoughts and leave you miserable for the rest of your life." Eileen was putting away the dishes and cleaning up the kitchen, ready for the next morning.

"What do they look like?"

"Like nasty corpses in rotten grave cloths and when they kiss you, they suck out your soul." Eileen made a sudden lunge at Russ, who squealed in mock terror and dove out of her grasp.

"If I did something bad, would they send me to Azkaban?" Russ continued from a more defensive position.

"Why? What did you do?" Eileen regarded her son shrewdly.

"Nothing."

"Then they won't send you there."

"But if I did something bad?"

"They don't send children to Azkaban. If you did something really bad, they'd send me to Azkaban, and you and your father'd have to muddle through. Come to think of it, I could use a holiday. What're you planning?"

"Mum!"

"I mean it. I'd get there, and when they tried to suck out my soul I'd tell them all about my demon of a son who'd drive a saint to perdition and get them all feeling so sorry for me…"

"Mum!"

Eileen stopped, and she seemed to see something in Russ's face because she crouched down to talk to him. "Don't you ever forget," she said, "you're a good boy. There's nothing you could do that'd make anyone want to put you into Azkaban. You're a good boy."

"I've done wand magic."

"They don't put you into Azkaban for that."

The next time Russ saw Lily was in May under the tree by the river. That was when he told her about the owl from the Ministry and the warning message, though he didn't go into detail about why he'd cast a spell, or what his dad'd been like, or how his mum'd reacted. Just that he'd done magic and gotten a warning. And he told her about Azkaban and the dementors.

"They sound really scary," Lily said.

"They're supposed to be scary. It wouldn't do any good to have a prison people weren't scared of."

"I guess not."

"Magic's serious business," Russ said solemnly. "It's not a game. You've got to follow the rules."

Of course, there are more serious things in the world than just magic.

_Monday, June 1, 1970 (three days before the new moon)_

School was winding down toward the summer break. On the first of June, Toby came home early from the pub, more sober than usual. Even more surprising, he brought a copy of the _Manchester Guardian_. It was a rare thing for him to buy a newspaper, but one glance at the front page told Russ and Eileen why.

"Forty thousand people," Toby told them, awe mixed with sorrow in his voice. "Forty thousand. That's a whole town buried under the earth. Makes a mine cave-in look like nothing. A miner – he knows what might happen every time he goes down a shaft, but them? Who'd think the earth could move so 's t' make a whole mountain come down on ya? Where's Peru, boy?"

Russ hesitated a moment, then blurted out, "South America." Geography was something Miss Wade had stressed.

"Smart kid. They do well by ya in that school. They speak English there?"

"No, Spanish."

"Don't matter none. People's people. Ain't nothing worse 'n being buried before y're dead."

The _Guardian_ was left to Russ, who pored over every word in every paragraph. The next day he uncharacteristically slipped a note into Lily's hand. _Ask about the Peru earthquake_ it said. Lily obliged, and the class got a nice lesson about plate tectonics and fault lines.

On June 18, general elections were held and Labor was voted out. Toby hadn't been completely happy with a Labor Government that tried to limit workers' rights, but he was less than happy with a Conservative government that didn't bother about those rights at all. Workers in far off places like Wales were talking of strikes, and late nights at the pub became common again. Russ mastered sleeping with one ear tuned to the cobblestones, ready to slip out of the house at a moment's notice.

Ten days later, the school year ended. Lily went with her family to the Lake District and Scotland, and wasn't due back until August. For the first time in his life, Russ found himself with nothing new to do and no one to do it with. He was frustrated and bored, and old enough for the boredom and frustration to find expression in mischievous and potentially destructive activities. He prowled through his house, his neighborhood, and the town looking for an outlet for his nervous energy. He found the outlet in his great-grandfather's books.

The study of spells, charms, hexes, jinxes, and curses was no longer a matter of childish curiosity. That summer it became serious business. Russ 'borrowed' his mother's wand, went far out on the moors where the rules didn't apply, and practiced gestures and incantations and a new language. Wensley's ships had put into Piraeus often enough for him to invest in a tiny Greek dictionary and phrase book, and once Russ figured out the strange letters, it was a treasure trove of words, though he was aware that it wasn't the 'magic language' that Nana used. He had to experiment with pronunciation, but he was patient and determined.

The first spell Russ invented was one that made a pebble jump a few inches into the air. He'd been concentrating on it all afternoon, and was so surprised when it happened that he jumped backward himself and fell down. He practiced saying _"Pido!"_ to a number of small things and returned home with a sense of great accomplishment. This was no vague, childish play, but a deliberate, focused spell. He assumed all wizards invented such things. He had yet to learn what a rare talent it was.

Later in the month, having more or less mastered the Pido spell and remembering the events of early June, Russ checked his Greek dictionary for the word for earthquake. It was _Seismos._ He tried making a spell with the word, but with little success. Not daunted, he continued trying.

_Saturday, August 8, 1970 (two days before the first quarter)_

Lily returned in August, and it was sunny and hot the second Saturday, when Russ and Lily were able to meet under their tree. The bright sun made the river sparkle, and you could almost forget how dirty it was. Russ even removed the ever present pea coat, now comfortable enough with Lily that he was confident she wouldn't laugh at his clothes. There was, however, a new barrier between them.

Russ found himself unable to look Lily in the eyes. It wasn't that he was afraid she could read him – he knew by now she couldn't – but that the feeling of being so open when he now had so much to conceal made him nervous. What if he couldn't close down again before he went home to his mum? What if his mum found out he was using her wand and doing illegal magic, even if it was in a place where the rules were different? Russ couldn't risk it. He spent a lot of the conversation looking at the river. They were talking about Hogwarts.

"…then after you get the school letter, you can get a wand."

"I thought you already had a wand."

"Mum took it away from me. Besides, it wasn't really mine. It was my grandfather's." Russ thought about the feel of the wand in his fingers. His mother's borrowed wand didn't feel the same, and he knew he could do better magic with his grandfather's old one. That wand really was his – he could tell. He didn't say this to Lily, though. "They'll start teaching us real magic at Hogwarts. Then the rules get stricter, like I told you, and the Ministry can punish you if you do magic outside school – you get letters."

Lily looked disbelieving. "But I have done magic outside school!" she insisted.

"We're all right. We haven't technically got wands yet. They let you off when you're a kid and you can't help it." Russ wasn't as sure what happened when you were a kid and knew enough magic so that you could help it, but not going to Hogwarts was involved. "But once you're eleven," he continued, "and they start training you, then you've got to go careful."

A random stick became a play wand in Lily's hand. "It is real, isn't?" The note of disbelief was softer now. This was something she wanted to be real. "It's not a joke? Petunia says you're lying to me. Petunia says there isn't a Hogwarts. It is real, isn't it?"

"It's real for us. Not for her. But we'll get the letter, you and me."

"Really?"

"Definitely."

"And will it really come by owl?"

"Normally. But you're muggle-born, so someone from the school will have to come and explain to your parents."

"Does it make a difference, being muggle-born?"

Russ found himself remembering the whispered conversations between his mum and Nana, the ones he wasn't supposed to have heard – A little half-blood boy like him… They'd eat him alive – and he knew not everything was perfect at Hogwarts. He looked at Lily then, her burnished red hair, the eager expression he knew so well, and couldn't bear the thought that his only friend might be afraid to go to Hogwarts, might refuse to go to Hogwarts. "No," he said. "It doesn't make any difference."

Their eyes met, the doors blew open and, as Lily rolled onto her back to stare up at the leaves, Russ watched inside his head where the selfish truth about himself was bubbling up through the open doors.

_I'm afraid of Hogwarts. The stars say I'm to be sorted into Slytherin where they eat half-blood boys like me alive, and Mum's so worried she's teaching me how to fight. I don't know if I'll ever have a friend there. I've never met any other wizards, and the only witches I know are Mum, Nana, and Lily. What if they don't like me? But if Lily's there, I'll have a friend, and it'll be all right. She has to go. She has to be there. I need her to be there…_ Then the doors slowly closed again for the green eyes were looking elsewhere.

"How are things at your house?" Lily asked, and Russ lied his little lie, downplaying the strife because he was ashamed of his dad, picking and pulling at the grass around him to keep from looking back at Lily's eyes, not wanting to see more of the truth.

"But it won't be that long and I'll be gone," he finished, hoping his mother was right, and it would be better at Hogwarts.

For some reason Lily wanted to talk more than usual, maybe because they hadn't seen each other in six weeks, and she changed the subject to Azkaban and the dementors. It was better than talking about his family, so Russ would have liked the conversation to continue, but at that moment he heard a rustle of leaves and grass much louder than any lizard or mouse could make, and Lily was scrambling to her feet crying, "Tuney!"

Their secret meeting place was no longer a secret.

Russ was on his feet at once, angry that Petunia would consider acceptable for her an action she'd condemned in him only a year earlier. "Who's spying now? What d' you want?" he demanded.

Instead of responding to the challenge, Petunia attacked on a personal level. She leveled a finger at Russ. "What is that you're wearing, anyway? Your mum's blouse?"

It was a low blow and, as fury blazed in him, Russ heard the snap of a breaking tree branch, Lily's warning cry, and then Petunia was pushed backwards when the falling branch struck her shoulder. She turned and ran from them, sobbing.

Lily's call of "Tuney!" had no effect. She spun to confront Russ, anger mounting in her as well. "Did you make that happen?"

He hadn't. He couldn't have. He hadn't noticed the branch until it fell. "No," Russ answered, and was distressed that Lily'd even asked the question.

Lily was already starting after Petunia. "You did! You did! You hurt her!" she flung at him, as she moved away.

"No – no I didn't!" but the protest was useless. Lily glared at him and was gone, leaving Russ staring forlornly at the branch on the ground where Petunia had been standing.

_Did I do that? I didn't think about doing it. It just happened… _Yet Russ understood that somehow he had done it, had used the branch as a weapon against Petunia because Petunia was attacking something that lay at the core of his being, something that he couldn't give up. Now, because of it, he was losing Lily's friendship anyway, because of something bad that he'd done.

_I lost control. I did childish, wandless magic because I lost control. Why did I lose control? I lost control because I wasn't shut down tightly enough. When you don't shut down, you lose control, and then people don't want to be around you. Like Lily doesn't want to be around me now. If I don't shut down tight enough, I'll lose control, and then Lily won't be my friend any more._

Quietly, consciously, deliberately, Russ examined the latches and locks of his mind. They were dangerously loose and open. He closed them. And having closed them, he resolved to monitor them closely to ensure they remained closed. He couldn't afford more mistakes like the one he'd just made.

Russ walked home firm in his new resolve. The following weekend he went to the thicket of trees by the river, but Lily didn't come. He didn't see her again until school started in September – their last year of school before Hogwarts. By then, Russ had been practicing being shut down so well that he no longer had to think about it all the time. He'd also spent more time working on magic and, in his loneliness and isolation, had created spells that would make flowers droop and wilt, little patches of ground dry up and become hard, and small insects like ants grow confused and lose their way.

The first Saturday in September was the fifth, and Lily came to the river. Russ watched the path behind her, but saw no sign of Petunia. "Don't worry," Lily said. "She won't be coming any more. You were very mean to her."

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to do it. I didn't even know it was me doing it."

"Well, you shouldn't do it any more. I couldn't be friends with someone I thought was mean."

"I won't do it any more. I've been practicing not getting angry."

"That's good. Because you did hurt Petunia, you know. She had a bruise on her shoulder."

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to do it. It won't happen again."

"That's all right, then," said Lily, and they sat under the tree and talked. Russ was very careful not to look into her eyes so that he wouldn't lose control. It was good to have everything in his world back to normal.

Things were better with Toby as well. With full time work, and the extra Eileen brought in, he managed to save a little money, and on October 17, instead of staying home to rest after a hard week at the mine, Toby left for the morning and returned in the early afternoon at the wheel of a battered old black car that chugged and backfired as he drove it along the cobblestones to the house. Since theirs was the last home in Spinner's End, Toby parked the car beside the house.

There was a dog-eared, torn manual with missing pages, some tools, and a kit for patching the inner tubes of the tires. Together, with Eileen watching, Toby and Russ pored over the manual. Toby had considerable experience with the trucks and other machines at the mine, and soon father and son had the hood up and were tinkering with the engine, trying to improve the car's performance. They succeeded well enough that that evening they went for a short drive, and Russ got to feel the wind whipping at his hair through the open windows and the thrill of speeding along at thirty miles per hour.

Fall dissolved into winter, and then into a new year, and soon it was Russ's eleventh birthday.

_Saturday, January 9, 1971 (two days before the full moon)_

For his eleventh birthday, Russ had an actual party. Both his grandmothers came, and he had not only cake, but three presents. The table in the sitting room was covered in a lace cloth supplied by Gra, and flowers from Nana's garden added color and a festival feeling.

The reason for the party was, of course, that if all went well, this was the last time he'd be home on his birthday for the next seven years. Toby wasn't entirely comfortable with the idea of his son attending a wizards' school, but the women dealt with it by reminding him of the major advantages – more time alone with Eileen, one less mouth to feed, and a son who, at the age of seventeen, would be able to keep the car properly tuned with a wave of his wand.

Gra, a lover of all kinds of puzzles, gave Russ a book of logic problems and a book of Sherlock Holmes stories. Nana's witching fees were mostly in kind, but she'd saved coin and bought him his first little cauldron and starting potions kit from a wizarding shop in Liverpool that carried school supplies.

Russ's mum and dad gave him a wonderful gift – trousers, shirt, shoes and a sweater that were only a little bit large, and actually came close to reasonably fitting. He tried them on to show how they looked and was quite the proper, respectable, working class boy. Then he changed back into his normal clothes so that the new ones wouldn't get dirty. They were for his trip to London at the end of August.

"Have you heard there's a new headmaster?" Nana asked after Russ blew out his candles, the cake was sliced, and Mum'd handed out the cups of tea.

"No. You mean old Dippet finally retired? It's about time. When I was there, the deputy headmaster already did most of the work anyway. We thought Dippet spent most of his time asleep." Eileen smiled to herself at the memory.

"Who was the deputy headmaster?"

"One of the Transfiguration teachers – Dumbledore." Eileen handed a slice of cake to Gra, who knew nothing of Hogwarts and wisely kept silent.

"He's the one who's just been made headmaster. Is he any good?" Nana asked.

"He's a shrewd one, that's for certain. Who'd take over as head of Gryffindor if Dumbledore's the headmaster?"

"Did you know a professor named Minerva McGonagall?"

Eileen shook her head. "She must have come after I left in June of fifty-two. I don't recall anyone named McGonagall."

"She's the new deputy as well, so Gryffindor remains firmly in charge. You said they always got the plums, didn't you?"

"It seems like my whole time there, the Head Boy and Head Girl were from Gryffindor house." Eileen turned to Russ, who was playing cribbage with his dad. "The discipline and order in the houses is maintained by the prefects of each house. You have to obey them." She turned back to the other women. "They all, regardless of their houses, are supervised by the Head Boy and Girl, who report to the deputy headmaster. So being Head Boy is a pretty powerful job. They always gave it to someone from Gryffindor because that was Dippet's old house and Dumbledore's, too."

"Sounds like Gryffindor has a lock on the power," said Nana, pouring herself another cup of tea.

"It didn't bother us too much, but the students in Slytherin were ambitious, and they resented being shut out." Eileen smiled across the table at her son. "Slytherin students are clever, and they all think Gryffindor students are strong, but brainless."

"My boy's clever," said Toby, not really paying much attention to the conversation. "He'll go with the clever ones. Y' don't need brawn to get along in the world, you need brains."

Late in the afternoon, they all got into Toby's car, Russ sandwiched in the back between his two grandmothers. First they took Nana to her neat little cottage in the country, then they drove to Gra's village where Toby helped his mother into the house, Gra having a little trouble walking. Then Toby gave Russ a treat by driving around for a while. Since they were on summer time all year, the sun didn't set until a quarter past five, so they got home just as it was getting dark.

It'd been a really nice birthday.

The next day was Sunday, and Russ wandered up to the little thicket of trees where he sometimes met Lily. There he found a piece of paper wedged between two branches. He unfolded it and read: _I came at 2:00 and you weren't here. It was cold but I waited for an hour. What happened? I thought you'd always come Sat. afternoon. Where were you?_

The idea of Lily waiting in the cold for him was terrible. Russ wasn't sure what to do. He'd have to find some way to apologize because he didn't want to lose Lily's friendship due to his own thoughtlessness.

The end of January brought both Lily's birthday on the last Saturday of the month, and the launch of Apollo 14 the following evening. Russ didn't have any money for a present, so he walked the eight miles to Nana's cottage after school on the twenty-ninth and returned long after dark with a little bottle of potion that could revive any drooping flower, plus the instructions for making more. It was fairly simple, and the beauty of potions was that they required no wand magic, so he could brew them without fear of the Ministry.

Apollo 14 returned safely from its mission and splashed down late in the evening of the second Tuesday in February. Lily's parents, amused by her interest in the American space program, let her stay up long enough to get the news that the capsule and astronauts were safe. She beamed her flashlight out towards the moors, so that Russ could sneak back home to his warm bed and a peaceful night.

The very next day, every bank in Britain closed at three-thirty, not to reopen until the following Monday. The era of tuppences and sixpences was over. England had gone decimal, and suddenly everyone was talking about 'pee,' so what used to cost half a crown was now twelve and a half 'pee.' It didn't affect Russ much since he never had any money, but everyone else was confused for a while.

Then in April, Russ became interested in the Russians. The Americans were going to the moon, but the Russians had a space station orbiting the earth, the Salyut 1. The first crew sent up to enter the station had to return to earth because the docking mechanism wouldn't work, but the second crew made it and spent almost all of June working on experiments in space. Russ and Lily sat for their eleven-plus exams, but Russ's thoughts were more with the cosmonauts than on the test. The test didn't mean anything anyway. He wasn't going to one of those schools.

June 30 brought the first tragedy. The three-man crew of the Soyuz 11 died during their return to earth. A faulty valve allowed their air to escape, and the cosmonauts were asphyxiated within minutes. Russ had nightmares for a week, waking up struggling for breath as if something heavy was sitting on his chest.

And then, in the last week of July, the Hogwarts letters came.

Russ got his letter by owl, a majestic brown bird, and treasured the stiff parchment message with its green ink that told him what to bring. Eileen immediately pulled out her old robes and books, and began altering the first to fit Russ and sorting through the second for the ones he would need. The books were old, secondhand even when Eileen had them, but she and Russ agreed he could make notes in the margins of any material that was new since they were published.

Nana sent Nelson with a letter asking if she could pick up anything at the shop in Liverpool, and soon, with his birthday cauldron and his grandfather's wand, Russ had everything he needed. On Saturday the thirty-first, he met Lily under their trees on the river.

"It's so exciting!" Lily squealed, hugging Russ when she saw him. "It was just like you said, everything the way you said it. This woman came to the door, the deputy headmistress, and talked for the longest time with Mum and Dad, and did magic for them right there in the house! You should have seen Petunia's face. She's been teasing me about this for the longest time, and now she has to eat her words because it's all true!"

"What did your mum and dad say?"

"I think they were really shocked, but also relieved. I mean, they've been worried about me and the things I can do, and I think they were happy to find out I wasn't crazy. Petunia's gone all sour. I think she's jealous."

"Let her be jealous. It serves her right for being nasty."

"Don't be mean. Anyway, we're going to London next week because there's this secret place just for witches where we can buy all the things I need for school. Are you going there?"

"Don't have to. I've had all my school things for ages." Russ didn't think it was necessary to tell Lily that they'd been his mother's things.

"Have you ever been to London?"

Russ shook his head. The whole business about going to London to take the Hogwarts train was causing problems in his family. There was no train from Colne that would get them to King's Cross station in time to catch the express, so he and his mother would have to go the day before, but there was no money for lodgings. His mum and dad had been arguing about it since the letter came.

There was something else important to ask Lily. "Are you going to be back from London by next Saturday?"

"Sure. I even have the house to myself all evening. Mum and Dad are taking Petunia out to dinner and a movie in Colne. Sort of to give her some attention since I'm getting so much. Why?"

"There's another splashdown..."

"Again?"

"Apollo 15. Coming back from the moon. Please Lily. What if they die like the Russians? I have to know."

The landing was scheduled for just before ten o'clock in the evening on August seventh. Lily suggested that Russ come for supper so that she could play hostess, but he didn't want his parents to wonder where he was. She settled for dessert and tea. He agreed to arrive around nine, and would leave well before her parents and Petunia got back.

Russ's arrival went according to plan, and he got to Lily's house just as the sun was setting, not having been seen by anyone. In honor of the occasion, he was wearing the new clothes he would take with him to Hogwarts. He felt very proper and dressed up. She let him into the kitchen where she had cake and tea ready, and for fifteen minutes they ate and talked about Hogwarts.

"Would you like to see my house?" Lily asked suddenly. "You hardly got to see anything the last time you were here."

"Sure," Russ replied, having not only the vague impression that refusing would be impolite, but also curiosity about the place where Lily lived. He wasn't as intimidated as he'd been the first time, since this time he had an idea what to expect.

The downstairs had a dining room as well as a living room. The upstairs had a bath and three bedrooms. Russ was immensely impressed that Lily didn't have to share her bedroom with Petunia, though Lily admitted that if they had overnight guests, she did.

Lily's room was robin's egg blue and white. "I wanted paisley," she told Russ proudly, "but Mum wouldn't hear of it." Petunia preferred yellow. It surprised Russ that Petunia's room was more frilly than Lily's. If he'd had to guess, he would have thought the other way around. Each girl had a bed, a desk and chair, a small bookcase and…

"What's that?" Russ asked, pointing to Petunia's desk where a yellow envelope with green writing lay.

"I don't know," said Lily.

"It's a letter from Hogwarts."

"Really? Petunia didn't mention it."

"That's not possible," Russ said, walking to the desk and staring at the envelope. "Muggles don't get Hogwarts letters."

"Maybe it isn't really from Hogwarts," Lily said, and picked the envelope up. It was the same parchment and the same green ink. "I wonder what it says. You don't think Petunia's been accepted to Hogwarts, too, do you?"

"Has she ever shown any magic ability?"

"I never saw any."

"Then she can't go."

Curiosity got the better of Lily, and she opened the envelope. After looking at the letter for a moment, she handed it to Russ. It was from Headmaster Dumbledore, gently explaining that unfortunately only persons with magical talent could attend Hogwarts. He understood Petunia's desire to learn magic with her sister, but it was not possible.

"She wrote to the school," Russ said in surprise. "How could she do that? I always thought muggles couldn't write to them, like there's someone in the postal service that stops the letters."

"Maybe it happened during the postal strike. That lasted forever."

Russ shook his head. "That ended in March. She must've writ to him after you got your letter last week."

"Poor Petunia," Lily sighed. "I guess she is jealous after all. She was on about you and me being freaks, but that could have been after she got the answer to her letter."

"Well let her be jealous. I don't care. I don't want her at Hogwarts. She's never been nice to me."

"Don't be mean, Severus."

"Mean is as mean does. I'm glad she won't be going."

At that moment, they both remembered the Apollo 15 capsule hurtling toward earth, and ran to warm up the television. Because of the recent Russian tragedy, the BBC picked up the image just before a quarter to the hour. Russ saw what was wrong at the same time the announcer did.

"There's only two parachutes open! What happened to the third one?"

All thought of Petunia's letter vanished as, heart in his throat, Russ watched the Endeavour plunge to earth. As it turned out, the third parachute was there just as a precaution, and the capsule was perfectly capable of landing in the ocean with two. Less than a minute after being terrified half out of his mind for the astronauts, Russ was hugging Lily madly in the knowledge that they were safe. Then he slipped out of her house and made his way home.

On August 30, both Nana and Gra came to stay the night in order to see Russ off at the train station in Colne. He was taking a footlocker with his books and a few extra things like changes of underwear, and Gra brought an old, somewhat battered Gladstone bag that had belonged to Wensley Snape in the days when he went to sea. The bag was for carrying Russ's robes and hat so he could change on the train.

It was a Monday night. Toby'd taken the following morning off to drive all of them, Eileen and Russ to the station at Colne, and then Nana and Gra to their homes. He'd be by himself one night, but there was a train Eileen could catch from Euston Station after leaving Russ on the platform at King's Cross that would get her home the evening of the second day, September first. Russ had the feeling his dad was looking forward to that night.

Lily had already left. She, her parents, and Petunia had spent the weekend in London. Russ wouldn't see her until they got to King's Cross Station, and he wouldn't be able to talk to her until the train was on its way to Scotland. After that, though, they no longer had to worry about their parents or Petunia.

That evening, Russ had a thorough wash at the sink upstairs. It was years now since he'd stood in the wash tub in the kitchen, but he still hated the whole process. Nonetheless, tonight he wanted to be especially clean for the trip to London in his new clothes. The worst part was his hair, which he couldn't wash upstairs so as not to get hairs in the drain. No, washing his hair had to be done outside in the area yard, stripped to the waist, while his mother poured water over his head in full view of the neighbors. It was humiliating, but Russ endured it. It was the last time for ten months. For Hogwarts, he'd endure anything.

"What say y' give us a game, eh boy?" Toby said after dinner, and they pulled out the cribbage board and the cards.

"You might let the child visit with us," said Nana primly. "We're the ones who don't see him every day."

"That's why you won't miss him so much as I will," Toby retorted. "'Sides, he can talk while he plays. He ain't no dummy, my son."

Despite the barbs, the evening was good humored and pleasant, and Russ even got the feeling his father and his grandmother enjoyed a bit of sparring. The grandmothers were sharing his room, and Russ spent the night on the old sofa downstairs.

They were up early the next morning to a hearty breakfast and the double checking of all Russ's things. The women fussed over how neat he looked in his new togs, while Toby went out for the twentieth time to run a cloth over the car to be sure it looked nice. The footlocker was loaded into the trunk of the car, then, at last, they were off to Colne.

"Now you remember," Toby said at the train station for the fifth time since he parked the car, "you don't let no one put nothing over. They try, and you give 'em what for."

"Sure, Dad."

They stood in an embarrassed little group on the platform until the train pulled up, and then there were hugs from the grandmothers while Toby watched. Last of them all, he faced his son and solemnly shook hands. "You remember who you are, Russ. Them college puddings can't never put nothing over on a lanky. You don't never forget that."

Eileen and Russ boarded the train and found seats in the nearly empty second class car. Russ had been on trains three times before in his life, once to Blackpool and twice to Manchester, and he knew the whole routine. They had sandwiches for the trip, which would be a long one since the train made every stop on the route. Longer from Lancashire to London than from London to northern Scotland, since the Hogwarts train was an express, Eileen explained.

The train was moving, and they were waving goodbye, and the adventure was truly started.

Eileen spent the trip reviewing with Russ all the things he needed to remember, about guarding his thoughts, about dueling and defending himself, about keeping his things secure, and about hiding from the authorities the fact that he'd been practicing magic, real magic, for some time, in defiance of the law. Keeping secrets wasn't a problem for Russ. He'd been keeping secrets for years.

From Euston station, they went to King's Cross where they checked almost everything they were carrying. Eileen had a special hotel in mind, one she'd stayed in as a student, and they shouldn't have luggage when they showed up there. "There," she said as they left the station. "Across the road." She was pointing to a church, a white church with a classic Georgian portico. "We should be in time for evensong. Then we have to be careful, but if we are it'll be a peaceful night."

Together mother and son crossed Euston Road and entered St. Pancras church.

**Here ends **_**In Principio**_


	6. Chapter 6 – A New World

**A Difference in the Family: The First Year: A New World**

_Wednesday, September 1, 1971 (four days before the full moon)_

"Russ, wake up. Wake up, child. Shh!"

Russ roused himself on the hard wood of the church pew where he'd spent the night, his mother's urgency vibrating in him. "What's happening, Mum?" he whispered.

"Sexton. It must be around six o'clock. Quick. He mustn't see us."

The two slipped off the pew as the lights came on and, making use of the columns and aisles, managed to stay out of sight of the sexton of St. Pancras Church. It was, in fact, six thirty-six on the morning of September 1, 1971, and neither mother nor son was supposed to be in the church at all.

"This way," Eileen hissed, and Russ followed her into a lavatory near the parish hall. There, not turning on any lights for fear of discovery, they made quick ablutions. Then they snuck back into the nave of the church to wait until, as people straggled in for morning prayer, they could slip out into the crisp morning air of London.

Eileen and Russ sat on the steps of the church portico. "You have to show me now," the mother said. "How do we get to the train station?"

Russ stood to get his bearings. At eleven and a half, he was still so thin-boned and small that few would guess him older than seven. His most prominent features were long, lank black hair, stunningly dark eyes, and a nose already predominating in his small, sharp face. No director, casting for a stage or film production of Dickens's _Oliver Twist_ could have passed him up for the part of the Artful Dodger. He had that air of being too old in a body that was too young.

"Euston Road to the right," Russ said. "Then right again and the subway under the car park." He pointed to the northeast. "That way," he said.

"Good boy. Mum's proud of you. They won't lose you, not in the biggest city in the world. Not anywhere."

Together the two turned right and walked to Euston Road, then right again to the underground passageway that took them across the busy street to the area in front of King's Cross Station. Eileen fumbled in her sweater and shawl, and pulled out a little cardboard ticket.

"Give us a moment, Russ," she said. "I got something I have to do."

By this time it was after eight o'clock, and the ticket booths were all open. Eileen left her son by a news vendor and went to a window to argue with a clerk, coming back a few minutes later with a fist full of coins.

"What'd you do, Mum?" Russ asked, eyeing his mother's hand. "Dad didn't give you any money."

"Now you got no reason to tell your Dad about this. He's going to meet me at the station in Colne and no questions. I just won't start from London." She let Russ see the tip of a wooden stick, about ten inches long that protruded from her sleeve.

"You brought the wand? I won't peach. Where're you jumping to?"

"I'll pick up the train in Wolverhampton, and no one the wiser. It'll give us more time together. But now, Master Snape, I'm going to treat you to breakfast. Real English breakfast in a real station restaurant. You never had kippered herring before, did you?"

They got a little table in the station breakfast room, and with the money she got from trading in her train ticket, Eileen treated Russ to bacon, eggs, toast, kippers, and even a cup of coffee. He ate with a healthy appetite, a good sign since he so often suffered from a nervous stomach.

As they ate, mother and son practiced a strange sort of catechism.

"In your classes…"

"I don't know anything. Everything they show me is new."

"They teach you a new spell…"

"I do it wrong the first time, so they don't suspect."

"With the boys in your dormitory…"

"I take the last place, I don't make trouble, I don't make enemies."

"And you never, ever, ever…"

"Let them steal my thoughts."

"Russ, I am going to miss you. Nana'll send you an owl every month. Anything happens, and you tell her."

"Yes, Mum."

After breakfast they wandered through the station, watching the people and reading the covers of the magazines in the kiosks. Eileen bought Russ a snack to eat on the train – "Healthier than the stuff they sell off the sweets trolley, and you don't need sickles to buy it." A little after ten o'clock, she murmured, "There's the first of them."

Russ looked in the direction she nodded. Two families were crossing the station heading for the platforms. They wore peculiar combinations of clothing and colors that made them look like mummers or circus performers. His mother had told him how hard it was for most wizards to blend in with normal people, but he hadn't really seen it before this day.

"We'd better get your things." Eileen took another ticket from her sweater pocket and went with a trolley to 'Left Luggage.' There she picked up the old Gladstone bag and the small footlocker. It had taken a while to convince Toby to give her the money to leave the things, but she'd talked about how hard it would be to run with them if they were caught, and he'd given in.

"This way, Russ, to platform nine." The platform was a perfectly normal train platform, but the show was delightful. Any number of oddly dressed people with luggage trolleys approached the decorative bricked arch between platforms nine and ten, looked around stealthily as if planning a robbery, then scooted through the brick wall. Both Eileen and Russ had a lovely half hour watching them, though Russ was also keeping an eye open for Lily and her family.

"All right," Eileen said finally, "your turn." Sedately the perfectly normal looking pair, she in working class dress, sweater, and shawl, Russ in trousers, shirt, and a sweater, walked to and through the place in the arch. No one noticed them.

On the other side it was another world, almost like stepping a hundred and twenty-five years into the past. A bright red steam locomotive puffed beside the platform, and people in colorful capes and cloaks, no longer out of place, lingered to say last goodbyes to the children they were sending off to school.

Further along, Russ finally spotted Lily. She must have arrived while his mum was getting the luggage. All four of them stood about halfway down the platform, Mr. and Mrs. Evans clearly enjoying watching all the color and display of the wizarding world. Lily and Petunia seemed to be arguing quietly a few yards away. Russ couldn't make any signal to Lily since no one but Petunia was even aware they knew each other. Suddenly shy, Russ huddled by his mother. This was an unknown world his mother was sending him into, and she was sending him alone for the first time in his life. Even Lily's presence couldn't prevent the disturbing sense of insecurity.

"Don't turn scaredy-cat on me now, Russ," Eileen said. "This is my world, the world your dad can't enter. You got to get used to it, too." The platform was emptying as eleven o'clock ticked closer. "Think what your dad would say if you turned tail now. Just remember, as the train gets near Hogsmeade you have to put on the robes. And let the station people take care of your things. Now, get on up."

Russ lugged the bag to the train, almost the last of the students to board. He turned to wave to his mum, but the station attendants had already closed the door. He could see her through the window, but he wasn't sure she could see him. The train lurched, then began to chug from the station. Russ picked up his bag again and made his way along the corridor toward the rear of the train, looking for the second-class cars.

There were no second-class cars. It took a while for Russ to realize this as he passed through car after car of first-class compartments. And every compartment was occupied. There was no place that he could enter without intruding on groups of friends and schoolmates, laughing and talking together, most of them older and all of them bigger than he was.

It took him over half an hour to traverse the entire train. At last he came to the end of the last passenger car and found himself face to face with the baggage compartment. Nowhere in all that long train had there been a place to sit by himself. Nowhere a place where he didn't have to slide open a door and meet the hostile stares of total strangers, eyes all fixed on him.

At that point, two things occurred to Russ. The first was that here, alone by the baggage car, he had a chance to change into his Hogwarts robes in private, and he did so. The second was that Lily must be in one of those first class compartments he'd passed, and he might, if he went back looking through all the compartment windows, find her and be able to sit with her. More slowly now, he retraced his steps, stopping to check every face in the compartments he passed.

Lily was sitting by the far window near the middle of the train, the seat opposite her empty. She was staring at the passing landscape, and Russ had the odd feeling that she'd been crying. Paying no attention to the others in the compartment, Russ opened the door and crossed over, sitting facing her.

Lily barely glanced at him. "I don't want to talk to you."

"Why not?"

"Tuney h…ates me. Because we saw that letter from Dumbledore." It sounded like Lily was going to start crying again.

"So what?" Russ said. He was thoroughly confused. Lily had shown him the house, Lily had opened the letter, Lily had handed it to him. He could see that Lily might be upset with Petunia, or even with herself, but not why she was angry with him.

The comment got Russ a glare, however. Lily clearly blamed him for something, so he must have done something. "So she's my sister!" Lily snapped.

"She's only a…" Russ stopped. There was a mystery here that he didn't understand. It had something to do with being brothers and sisters. Neil and Brian Philips were always fighting, yet Brian bullied people Neil didn't like. Russ didn't know Petunia very well, but every time he'd seen her, she was bossing Lily around or arguing with her. Lily was nevertheless always on Petunia's side. In any case, where they were going, he'd never have to worry about muggles again. A sudden loud laugh from one of the boys sharing the compartment reminded him, too, that he shouldn't go around mentioning that Lily was muggle-born. Not until he got his bearings and knew the lay of the land.

Deciding Lily just needed cheering up, Russ said happily, "But we're going! This is it! We're off to Hogwarts!" Lily wiped her eyes and gave him a little smile. His stab at taking her mind off Petunia was working. Now Russ was concentrating on the future, on a time approaching with the speed of the train they were riding, a time when he'd always have someone to talk to without having to hide his friendship from everyone. He returned Lily's smile. "You'd better be in Slytherin," he told her, knowing that to be his destiny as well.

Their conversation was interrupted by a sneering voice. "Slytherin?" said one of the boys, curling his lip and looking arrogantly down his nose at Russ. He turned to his companion. "Who wants to be in Slytherin? I think I'd leave, wouldn't you?"

The other boy appeared equally arrogant, stretched out across two seats as if he owned the whole compartment by right of birth. His demeanor was identical to that of Brian Philips. "My whole family have been in Slytherin," he said.

Russ tried to ignore them, but he was suddenly seized with a sense of horror that he might have to live in the same place as this boy, and for the first time he thought about the implications of everything his mother had told him of dormitories.

The two boys ignored him as well. "Blimey, and I thought you seemed all right!" the first boy said.

"Maybe I'll break the tradition," the other replied with a big smile. "Where are you heading, if you've got the choice?"

The first boy posed, like a man with a sword. "'Gryffindor, where dwell the brave at heart!' Like my dad." Russ sniffed, and the boy rounded on him. "Got a problem with that?"

There was menace in the boy's attitude, and Russ began to shut down. "No," he replied. "If you'd rather be brawny than brainy…"

The slouching boy joined in. "Where're you hoping to go, seeing as you're neither," he said, provoking the other boy to laughter.

Lily stood up, her face set and angry. "Come on, Severus," she said with forced calm, "let's find another compartment."

Both boys mocked Lily, and the Gryffindor boy stuck out his foot to trip Russ as he passed. "See ya, Snivellus!" the sloucher called as Lily slammed the compartment door shut.

"What unpleasant people!" Lily exclaimed as the two of them moved through the train. "I thought you said Hogwarts would be a nice place."

"All except… Gryffindor," Russ said. "My mum told me that… Gryffindor students always looked… down on Hufflepuffs."

Lily paused and looked at Russ carefully. "They really bothered you, didn't they? You're stammering again." She waited, but Russ didn't reply. "Okay, Severus, what's a Hufflepuff?" she continued.

"There're four… houses. Slytherin, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, and… Gryffindor. They put this hat on your… head, and it tells everyone which… house you go into. That's where you live."

"So why are you going to Slytherin if your mum went to Hufflepuff?"

"My grandmother did this star chart for me, and it… said I'd go to Slytherin."

"Well," Lily said, "at least it's better than Gryffindor."

"Do you want to find another compartment?" Russ felt that if Lily was with him, he wouldn't be as shy about entering one of them.

"No. Is there any place else we can sit?"

Russ led Lily back to the space between the last passenger compartment and the baggage car, where they settled themselves onto the floor of the train. Leaning back against a panel, feet drawn up and arms around their knees, they managed to relax in the quiet and complete privacy of the little out-of-the-way nook. There they chatted, ate their food, and watched the passing scenery – and generally enjoyed the rest of the trip to Hogwarts.

It was getting dark when Russ and Lily were startled by a voice over a loudspeaker telling the students that they'd be arriving in five minutes and to leave their luggage on the train. Quickly Lily ran back to the compartment to get her robes and returned a few minutes later looking upset, though she refused to tell Russ what happened when she reencountered the two unpleasant boys. Russ stood guard with his back to Lily while she changed into robes. The train was slowing down.

Students were in the corridor, straining for a glimpse of the school, a glimpse that was denied them as the train braked to a crawl and then stopped in a tiny rural station with only one platform. Most of them seemed to know where they were going, and Russ and Lily let them go first, hanging back unobserved so that they could observe the others. They left their bags in a compartment that was now empty except for the luggage.

When they stepped from the train, students milled around them, a wall of black that they couldn't see around or through, but to their right a booming voice was calling, "First years! This way, first years! Get together over here 'n follow me!"

Russ and Lily glanced at each other, then followed the voice, and soon most of the students were behind them as they tagged after the other first years and the great voice.

It was dark, the sun having set and the moon not yet risen. The line of students had entered a forest, for Russ could both hear and smell the pine trees, and noted the occasional skitter of some tiny creature disturbed by the passage of a horde of children. The path began to slant downward, and the footing was uncertain, forcing Russ to concentrate to keep up with the others and at the same time keep from falling. One good thing was that being in the rear and now slightly above the others, he could see that the one leading them had a lantern, and the small light bobbing far down the hill helped him get his bearings. He walked in front of Lily, and she held his hand to steady herself on the path.

Then there was a turn and the path opened onto the beach around a large lake, but Russ didn't notice the lake much. Still a ways up the hill, he could see over the heads of those in front, and what he saw made him stop, mouth open in wonder.

It was a great castle set high on a cliff on the other side of the lake, and every window blazed with light in the darkness around it. Russ had never seen anything so beautiful in all his short life. Beside him, Lily whispered, "Oh, how marvelous. You were right; this is wonderful."

He would have stayed there watching that castle all night long, but the voice was once again booming, "Into the boats now, four t' a boat. Everybody into a boat. We don't want t' be late."

Russ then saw the owner of the voice, a giant of a man with a great beard and massive frame. Russ didn't come to much past his knee. Beyond the monstrous figure were the boats, all of them occupied as the train compartments had been occupied. Russ's eyes flickered from the huge man to the forbidding boats, to the last students clambering into them, and didn't know what to do.

The monster knew what to do. "Come on, lass. Come on lad. Don't be shy. Here's a spot for ya." He guided Lily to a boat with three girls already in it, then swept Russ up in a great arm and placed him surprisingly gently into the last empty place in the last boat. The other students never noticed; his companions didn't even turn to look at him. They were all staring at the castle, and Russ was relieved that things so far were going relatively well.

The boats glided across the water, propelled by magic, into a cave under the castle's cliff. Inside was a grotto where the boats docked to allow the students to disembark. Once again Russ and Lily brought up the rear, climbing in the dark up a narrow rock passage to the top of the cliff. At the entrance to the castle, they were met by a tall, dark-haired witch who peered at them over wire glasses.

"The first years, Professor McGonagall," the monster said, and the group of students entered Hogwarts Castle.

They were ushered into a sort of antechamber where Professor McGonagall explained to them about the houses they were to be sorted into. Russ paid polite attention, but there was nothing new in what she said. It was basically exactly what he'd told Lily on the train.

Then it was time, and the first years filed out of the antechamber into the Great Hall, open to the night sky and aflame with torches, pulsing with the laughter and chatter of nearly two hundred fifty students, laughter and chatter that was stilled as the first years entered. Russ wasn't tall enough to see much, but he could feel the stares, and it unnerved him to be in the center of the circle of eyes.

In front of the teacher's table, the first years were arranged with the short ones in front and the tall ones in back so, though he wasn't happy being in front, Russ was finally able to see. There on the dais was Professor McGonagall holding a battered old wizard's hat. Beside her was a stool. "When I announce your name, come forward and sit on the stool," she said, and then called, "Adams, Clarissa."

The role call went slowly, for sometimes the hat had to think before pronouncing 'Gryffindor!' or 'Ravenclaw!', but it gave Russ time to observe the other students. He particularly listened for the boys being sorted into Slytherin house, for they would most likely be his dormitory mates.

The nasty, slouching boy from the train responded to the name 'Black, Sirius,' and Russ held his breath. The Hat cried out "Gryffindor!" and Russ was able to breathe again.

'Edison, Mitchell' was the first Slytherin boy sorted, then it was the turn of 'Evans, Lily,' and Russ again held his breath. To his horror and intense disappointment, the Hat didn't hesitate at all before calling "Gryffindor!" Russ moaned slightly, and kept his eyes on Lily as she joined the Gryffindor table. She looked back at him with a wan smile then, forced to sit close to 'Black, Sirius', she firmly turned her back on him.

Now, suddenly, Russ felt that he could even put up with 'Black, Sirius' if he could just be sorted into Gryffindor house. But of course, that was not in the stars. The names of the Gryffindor boys became as important to him as the names of the Slytherin boys. One Gryffindor girl had also been sorted before Lily, but Russ didn't remember her name. He'd have to find out, though, because she was one of Lily's dormitory mates. Then came: 'Jones, Calpurnia' – Gryffindor; 'Lupin, Remus' – Gryffindor; 'Macdonald, Mary' – Gryffindor; 'Mulciber, Aloysius' – Slytherin; 'Pettigrew, Peter' – Gryffindor; the sneering one from the train, 'Potter, James' – Gryffindor; 'Rosier, Evan' – Slytherin...

And then – "Snape, Severus."

Russ stepped forward, climbing awkwardly onto the sorting stool, and felt the Hat slide onto his head.

_Danger!_ Tentacles were thrusting into his mind – horrid, probing things sucking at the thoughts he kept locked away! Instantly Russ shut down, the doors in his brain slamming and bolting, shielding his thoughts from the probe. Adrenaline poured into his system to battle the threat, and Russ instinctively groped for the wand he usually kept in his sleeve, the wand that at this moment was still in his Gladstone bag. But the probing tentacles had already stopped, baffled by the barriers.

The Sorting Hat spoke. "Is there no student here? I cannot sort someone who does not exist. Where is the student?" It paused. "Yes, here he is. Here is the wall he builds against me. But where is the student behind the wall? Does he hold his secrets so close? A boy who hides his true self so completely can only be... SLYTHERIN!"

Utterly mortified, Russ slipped off the stool. Not only was he not with Lily, the Hat had told everyone there was no student there to sort. Then he noticed that the Slytherin table was clapping politely and that the expressions of the students around him hadn't changed. _They didn't hear_, he thought. _The hat spoke to me, but not to them._ It was small, but it was a comfort.

Quietly Russ made his way to the section of the Slytherin table where the first years sat, close to the teachers. There he joined the three boys who'd already been sorted. A tall, blond, older student wearing a badge came over to congratulate him. A few minutes later, 'Wilkes, Aaron' was sorted into Slytherin, too, and they were five. 'Vance, Sally' and 'Wintergreen, Paladin' were in Gryffindor.

Aaron Wilkes sat next to Severus, and the other three Slytherin boys sat opposite. "What's your name again?" a big boy with dark hair asked him.

"Severus," Russ replied, barely looking up. "Severus… Snape."

"I'm Aloysius Mulciber. You play Quidditch?"

Russ shook his head. His mother had mentioned Quidditch to him, but he'd never been on a broom. "I'm not… good at things like… that," was all he said.

"I play Quidditch at home," said Aaron. "I'm Aaron Wilkes. That's my cousin Evan Rosier, and you are…?" He was speaking to a tall, sturdy blond boy.

"Mitchell Edison. I play Quidditch, too. I'm a pretty good chaser."

"Great!" Aloysius said. "I'm better as a beater. If either of you is a good seeker or a keeper, we've got the start of a team!"

At that point announcements were made by the Headmaster about what was not permitted, and the welcoming feast began. Suddenly the table was loaded with all kinds of things to eat, many of which Russ had never seen before. His four classmates dug in with fervor. Russ examined the fare carefully. He was nervous, and therefore not hungry. He took a piece of chicken and a chunk of bread. Around him, as if on cue, silvery ghosts began to flit.

This wasn't at all daunting, since Eileen had told Russ all about the ghosts. There were around twenty of them, and four were the patrons of the four houses. Slytherin's ghost was the Bloody Baron, a stern, taciturn spirit adorned with gouts of spectral blood. After introducing themselves, the phantoms were considerate and allowed the students to eat undisturbed.

Russ had been placed so his back was to the rest of the hall and the Gryffindor table on the far side of the room. He wanted to glance back and see how Lily was dealing with the ghosts, but he didn't dare.

Aloysius, Mitchell, Aaron, and Evan talked of nothing but Quidditch for the entire feast. They discussed the national teams, described games they watched, and bragged of their own abilities. Russ couldn't even follow the conversation since he didn't know how the game was played. At that moment, he didn't care. He wished the feast were over so that they could go to bed. Maybe on the way out he could speak to Lily.

Dessert came, and Russ tried a pastry, but it was so much sweeter than anything he was used to that he knew if he ate it he'd be sick. It seemed like an eternity before the prefects were told to escort the first years to their houses.

The seventy students of Slytherin house left the Great Hall first. Russ was finally able to look over at Lily, and she raised a hand and gave a tiny wave. He did the same and then with the others trooped across the entrance hall to the stairs leading to the dungeon level. In fact, they went down several levels until Russ thought they must be around the same depth as the boat grotto. They stopped in front of a blank wall.

"_Dens Serpentis,"_ one of the prefects said, and the wall slid open to reveal another flight of stairs leading down into a large common room with green lamps and sea-green walls. Russ didn't ask, but he had the feeling they were under the lake. The new students were shown the lavatories and then taken to their dormitories, which split off a long corridor, boys on the right and girls on the left.

A few minutes later, they were called back into the common room. The tall, blond prefect who'd greeted Russ after his sorting rose to address all the Slytherin students.

"This is going to be brief because we're all tired and want to go to bed," he said with a smooth voice that held the hint of a drawl. "You all know me. For the benefit of the first years, my name is Lucius Malfoy, and I'm the senior male prefect of the house. Sarah Urquhart is the senior female prefect. Sixth year prefects are Brutus Gamp and Victoria Vaisey, and fifth year are Rabastan Lestrange and Beatrice Bole. Prefects are in charge of discipline in the house, and you obey a prefect the way you obey a teacher."

Malfoy glanced around at the students. "You first years should know that we have a new headmaster, Albus Dumbledore. He used to teach Transfiguration, and he was the deputy headmaster, but he's been the one really in charge for years, ever since the last headmaster, Dippet, started getting too old to do the job. Dumbledore favors Gryffindor, always has. He was subtle about it while Dippet was still nominally in charge, but now he's showing his true colors.

"The most powerful students in the school are the head boy and girl. They're in charge of schoolwide discipline and supervise all the prefects. They also represent the students to the faculty when there are problems. Normally the job is divided between a boy and a girl of different houses. Dumbledore has appointed a Gryffindor both as head boy and as head girl, shutting out all three of the other houses. The new Head Boy is Fabian Prewett, and the new Head Girl is Cindy McLaggen."

A murmur of discontent swept through the Slytherin students at this news. It appeared that neither of the two was popular.

Malfoy held up a hand for quiet. "I want to caution you all. They'll be looking for ways to deduct points from Slytherin house and to put Slytherin students on detention. And from what we saw of Dumbledore last year, he'll back them all the way. Everybody has to be on his guard. We can't give them excuses for striking at us. That's all. You all need to get to sleep." With that the students left the common room, most of them talking excitedly. The first years were quieter, not understanding exactly what the speech had been about.

Back in the dormitory, the five new boys found their things laid out on chairs next to their beds. Each bed also had a night stand by the head and a storage chest at the foot. Russ's bed was near the door. Aaron went to his bed on the far side of the room from the door and looked it over. Then he went to Russ.

"I prefer the bed near the door. What say we switch?"

_Don't make trouble. Don't make enemies._ "All right," Russ said. "Which one do… I take?"

"The one on the far side of the room. Opposite the fireplace."

Russ moved his things. It wasn't hard to do as he had so few of them. Then he sat on the bed and examined his new school uniform. It was a straight, black, belted medieval gown with green and silver embroidery on collar and cuffs, the Slytherin colors. The cap was a green and silver biretta. Russ took off his black academic robe and laid it over the chair, too, then did the same with the cloak from his bag. His mum hadn't needed to alter it for him, and it still bore the black and yellow badger shield from her own school days.

"What's that? Hufflepuff?" Evan snorted.

"My mother was… in Hufflepuff." He'd have to remove the Hufflepuff badge.

"That explains it," Mitchell said. "I didn't think I'd heard of anyone named Snape in Slytherin. But you're Slytherin now."

"Yes," said Russ quietly. He noticed that the bed had curtains, and he pulled them so that he could undress in privacy, which caused some amusement among the other boys. Then all five of them went to bed.

Russ had never before slept in a room with other people or in a room with no windows, where you couldn't look out and see the moon and the stars. When the lights were out, it was pitch black. In addition, Aloysius snored. It was a while before Russ was able to fall asleep. Instead, he stared blindly up into the darkness at the invisible canopy of his bed, wondering what Lily was doing. He had so little in common with his four dorm mates that he couldn't imagine being friends with them. It was a good thing he already had a friend. That way he wouldn't have to worry about what the others thought of him. All he had to do was stay out of trouble.

_Thursday, September 2, 1971_

Russ woke early the next morning, his whole life with his father making him sensitive to any change in the night. Aware at once of his surroundings, he was surprised to note that the room had grown perceptibly less dark. Even without windows, it seemed that the light of dawn was allowed to filter into Slytherin house through the water of the lake. The light had a soft greenish tint to it.

Glancing over at his clothes, Russ saw that they'd changed. He sat up, feet dangling off the side of the bed away from the others, and examined his robes. They were the same, except bands of embroidered green and silver had been added to his academic robe, down the front and banding the wide sleeves, and the Hufflepuff badge had been replaced by the Slytherin snake. Russ had no idea how this had happened except by a magic spell. He was worried that performing magic in the room hadn't wakened him. It meant he wasn't safe.

There was an envelope on the night stand. Opening it, Russ found the Hufflepuff badge. It made him feel better to think he still had his mother's insignia, and he slipped the envelope with its contents into the drawer of the stand. Then he stood up.

Everyone else was sleeping soundly. It was the perfect time to be up and about. Gathering his new robes, Russ padded barefoot out of the dormitory to the lavatory where, completely by himself, he washed and got dressed. There was a mirror there, but he didn't look at it until after he was done.

There in the mirror was a tiny, slender wizard, the green and silver biretta holding his long black hair neatly in place around his small, pale features, the black belted gown and flowing robe giving him an almost priest-like appearance. For the first time in his life, Russ was pleased with the way he looked. The robes suited him.

He went back to his dormitory and took some care putting his things into the storage chest. There wasn't much. Just the clothes he'd worn the day before, another pair of trousers and another shirt, some underwear, toothbrush and comb, his books, and the cloak.

Then he sat on the bed with his History of Magic book and waited for the others to wake up.

That didn't happen until the wake-up bells rang at six-thirty. Russ's four roommates staggered out of bed and to the boys' lavatory, then returned and transformed the whole business of dressing into a pillow fight initiated by Aaron and Evan. After that they trooped off, Russ with them, to the Great Hall for breakfast. On the way out, they were informed that the password had been changed to _Toujours pur_ by Sarah Urquhart.

Once in the Great Hall, Russ stayed with the other first year boys at the Slytherin table since he wasn't sure whether anything else he did might be a mistake. The talk was about broomsticks, a subject Russ knew nothing about, and so he was quiet, munching on a piece of toast and drinking water. The others poured themselves a drink that looked a bit like orange juice, but when Russ tried it, it tasted strange, so he didn't take any more.

While he half listened to the chatter of the other boys, Russ looked around the Hall. It was very different from the night before in that the students didn't seem to feel as if they had to sit in a particular place. Some came in groups, others individually, a couple were reading books, and clearly many of them were still in their dormitories getting dressed and ready for the day.

Lily was at the Gryffindor table, and Russ raised his hand just below shoulder height when he caught her eye. She waggled her hand in return, then went back to eating breakfast with the little group of girls that were her dorm mates. Russ was happy that she seemed so happy, but wished he was with her instead of where he was.

A little later a short, fat professor with thinning hair came by, greeting many of the Slytherin students by name and handing out schedules. The older students had just their regular classes for the semester, while the first years had orientation in the morning and started their first classes in the afternoon.

Back in Slytherin house, Russ went to his storage chest for his toothbrush, at which point he found Aaron right behind him.

"So, Hufflepuff, what house was your father in?"

Russ didn't look at him, not wanting eye contact. Instead he carefully closed and latched the chest. "He didn't… go to Hogwarts," was all he said.

"You talk funny. Where're you from?"

"Lancashire."

"Northern boy. So where did your father go to school?"

"Just an… ordinary school."

The momentary silence was full of danger. Then Aaron sneered, "You mean a muggle school? Hey, Evan, I think we've got ourselves a half-breed in Slytherin house."

Russ bristled. "I'm a… half-blood, not a dog."

"Half-bloods are dogs. What's that word, Evan?"

"Mongrel."

"Yeah, one of those."

"Come on," said Mitchell from the other side of the room, "lay off, why don't you. He didn't do anything to you."

Aaron whipped around. "Are you a half-breed, too? Or just a muggle-lover?" he turned back to Russ, "Like his mom."

A prefect stuck his head in the doorway. "Into the common room, first years. Head of house is here."

The argument dropped as the five boys filed from the room, Aaron pushing his way first. Russ, of course, was the last one out and stayed to the rear of the assembled house where he couldn't see and had trouble hearing.

The fat professor with thinning hair was Professor Slughorn, potions teacher and head of Slytherin house. He gave what was clearly the same speech he gave every year about doing their best and making Slytherin proud. Then he sent all but the first years off to their classes.

"Let's see, who do we have this year?" Slughorn muttered as he sorted through his papers. "Ah, yes. Wilhelmina Alderton?"

"Here, sir," said a plump blonde.

"Such a sweet girl. Your father works for the _Daily Prophet_, doesn't he? Mitchell Edison?"

"Here, sir," said Mitchell.

"Your uncle was one of my students many years ago. He's the Seeker for the Chudley Cannons now, I believe. Your mother was a lovely girl, truly beautiful. I remember her well. Doris Gamp? So nice to see the old families continuing in Slytherin. Claudia Higgs? Your mother went in the Department of Law Enforcement, no? Sonya MacFusty? Are you one of the Hebridean MacFustys? Excellent family. Aloysius Mulciber? I seem to recall your grandfather made a fortune in South American mines. Evan Rosier? I hear your father is making quite a stir in the world these days. Severus Snape? Yes. Maladicta Trimble? Isn't your uncle the one who wrote our Dark Arts text? I thought I recognized the name. And Aaron Wilkes, another family expanding its influence, you must be proud. Now students, if you will follow those two prefects, they'll give you a tour of the school. I'll be talking to each of you personally this evening after dinner."

With that, Professor Slughorn left.

The fifth year prefects started out by showing the first years how not to get lost in the dungeons. It was like a three-dimensional labyrinth. The most sensible thing to do was learn the way in and the way out and never deviate from it. Russ was beginning to find the sheer size of Hogwarts frightening.

Back in the upper levels of the dungeons, the prefects showed them the Potions room and the door to Slughorn's office. Then they went into the entrance hall. "You know where the Great Hall is. Down that way are a bunch of classrooms we seldom use except as study areas. On the other side of the staircase is the passage to the kitchens and Hufflepuff house (Aaron nudged Evan at this information), and down that way are lavatories and more staircases to the upper floors."

It turned out that Hogwarts had seven floors above the ground area and a large number of towers. Each floor was laid out differently, and the corridors didn't seem to intersect at right angles. Some of the staircases went in different directions on odd days of the week. By the time orientation was over, Russ was sure of only two things: the nurse was on the first floor, and the library was on the fourth. Beyond that, he was more lost than when he'd started.

By this time the morning classes had ended, and the school was going to lunch. Russ stood in the back of the Great Hall and observed the freewheeling way students came and went, just as they did at breakfast. Lily wasn't there. _It would be easier_, he thought, _if I just took a sandwich and ate in the dormitory. That way I wouldn't have to sit with the others._

There were a variety of sandwiches, and Russ took one that looked like chicken. He went down the dungeon steps and puzzled his way slowly through the twists, turns, and staircases that led to Slytherin house. On the second try he pronounced _Toujours pur_ correctly and entered, going straight to the dormitory.

Aaron and Evan had his chest open and were looking through his things.

"That's… mine," said Russ from the doorway.

"Hufflepuffs have to pay a fine if they want to stay in Slytherin," said Aaron, and Russ realized they were looking for money.

"It's mine," Russ repeated.

"Leave it, Aaron," said Evan. "I bet he doesn't have anything to pay a fine with. Look at this junk. Muggle boy doesn't have anything anyone would want anyway. Let's go to lunch."

"Sure," said Aaron, letting the chest lid fall with a bang. "I'm hungry. And don't you get any ideas about looking at my things or I'll wipe the floor with that big muggle nose of yours."

Russ waited until they were gone, then opened the chest and checked his things. Everything was there, though it had been tossed about untidily. He found his wand and began to murmur a guarding spell. The cousins would have a much harder time opening that chest in the future.

Having done that, Russ sat on his bed eating his sandwich and studying for his first class that afternoon, Herbology, which was followed by History of Magic. Well before one o'clock, when the Herbology class started, Russ put an additional locking charm on the chest and left the dormitory to try to find the Herbology lecture room.

The Herbology lecture classroom was on the second floor, where its windows had a view of the greenhouse complex. Russ was the first Slytherin student into the room, though there were already several Ravenclaw students ahead of him. He took a seat at a desk towards the back.

By one o'clock, all the students were there and the Herbology professor came in. The other Slytherin students had said nothing to Russ, though Mitchell had nodded.

"Well, well," he said. "Fresh new faces. I am Professor Mullein. First, I have to call your names from the register, and then we can get started." Which he proceeded to do without commentary, to Russ's great relief.

"Good. Administrative business over. Now, let's see what you already know. Who can tell me three important things that all plants need?" No one raised their hand. Mullein prompted them gently, "Now think, what do you have to give to plants?"

Russ was trying to obey his mother's instructions, but it was hard. _I know I'm suppose to let them think I have no experience, but Mum was really only worried about magic. This isn't magic, it's gardening. Timidly he raised his hand._

"Yes, you young man in the back. Remind me of your name, please."

"Severus Snape, sir."

"And what three things would you guess, Master Snape?"

"Soil, water, and sunlight."

"Excellent! Thank you. And a point to Slytherin for your answer." Mullein paused. "Your face is familiar. Are you by chance Eileen Prince's son?"

"Yes, sir."

"A good Herbology student, too, your mother. That would make you Constantina Prince's grandson. A classic witch of the old tradition. Does wonders with herbs and potions. Now, as Master Snape has told us, plants need soil, water, and sunshine. Why is that? Because unlike us poor humans or members of the animal world, plants can make their own food. And they do it with air, water, and sunshine."

The first class was basically a lesson, minus chemical equations, on what muggles would call photosynthesis. It was meant to impress on the young, as yet unschooled minds, the importance of learning exactly how much water and sunlight, and what kind of soil, each plant needed. Russ already knew that each plant had its own requirements, but he'd never learned the technical reasons why before. He enjoyed the lesson thoroughly and jotted notes in his Herbology textbook.

It turned out that most of their lessons were with the Ravenclaw students. Their other class Thursday afternoons was History of Magic, and all twenty students walked together from the second to the first floor where Professor Binns's class was.

Professor Binns was a ghost. Like Professor Mullein, he had a register of the students in the class and read it out to responses of 'Here, sir' from all, but that would be the last time that year that he got their names right. This was apparently because he'd not been able to learn any new information since the day he died. He continued forward, perennially locked in 1922.

Binns started right away with lectures – it was the only teaching style he knew. And he started from the beginning with 30,000 year old Cro Magnon amulets and grave goods. Russ was glad then that he'd spent so much time reading the text in August.

Here again, Russ's quill was busy scratching small cramped notes in the margins of his books and on scraps of parchment that he tucked between the pages. Professor Binns supplemented the book with lots of tidbits of history and sociology that the book didn't contain, but Russ only knew that because he'd read ahead. He didn't notice that the other boys kept glancing at him as if a diligent student was outside their frame of reference.

Mitchell walked beside Russ as the Slytherin students returned to their house to rest before dinner. "He knows your grandmother," he said after several minutes. "Mullein, I mean."

"He seems to… know of her. I never heard… her mention him."

"Didn't she go to school here?"

"My mother was… the first Hogwarts student in… the family."

"Oh. You took a lot of notes that last class."

"He said things I… wanted to remember."

"Yeah."

They entered the dormitory together. Aaron was standing by Russ's bed trying to open the chest. Every time he yanked on the lid, the chest jumped forward and tried to crush his toes. So far Aaron had escaped, but he was so determined to force the chest that crushed toes seemed inevitable. "What did you do to this thing?" he yelled at Russ as soon as he noticed Russ's presence.

Russ thought of his mother and her warnings about not making enemies, but that was something that had started when Nana had shown her the astrology charts. There were older lessons, and some enemies come ready-made. _Never let them see you're afraid. It's like blood to wolves._ His wand, kept in a special loop up the right sleeve of his robe, was ready if he needed it. The few open places in his brain were shutting down.

"I locked it," Russ replied to Aaron's question.

"You're going to open it." Aaron advanced on Russ, his hands balled into fists.

Mitchell stepped to one side, as if hoping the fight would be interesting.

"It's more fun watching you try," said Russ quietly.

Aaron paused, his eyes narrowing in reassessment, then he reached into the pocket of his robe. Russ didn't move a muscle, but his right hand now also held a wand, concealed by the loose folds of his own robe.

Turning slowly, Aaron pointed his wand at the chest and said, _"Alohomora!"_ Replacing the wand, he grinned at Russ. "Now we'll see," he said.

He went back to the chest and pulled at the lid. It wouldn't open, but the chest attacked him again.

"If I'd known you were still just on _Standard Book of Spells, Grade One_," said Russ, "I wouldn't have wasted the effort."

Aaron pulled out his wand again, but it was clear he didn't know any other opening spells. He faced Russ, angry and frustrated, only to find that Russ's wand was pointing at him. He glared at both Russ and Mitchell, then stomped past them out of the room muttering, "Stupid half-breed," as he passed.

"That was pretty cool," Mitchell said. He looked down at Russ's right hand, but the wand had disappeared. "How'd you do that?"

Russ looked Mitchell in the eyes, his own as black as jet, impenetrable. "Do what?" he said, and went over to his bed where he sat facing the wall, trying to wind down and reopen some of the doors in his mind, a much more difficult task than closing them.

Mitchell shrugged and threw himself on his bed. "If I fall asleep, wake me for dinner," he said.

"Sure," Russ answered.

Dinner was more formal than breakfast and lunch, the whole school assembling in the Great Hall and filling the tables. Mitchell, who seemed to be perpetually hungry, left the dormitory before Russ. None of the others had come in, and Russ assumed that Aaron and Evan were together, probably with Aloysius.

Walking into the Great Hall at exactly dinner time, Russ noted that Aaron was next to Evan, but that Mitchell and Aloysius were together at a different part of the table. There was no room at the end of the table near the door, but there were several spaces along the sides. Russ walked to a section where there was an empty bench, ready to move if someone said it was taken. No one said anything, and he relaxed and looked at the food.

Over at the Gryffindor table, Lily smiled at him. She looked tired, and he reasoned that she, too, had had a busy day. Neither made any attempt to communicate. It was as if their friendship was as much a secret here as it had been in Lancashire.

That evening, back in the dormitory, Russ sat in bed and studied. He felt like he needed to find another place for that, but there were just too many new things to get used to. At home there were just him and his parents, and Lily on the odd Saturdays when she could get away. Russ was used to wide, empty, rolling moors, and the quiet back streets of a small town in a mine and mill district. And to hours and hours of being alone.

Now he was almost never alone. The school was all heavy stone pressing around him and a maze of corridors where you couldn't see the sky to get your bearings. Slytherin house didn't even have windows. The common room was crowded and noisy. The classrooms were regimented rows of desks. Russ began to doze.

Suddenly, the other boys were racing into the dormitory room, opening chests and pulling out books. Russ was wide awake immediately. He'd forgotten it was Thursday night and they had Astronomy. Together the five boys and five girls raced up out of the dungeons, running into ten Hufflepuff students on the main staircase who were going in the same direction. At least with the whole group of them together, it would be hard to get lost.

The Astronomy lecture room was on the seventh floor, and the children were all out of breath by the time they got there. Professor Sinistra, a rather calm lady with gray hair, was already waiting. "Good," she said, "you didn't forget. They sometimes do for the first lesson." She called the names on the register, then told them that this first class would be short since they'd had no preparatory lectures on what they were supposed to be looking at. This evening, they would just familiarize themselves with the location of the tower and the compass points.

Russ followed the rest up the long spiral stair of the Astronomy Tower and onto its broad, flat roof. The air was cool and clean, and it was dark enough, for though the moon was nearing full, it took a couple of hours to rise above the surrounding mountains. Looking up, Russ drew in a deep, satisfied breath, for arched above him from horizon to horizon was the vast canopy of the night sky, glittering with millions of stars.

The next morning, Friday, Russ had Defense against the Dark Arts and Transfiguration with Ravenclaw. Dark Arts was the only class where the Slytherin students didn't share the classroom with another house. Professor Wildacre was new and just getting used to the curriculum, so after calling the names on the register she set the students to memorizing the definition of Dark Arts and the five classes of dark spells (Unforgivable Curses, Curses against the Mind, Curses against the Body, Hexes, and Jinxes). It was quite dull and pointless, especially since Russ was perfectly aware that any spell could be considered a dark one if it was used in the wrong way.

Professor McGonagall in Transfiguration was more interesting, especially since school rumor had it that she was secretly an animagus. It was fun to sit there quietly and wonder what sort of animal she might transfigure herself into, while she was demonstrating how to turn a mouse into mustache wax. _I wonder what happens to your mustache after the mouse is transformed back into itself. Do you have mouse guts all over your face?_ Transfiguration was the only subject that was new to Russ. His mother hadn't been good at it, and had never taught him. It was the only place so far where Russ felt like he was really learning something.

In the afternoon they had Charms with Ravenclaw and the first Astronomy lecture period. Russ's delight at finding someone else in the school as small as he was didn't last long, for Aaron and Evan started a whispered speculation as to whether there wasn't more than one part-goblin in the school. Being thought related to Professor Flitwick was definitely a minus. It was in this class that Russ really had to work hard at pretending he didn't know anything. Spells were just too easy for him.

Astronomy was like Herbology – it didn't deal with magic. Here was a place where Russ's muggle knowledge could shine. His familiarity with the Apollo program and understanding of satellites and orbits stood him in good stead. The night sky was a friend, and terms like 'retrograde movement' were old, familiar vocabulary.

When Russ returned to Slytherin house after dinner in the Great Hall, there was a subtle change in its mood. People noticed him, watched him, and the feeling wasn't friendly. No one said anything, but Russ was sure Aaron had mentioned he was a half-blood. He slipped as quickly as possible through the common room and into his dormitory, not going out again until most of the rest had gone to bed, when the lavatory area was empty and he could wash and brush his teeth in peace.

The following day was Saturday. Russ got to the Great Hall early, and then dawdled over his breakfast. Lily came in fifteen minutes after he did, and though they exchanged glances, neither spoke nor even signaled each other. Russ was nervous about letting the other Slytherin students know he had a Gryffindor friend, and it appeared Lily felt the same. Lily ate quickly, then said something to the girl sitting next to her, rose, and walked out of the Great Hall. A moment later, Russ followed her.

Lily was standing next to the great oak doors leading outside. As soon as she saw Russ, she slipped out the doors. Russ crossed the entrance hall and started down the passage to Slytherin house, then seemed to change his mind, turned, and went outside, too. It was like being back in Lancashire, sneaking through the streets and around the moors so that neither his family nor hers would ever see them together.

Russ saw Lily near the cliff overlooking the lake. This was his first time outside the Castle, but it was clearly not Lily's. She led him along the cliff, down a little path opposite the stands of a stadium, and along the lake shore to the trees. There the two sat under a tree, shielded from the sight of the Castle. It was as if nothing had changed.

"Are you all right?" Lily asked, looking worried.

"Yeah, fine. Why?" It wasn't a lie. Right at that moment Russ was fine.

"Everybody in Gryffindor says that Slytherins hate muggle-borns and half-bloods. That's why I didn't try to talk to you. I didn't want to get you into trouble." She paused. "They also say the students in Slytherin are wicked and practice dark magic."

"Funny. The students in Slytherin say Gryffindors are bullies and care only about power. Anyway, they already know I'm a half-blood. Some are mean about it. I don't know about the others yet. How are your classes?"

"Pretty good. We had Astronomy last night, and I kept thinking about the moon missions. Do you know that almost none of them even know people have been to the moon? I thought that was sort of dumb. But I really liked my Charms class. The professor said I'm a natural."

Russ smiled a little. "The Herbology teacher knows about my grandmother. He called her a classic witch. I think that helped a little with some of the others in the dormitory. Like making up for being half muggle."

"Do you have any friends yet?" Lily asked.

"Sure," Russ replied. "You."

They chatted for a while, and Lily asked Russ about some of the words the ghost Professor Binns had used, then they went separately back into the Castle to study and do homework. They promised to meet every Saturday and Sunday morning after breakfast. Then on Monday, they would see each other in the one class they had together – Potions.

Potions Monday morning with Gryffindor was a joke. Russ 'd helped his Nana brew medicines from time to time since he was five, and already knew a tisane from a decoction, and how to extract an essence, but Mum said not to let them know, not to make them notice, not to be a target, so he had to pretend. Professor Slughorn wandered around the room watching the students, clearly only paying attention to his favorites. Russ was too much Nana's grandson to botch a potion, so he made it the best he could – knowing Slughorn would never see it – then, when it was perfect, added a little more crushed snake fang and a few nettles, reducing the potion's quality to mediocre. Lily noticed and made a face at him, but he ignored her.

It turned out that the two of them couldn't make contact in Potions class either, for the Slytherin students were watching him, and the Gryffindor students were watching her. Not that any Slytherins suspected the friendship. They just watched him because he was a half-blood. In Lily's case it was different. The two bullying boys from the train already knew Russ and Lily were friends. They were constantly glancing over, as if to be sure she was toeing the line.

That afternoon, after Herbology, the first year Slytherins had the rest of the day off. Russ left the Castle by himself, seeking a place to be alone. He found it at the bottom of the cliff, out of sight of any window, and reachable by a narrow path. There he sat with his schoolbooks to study. Weekday afternoons were not a time to be with Lily. That was for weekend mornings when half the school was sleeping in.

Dumbledore was meeting with the teachers at exactly the same time, getting a first impression of the newest students.

"And you, Minerva? What of your charges? How is our youngest member of the Black tribe taking his exile from Slytherin?"

"That boy is mischief personified. He'll be terrorizing the whole school before he's in third year. Do you know he's already found a way to get onto the roof of Gryffindor tower?"

"Do tell? I was hoping that would take him at least two weeks. And the thin one? Lupin?"

"Shy and withdrawn. The others have been teasing him a bit, but I think it'll calm down, so I'm not saying anything. Just keeping an eye on it. Pity that he's been sick the last few days and missed this morning's classes. It makes it just that little bit harder on him."

"I was sorry to hear that, but it was not unexpected. His health is fragile. He does need to see Madam Deering on a regular basis," Dumbledore nodded to the school nurse, "but it should not interfere seriously with his studies. Are there any other areas of concern?" McGonagall shook her head, and Dumbledore turned to Slughorn. "And what of Slytherin house, Horace? Any problems surfacing there? They are not bothering the little one, the Snape boy, are they? He is a half-blood, you know."

Slughorn shook his head. "Everything smooth in Slytherin, just as usual."

McGonagall coughed slightly. "I'd keep an eye on that one if I were you. He's a loner, not shy but withdrawn. I got the feeling he was assessing everyone as a potential opponent."

Dumbledore pondered this for a long time after the others left. It was not the first time that a thin, dark-haired, pale-faced half-blood had been sorted into Slytherin house. That other one had been cold, withdrawn, and calculating, too. It bore watching. It definitely bore watching. It was fortunate that the other Slytherin boys were not teasing the child. Ostracism could be devastating to a young psyche. Dumbledore made a mental note to check frequently with Slughorn about it.

Russ returned to Slytherin house just before dinner, planning to leave his books in the dormitory. Just as he reached the door to his room, he heard a bit of conversation – Aloysius's voice.

"…just that Dad told me to get to know you because he and your dad… Well, you know… It'd be a good thing if students like us…"

Russ opened the door then, not trying to conceal his presence. He didn't want to be accused of listening at doors. Aloysius stopped talking immediately, and Evan, for that was the one he was talking to, got up from Aloysius's bed where he'd been sitting and moved across the room to his own.

Paying absolutely no attention to either one, Russ traversed the room to his corner, deposited his books, straightened his robes and his biretta, and walked out again, not having said a word to either boy. As he closed the door behind him, the conversation was renewed.

"Do you think he heard us?" Evan asked nervously.

"Nah." Aloysius's voice was scornful. "Don't worry about it. A little half-muggle like that doesn't have a clue what's going on in the real world."

_It depends_, Russ thought, _what you consider the real world to be_… but he made a note to talk to Lily about it on the weekend.

_Friday, September 10, 1971 (the day before the last quarter moon)_

The rest of the week passed without much change. Each class was three times a week except Defense against the Dark Arts (twice) and Potions (once). The schedule was complex, but first years had only two hours in the morning daily and two in the afternoon Tuesday and Wednesday. Thursday evening was the Astronomy practical session, and it appeared Friday's second afternoon hour would be for Flying Lessons. Monday after Herbology, the rest of the afternoon was free.

Russ was now spending a large part of his free time studying by the lake. He even took his lunch down there to be alone. It wasn't too bad. He was used to being either around adults or alone, and he didn't suffer much from it. It was a more pleasant place than home because here no one hit him. On the weekends he could be with Lily. The rest was minor.

Until the second Friday evening, that is. Russ went straight to dinner where he sat and ate alone as was his wont, trying not to watch Lily chatting with the other girls in her dormitory. Then he went back to his dormitory and to the lavatory to wash his hands and brush his teeth.

Aaron and Evan were there, as were a couple of third years. "Do you smell something?" one of them said.

"Smells like a mongrel to me. Muggles always smell."

Russ turned to leave the lavatory, but the third year blocked his way. "We've never seen you take a bath, half-breed, and we think you smell."

There was no point in explaining that he washed every morning before they were awake, since that wasn't what this was about. "I'll try to do better," Russ said, wishing he could see where the boys behind him were standing.

"Not good enough. I have a better idea. Why don't we give you a bath right now? We've got hot water. We've got soap. We've got the scrub brushes. Wash that muggle smell right off you, so your dorm mates can sleep tonight."

The panicky realization of what they intended was shutting Russ down completely. He stepped to one side and let his wand slide into his hand, but Aaron was ready for this. From behind, he forced Russ's wand hand down, and slipped his other arm around Russ's neck. Evan was running hot water into one of the tubs. The second third year produced soap and brushes while the one who'd blocked his way starting unbuttoning Russ's collar.

"A nice bath," he said. "To get rid of the mongrel smell."

Russ kicked out and connected with a shin, then began to struggle fiercely. His tormentor swore, seizing the smaller boy by the hair and twisting a hand in the collar. "You little mudblood spawn! I'm going to enjoy this." With Aaron's help, he dragged the kicking Russ over to the steaming tub.

Danger had by now focused everything into sharp clarity, and Russ began to broadcast silent commands, spells inspired over the last two years by words from his great-grandfather Wenny's Greek dictionary – _Phouskala! Spuraki! Aimateré muté!_

With cries of alarm, both Aaron and the third year released him as blisters, boils, and pustules erupted on their skins. Evan grabbed a towel and clamped it to his face to stem the sudden stream of blood from his nose. Russ, free of their grasp, lunged for the door, pausing there to issue a wordless _Accio!_ to his wand, which sprang into his hand. Without a backward glance, he raced for the dormitory room where he would have a wall at his back and the more neutral witness of Mitchell in case he was pursued.

He was not pursued. About five minutes later, another third year stuck his head in the door. "They'll leave you alone if you reverse the spells," he said quickly and nervously, then left.

Mitchell, who'd been watching ever since Russ came bolting into the room, asked, "What spells?" but a look at Russ's jet black eyes told him the question was futile.

After a moment, Russ released a deep breath and, wand still in hand, walked out of the dormitory to the common room and from there to the lavatory. Those students still in the common room watched him warily. At the lavatory door, Russ paused.

"I don't want you to touch me," he said.

"We won't," the third year replied. "Just undo the spell." His nose was dripping blood, and his face and hands were pocked with eruptions.

Russ pointed his wand and thought _Therapeia!_ four times. He didn't really need the wand at these close quarters, but it would look better to the others. Then he returned to the dormitory to calm himself and reopen doors.

Nobody bothered him for the rest of the evening. Nobody even spoke to him. Before retiring for the night, Russ walked slowly around his bed, silently casting guard spells. Though it was best to be cautious, he wasn't really worried because he didn't think they'd have the nerve to attack him. They'd gotten a taste of what he could do.

More important, they hadn't seen the scars on his back.

The next morning, Russ went straight to the Great Hall, picked up some food and made something resembling a sandwich, and went straight out to the lake and the trees past the Quidditch stadium. Lily arrived half an hour later.

"How was your week?" was her first question.

"Fine. How was yours?"

"It was great. I'm learning so much, and the other girls in the dorm are really nice. Morwen's helping me with Herbology, and I'm helping her with Astronomy. Mary has this funny tortoiseshell cat named Spooks, and Calpurnia knows all kinds of jokes. Are you having fun with your dorm mates?"

"Yeah, except they all like Quidditch, and I don't know much about it. And Aaron and Evan are cousins, and Aloysius's dad's in business with Evan's dad, so they already know each other. It's harder when they're already a group and you're the only new one. Besides, you know… me. I never had a lot of… friends anyway."

Lily looked at Russ shrewdly. "You're stammering," she said. "Are you sure everything's all right?"

"Yeah." Russ didn't want to upset Lily with his problems. He'd already realized that it was a good thing she hadn't been sorted into Slytherin. It would have been much worse for her than for him. Now he just wanted their time together to be pleasant so that she'd enjoy talking with him. Otherwise she might prefer the company of the cat, or the girl who told jokes. "What did you think of the Potions class?"

"I wanted to ask you about that! What did you do to your potion? It looked great, then all of a sudden it got cloudy."

"I told you. Mum doesn't want anyone to know they've already taught me stuff. I'm supposed to lie low for the first year or so, so we don't get in trouble with the Ministry."

"I forgot about that. Do you understand the Potions homework?"

"Sure." They spent the next hour talking about the different ways of extracting oils and essences from plants. Then they split up, Lily going to the library, and Russ staying by the lake near the boat grotto, right at the foot of the cliff.

That evening after dinner, as Russ crossed the common room to the corridor leading to the dormitories, he heard his name.

"Snape? Could I have a word with you?" It was the fifth year prefect named Rabastan.

Russ walked over to him and sat in the chair the older boy indicated. He didn't say anything.

"I hear there was a little trouble last night. Students aren't supposed to be fighting or hexing each other, you know," Rabastan said.

This was a different kind of fight. Russ shut his doors and looked Rabastan in the eyes, closed down and innocent. "They wanted to fool around. I didn't want to play. They had trouble understanding that, so I had to make it clear."

Rabastan's eyebrows shot up in surprise. "So I heard. Really clear. Where'd you learn to do that?"

"Do what?"

"Make things clear."

"No place. Some things just happen."

Now Rabastan was trying to control a frown. "Just make sure it doesn't 'just happen' again."

"Yes, sir." Russ got up and went into the dormitory where Mitchell greeted him and the others ignored him. He performed his new ritual of guard spells, got into bed, and fell quickly asleep.

On Sunday, Russ started for the trees to meet Lily, but realized Aaron was watching him. He skirted the Castle, ducked into a cloistered courtyard, doubled back through the entrance hall, then slipped outside and down the passageway leading to the boat grotto. From there it was easy to tell if he'd gotten rid of his shadow, or if he was still being followed. No one came after him, and he continued downward and out along the lake shore, hidden from the view of the castle by the rocks of the cliff.

Lily had a bunch of jokes for him, courtesy of Calpurnia, and they spent an hour laughing at them. Then the interlude was over, and Russ went back to his now normal life of solitude and study, eager for the next weekend when he could again be with a friend.

It was the end of the week before Aaron and Evan were brave enough to try again. During that week, Russ noticed that others in Slytherin were watching him even more than before, but with a difference. Now there was a touch of wariness. Russ was content. _Oderint dum metuant_. [_Let them hate, so long as they fear._]

Russ was consciously building a wall around himself. At every meal he took some food and went elsewhere. In every class he buried his nose in his books, refusing even to notice the names of his classmates. During free time he went to the lake or hunted for corners of the Castle where no one else went. His initial timidity at Hogwarts' great size was diminishing, and he even began exploring the dungeons. He only returned to Slytherin house for curfew and to sleep.

Classes were hard, for he still tried to obey his mother's instructions about staying unnoticed. Flitwick, McGonagall, and Wildacre, he knew, saw him in the ranks of the mediocre. Binns and Slughorn didn't see him at all. Only Mullein and Sinistra seemed to realize that he was better than he allowed others to see, though both respected his clear desire for privacy.

On the third Friday, the seventeenth, Flying Lessons started with Mr. Overhill. It was not something that Russ was looking forward to. The students lined up with their brooms, simple school brooms, to their right side, hand outstretched, and called "Up!" A few of the brooms responded. Others quivered or jerked. Russ's broom didn't move. "Up!" he repeated. "Up!" Aaron and Evan were snickering. None of the others, including the Ravenclaws with whom they were taking the lessons, seemed to notice since they were having troubles of their own.

Two Ravenclaw boys got their brooms up into their hands at the first try, as did both Aaron and Evan. No one else did as well, though others were slowly getting the idea. Russ's broom remained adamantly on the ground. Since Overhill was not about to delay the lesson for a few students, he sent those who were having no success to one side to try to get control of their brooms. The three were Russ, the Slytherin girl named Maladicta Trimble, and a Ravenclaw girl. None of them could get their brooms to move. They didn't talk to each other.

The fiasco with the broom seemed to embolden Aaron, who took it as evidence that Russ was not as powerful as previously thought. He laughed about the episode as they went in to dinner. "I swear, I was beginning to think it was the janitor's broom, that's how quiet it was, but when I tried it, it came right to hand. Guess some people aren't cut out to ride brooms. Something to do with blood."

Russ took some bread and an apple and went out into the early evening to watch the sun go down and try to forget his failure.

The other first years were in the common room when Russ reached Slytherin house just before curfew. Aaron and Evan followed him into the dormitory, Aloysius and Mitchell not far behind. Evan was doing a crude imitation of the way Russ edged sideways along the common room wall so that he had the wall to his back and was facing the others.

"You walk like a spider!" Evan sneered.

"Don't you… like spiders?" Russ asked innocently.

"Disgusting things," said Evan. "Almost as bad as muggles."

Russ didn't answer. Instead he went over to his bed and sat down. There was something different about the night stand. The drawer had been opened and not completely shut again. Russ reached over and opened the drawer. The Hufflepuff badge was gone. When he turned around, Aaron was holding it.

"That belongs… to me," Russ said coldly. "Give… it back."

"We don't want lousy Hufflepuff garbage in Slytherin any more than we want lousy half-bloods." Aaron took out his wand and pointed it at the badge.

"It's mine." Russ repeated. "Give it to me."

With a few waves of his wand, Aaron cut the badge to shreds and set it on fire. Russ said nothing, but returned to his bed. There he changed into his night clothes, then looked over to the laughing Aaron and Evan. _Folia arachnon!_ he thought in Evan's direction, and towards Aaron _Pseires!_ The lights had barely gone out when Aaron began to shriek.

The prefects got Slughorn, who got Professor Dumbledore and Madam Deering. "I have to get him upstairs," Deering said. "We need to check the whole dormitory and disinfest the bed. His head will take more than a few minutes, though. How he could have such a bad case of lice and not realize it before is beyond me." Beside her Aaron kept running his hands through his hair and blubbering.

Dumbledore looked around. Amidst the turmoil, Eileen Prince's son sat quietly on his bed looking shyly at the floor. Calm, innocent, well-behaved. "Is there anything you wish to tell me about this?" Dumbledore asked gently.

The boy shook his head, not looking up. Just so another shy exterior had masked a wizard of formidable power. Just so another half-blood boy had denied knowledge of incidents that had gradually grown to terrify his house mates.

Dumbledore helped escort the Wilkes boy up to the hospital wing. He did not wish to leap to unfair or unjustified conclusions, but he was deeply disturbed.

From the moment Aaron returned from the hospital wing, his head lice now gone, Russ's house mates in Slytherin ceased to tease him. Instead they ignored him altogether. If this was meant to be some sort of punishment for being both a half-blood and a student who could conjure a headful of lice, it didn't work. Russ didn't feel punished. He preferred to be left alone.

The only one still suffering was Evan. Starting the night of the lice, Evan discovered that he'd acquired a nest of spiders over his bed, and occasionally one would drop onto his face or into his mouth while he was sleeping, or even weave cobwebs attached to his ears or nose. His efforts to get rid of the nest weren't successful, but it seemed silly to complain to Slughorn about an occasional spider. He didn't talk to Russ about it, as that might seem like surrender.

Mitchell acted as if he might like to talk to Russ, but the other students made it clear that if he did, he would be ostracized, too. In any case, Russ never acted as if he wanted anyone to talk to him, and so it was easy to let him be by himself, and to give him a wide berth in the common room when he passed through, just to avoid unpleasantness.

Russ made it easier on the others by staying out of Slytherin house as much as possible. When he could, he used the regular lavatories on the different floors, and he found other sources of clean water in the springs that bubbled up here and there in the cliffs around the lake. He spent his spare time in the library or at the lakeside, and wrote lengthy and meticulous assignments for his different classes. Weekend mornings of course, were different.

The one failure was Flying. Russ could not control a broom. The single time he managed to mount one, it bucked and threw him off while the others laughed. It wasn't really important. There wasn't an OWL in broomsticks.

It was in Potions that Russ scared the other students. He worked alone, and by this time it wasn't just Lily who noticed him, it was all the Slytherin students as well, for Russ would make a perfect potion in record time then, while they all watched, would do something to lower its quality. When he caught another Slytherin student watching, Russ would just smile.

"Why did you do that?" Mitchell whispered to Russ after watching him intentionally get a lower grade on a potion to reduce hives. During Potions class was almost the only time they talked now. The others were usually struggling with their own potions and paid no attention.

"I don't… like Slughorn," Russ replied.

"But you get poor marks in Potions."

"Who cares? I know I can… do it. No one… else needs to know."

"But you need good marks to get a good job."

"Not from him. I checked. He doesn't… give the OWL or the NEWT, and only the… OWL and the NEWT matter."

"So what he teaches you is…"

"Baby stuff. I could pass either… test right now."

"Wicked."

Russ heard a sound and turned to find Evan watching him. Evan immediately turned away, but Russ remarked, ostensibly to Mitchell, "There are other… potions, too. Ones that can turn your… brains to jelly so they run… out your ears…" Evan moved to a table farther off.

"Where do you go during dinner?"

Russ stared at Mitchell calmly, as if he were a laboratory specimen. "My… business," he said. "Not yours."

"All right. Have it your own way."

What Professor Slughorn didn't notice, Professor Flitwick did. The talents of a student with no background in spell casting, and the talents of a student concealing a background in spell casting are quite different.

"He isn't failing at his first attempts because he can't do it," Flitwick told Dumbledore. "He's doing a different spell technique that doesn't match the spell he's supposed to do. Then, after several 'unsuccessful' attempts, he switches techniques and does the spell perfectly. The other students think he's struggling to learn the material, but he's really just playing a game. The Slytherin boys seem to understand that now because they don't tease him about it anymore. They stay clear of him."

"Have you seen any evidence of his performing unusual spells, things you never saw before?"

"Would causing another student's levitation feather to tear to pieces count? I couldn't figure out how it happened, but if he did it, it was nonverbal and without direct wand action."

"Whose feather was mutilated?"

"A Slytherin boy. Aaron Wilkes."

"Did Master Wilkes think that Master Snape had done it?"

"Oh, no. He just thought he'd done the spell wrong. I didn't tell him it wasn't possible in that situation. I was trying to work out how it could have happened."

Dumbledore drummed his fingers thoughtfully on his desk after Flitwick left. _Hexes, advanced spells – it makes one wonder if perhaps certain things are escaping Professor Slughorn's attention in Potions. But how to verify it?_

Until well into the small hours, Dumbledore paced his office, puzzling over patterns and coincidences and the peculiar workings of fate. Two boys, so similar – and he did not wish the second to go the way of the first.

Both were from old wizard families that were nonetheless outside the mainstream of wizard life. Dumbledore was just beginning to research the background of his former student, Tom Riddle, and the picture of an ancient and traditional, but provincial and poverty-stricken family was one part of the pattern. True that the Snape boy did not appear to be related to any of the founders, but the witches of the Pendle region had their own traditions.

Then both had the air of changeling children. Riddle, of course, had been abandoned and orphaned, left to be raised unaware of the fact that he was a wizard. Dumbledore knew of no similar problem in young Snape's family, and yet there was that strong sense that there was something other about him that Dumbledore could not quite place.

And why would the Sorting Hat place the child of a Hufflepuff girl into Slytherin house? And a half-blood to boot? It was another disturbing part to the pattern.

Dumbledore had also to add recent events. There had been no head lice when Wilkes entered Hogwarts three weeks earlier, of that Dumbledore was certain. And yet the lice had appeared without wand or warning, suddenly there. Something was happening in the first year dormitory of Slytherin house that Slughorn was blithely unaware of. Was Wilkes the offender, and Snape retaliating? Or was Snape the manipulator as Riddle had been, already gathering followers and intimidating those who would not follow? Neither boy had accused the other of anything – itself a bit of a mystery – and yet Dumbledore knew it was between the two of them.

Now Flitwick revealed that the Snape boy was deliberately concealing a talent for spells – for curses, hexes, and jinxes, no doubt – of an astounding magnitude in one so young and so outside the normal wizard milieu. Patterns were forming into dark, frightening shapes.

The Headmaster got little rest that night, for the problem was potentially a great one. They had not watched over Tom Riddle enough from the beginning, and the wizarding world was beginning to reap the consequences. It could not afford a second Lord Voldemort.

"The Snape boy? Little Severus? Why he's a darling child! I wish all my students were like him." Professor Sinistra adjusted the cap over the end of a telescope, checking for cracks and loose fitting. "He wants to come up to the tower and observe the twilight sky, particularly as the moon wanes to new and waxes again. He says it has something to do with Saturn and Apollo and America, which I don't completely understand, but I'm not about to stand in the way of such enthusiasm. And he really is looking at the sky, mind you. I've peeked up here to check."

"So he already knows a lot of astronomy?" It was something Dumbledore had not expected.

"Sir, that child knows a thing or two that I don't. He's that good. He has a few strange ideas – he thinks we should know what the other side of the moon looks like – but anything that gets a boy to want to look through a telescope is a good thing in my opinion."

"Snape? About the same as any other student. Not at ease with Transfiguration. I don't think he's ever done it before. He does have skill with a wand. I'd expect him to shine more at Charms. It's the metamorphosis he has trouble with, as if he wants things to be…"

"Yes?" Dumbledore prompted as McGonagall hesitated.

"Well, Albus, predictable. Dependable. He has that attitude, you know the one. He wants to know where he stands, and feels uncomfortable when things around him keep shifting. I don't have to tell you what a common problem that is in Transfiguration."

Wildacre thought deeply about the question. "If I were to go by his daily performance in class, I'd say mediocre. He won't answer questions, he doesn't grasp the material, he's abnormally shy… no, shy isn't the word. Reticent."

Dumbledore waited an moment, then spoke. "That is his performance in class. What else is there?"

"His written assignments. Well considered, well researched. If I didn't know he was a first year, I'd think he was preparing for OWLs. I'm not complaining, but the written performance and the spoken performance don't match."

"He's his grandmother's grandson." Mullein seemed to think no other evaluation was needed.

Dumbledore raised his eyebrows. "I do not know that I have ever heard of his grandmother."

"She's a local potions brewer in eastern Lancashire. I travel a lot in the summer, looking for new potions or different recipes for old ones. Mrs. Prince is a witch and healer of the classic tradition. Those in the trade know her. Severus takes after his grandmother."

"I wouldn'ta thought ya'd be so worried about one little boy," said Hagrid as he fixed Dumbledore a cup of tea.

"It is not the boy himself that I am worried about, at least not on a cosmic level. It is his potential that concerns me. There is circumstantial evidence to indicate that he knows more about certain aspects of magic than our seventh years."

"Why would ya think that was bad? Sounds good t' me." Hagrid set the cup and saucer down and watched while Dumbledore added sugar. "A boy ought t' live up t' his potential."

"Oh, Hagrid. You know what trouble a boy with too much potential can cause. You have had first hand experience. And now the wizarding world is having too much…"

Hagrid began fizzing in laughter, which caused Dumbledore to stop stirring his tea and look up in irritation. "I was not aware that I had said anything funny," he said grumpily.

The last laugh was more of a bark. "You're comparing that wee thing to We-Ain't-Supposed-t'-Say-His-Name? I weren't here yet when he was sorted into Hogwarts, but that Snape boy ain't no Tom Riddle."

"What makes you say that? You haven't seen much of him at all."

"I seen enough. Train crew says he didn't hardly try t' find a seat – just plunked hisself at the back of the train in a corridor the whole trip, with a muggle-born girl. He weren't about t' climb into a boat with the others – I had t' put him in one. He don't take meals in the Hall, an' he spends time by hisself at the lake – I seen him there. Now Tom, he'd be out there making contacts an' building power – what d' ya call it – influence. That Snape boy – he don't know nothing about building power. He just wants t' be left alone."

It was reassuring, but Dumbledore wanted more certainty. "He has used some rather strong spells against his dormitory mates."

"An' who told ya that? An' did they say why? No offense t' Professor Slughorn, mind you, but what goes on in Slytherin house can be mighty unpleasant."

"How would you know that?"

"I got ears. I got eyes. I know when a boy's being bullied. Ya don't want t' step in right off, 'cause most of the time the boys fix it themselves, but ya can see if it's there. That boy were being bullied, and then it stopped. But he's spending more time from Slytherin than before. That tells me he took care of hisself, but he ain't trying t' build anything on it. You catch my meaning?"

Dumbledore relaxed somewhat, for what Hagrid observed on a gut emotional level was usually the truth, the gut emotional level being where most young people lived. "You have been watching him, then?"

"I got me a personal interest, being the biggest one at Hogwarts, in watching out f'r the littlest. Mind, if he grows, or if someone littler shows up… Ya ever ask why he got put in Slytherin?"

"The Hat will not say, except that it has something to do with guarding secrets. That did not make me feel more comfortable about the situation."

"What secrets would a boy like that have t' hide?"

"Exactly. I do not know."

And then there was Horace Slughorn.

"Well, Albus, let me see… I don't really have a firm grasp of his character yet. The boy isn't personable, you know. His mother? I don't think I recall his mother. Not Slytherin, of course."

"No. Hufflepuff, actually."

"There you go! I knew she wasn't Slytherin."

"Have you spoken to the boy?"

"Naturally. Start of term interview and everything. Sullen child. Kept his head down the whole time. Answered in monosyllables. I'm not surprised he's doing poorly in some of his classes. Potions work – not top quality at all. I generally get better material sorted onto Slytherin."

"I am sorry to hear that. Professors Mullein and Sinistra are impressed with him. Flitwick and Wildacre think he shows promise."

"Really?" Slughorn thought for a moment. "He does have a grasp of some, uh, techniques. And if he works hard his skills, hem, could improve. It isn't a lost cause, you know."

"Have there been any other incidents in the dormitories?"

"No, no. None at all. We run a tight ship in Slytherin. Firm hand at the helm."

"Well, I am sure you are watching out for all your students. Thank you, Horace."


	7. Chapter 7  – Settling In

**A Difference in the Family: The First Year – Settling In**

"I think," Lily said with a contented sigh, "that broomsticks are the most wonderful thing in the world, don't you?"

Russ made a face, wrinkling his nose in distaste, but didn't respond.

Lily rolled onto her stomach on the soft autumn leaves. "It's just so wonderful to be able to go up into the air like a bird and look down on everything, and feel the breeze in your hair… Pretty soon I'll be able to steer the broom better and maybe go faster. Don't you just adore it?"

This time Lily noticed Russ's silence. She reached out and smacked him on the nose with the seed head of the blade of dry grass she was holding. "Aren't you enjoying flying on a broom, Severus?"

"I suppose," Russ replied with some dignity, "that I might enjoy it if I ever got around to doing it. As it is, I have other things to occupy my time."

"You take flying lessons, too! It's just like riding a bicycle. Almost."

The great thing about talking to Lily was not having to pretend. "I never had a bicycle," Russ said, "I never rode one."

"Do you mean," Lily giggled, "that you never got your broom up in air?"

"Up?" said Russ. "Are you saying they're supposed to go up? If I'd known that… Silly teachers never tell you anything."

Lily was laughing now, and tossed a handful of leaves in Russ's hair. "I bet I could get you to fly on a broomstick," she boasted.

It turned out that Lily, in fact, had a plan. They agreed to meet again after supper, and she went running back to the Castle. Russ waited a few minutes, then strolled to his usual place at the foot of the cliff. He'd only been there half an hour when it started to rain. With a sigh, Russ got up and went into the Castle. He spent the rest of the day studying in the library.

It continued raining all afternoon. Unable to take food from the table to eat outside, Russ stayed in the Great Hall, which also gave him the opportunity to see what Lily wanted him to do, since she couldn't go to their usual meeting place either. A few moments after she left the hall, he rose and left, too.

Lily was at the end of the classroom corridor opposite the Hall. As soon as Russ appeared, she slipped down another corridor to the right, one that led to the fountain courtyard. Russ followed her out. There were a few students there, but it was easy to stand off to one side of the large courtyard and talk, basically unobserved.

"Tomorrow morning," Lily said, "go down to the Quidditch stadium. They keep the school brooms stabled there. Nobody 'll be there that early, and we can practice with the brooms for a while. I'm going to get you airborne!"

Russ returned to Slytherin for the night feeling more light hearted than usual. He was accosted in the passage to the dormitory by Aloysius. "What were you doing talking to a Gryffindor?" Aloysius said.

"Potions… homework," Russ replied.

"Why doesn't she ask her own house mates?"

"Gryffindors are… stupid at potions."

"She's a mudblood, isn't she?"

Russ had never heard the word before, but it didn't sound complimentary. "I don't know," seemed the most neutral reply. "I didn't… ask."

"Blood calls to blood, I guess. You might try to rise out of the ooze, you know. Part of you is supposed to be a wizard."

Russ didn't answer. Instead, he went inside the dorm and to his bed to get ready for the night. What Aloysius said didn't really bother him. On the day wizards walked on the moon, he'd start giving them credit for being almost equal to muggles. Not before.

The next morning after breakfast, Russ snuck down to the Quidditch stadium. Lily 'd already opened the broom lockers where the ordinary brooms were kept and selected a couple she knew to be docile and easy to manage. Neither of them responded to Russ's command of "Up!"

Lily stepped in and ordered a broom to rise. With the broom already in the air, Russ mounted and, on Lily's instructions, kicked into the air. For a moment, Russ had the heady feeling of hovering a few feet from the ground, the best he'd ever managed. Then the broom began to buck and tossed him onto the grass.

"That's an unusual dismounting technique," Lily said, laughing heartily. Russ smiled as she coaxed him back onto the broom. They were there for an hour, but with Lily's help Russ was finally able to get a broom up on command, and to mount and hover. He had a fine sense of accomplishment that day.

_Thursday, September 30, 1970 (four days before the full moon)_

On the morning of the last day of September, Russ received his first owl message. The tawny owl was already up in the rafters waiting when he walked in to get his breakfast, and it swooped down and deposited a blue envelope in front of him before he started picking up food. Then it returned immediately to the rafters to wait for a reply.

A glance down the table showed Russ that his dormitory mates had seen the exchange and were curious. There was even the vague sense that getting an owl had brought him up a notch in their estimation. It made him more a wizard and less a muggle.

By this time Russ had gotten used to pumpkin juice, so he took a glass, put a couple of slices of bacon between two pieces of toast, and went back to the dormitory to read his letter.

_Dear Russ,_

_How are you doing in school? We all miss you and think about you. Your mum wants to know which house you were sorted into, and whether you're doing what you're supposed to in classes. Your dad had a spate of trouble getting used to you not being around, but he's back to normal now. He says you better not come home a 'college pudding' whatever that means._

_This grandmother has finished drying her winter herbs and harvesting the last of the annuals. The pumpkins you planted at the start of the season are huge and could bring you a bit of pocket money, maybe even a sickle or two from the local 'community'. I'll let you know. The other one says you have to keep the second half of April free for sixteen. Destination Descartes. Crew Young, Mattingly, and Duke. Muggle talk, I suppose._

_Don't think you have to answer right away. Your mum says Nelson can wait in the owlery a day or two while you write. We're all looking forward to getting your letter. And Mrs. Hanson is back and sends her love._

_Nana_

Russ returned to the Great Hall and called Nelson. Once again he noted that the others were watching. He told Nelson to join the rest in the owlery while he thought about his answer, then watched as the owl flew away.

All during the day, Russ used his spare time to compose an answer to Nana. There were things that weren't so good, but he didn't want anyone to worry, especially his mother.

_Dear Nana,_

_Thank you for your letter. I got it at breakfast this morning. The news about the pumpkins is great. My Herbology class is my best, and Professor Mullein says he knows you. Do you know him? Tell mum she was right about that Potions teacher. He don't know half. I've been doing everything she told me._

_I got into Slytherin like she thought I would. It's down in the spooky old dungeons and there aren't any windows. I don't stay there much. Tell dad a couple of the boys tried to mess with me, but I gave them what-for, and they don't mess with me any more. I won't be no pudding._

_Classes keep me busy, but I get outside, too. There's mountains here, and a forest, and a lake. The castle is really big. I was scared at first but just for a day or two. Now I started exploring and I've got my bearings. I'm going to know it better than anybody._

_Tell Gra I copy. I got a telescope in Astronomy class and everything is 'go' for April._

_I miss you all, but don't worry. Things are fine here. Tell Mrs. Hanson I miss her, too._

_Russ_

Later that afternoon, Russ climbed up to the owlery and found Nelson. He gave the owl a treat he'd saved from lunch, and sent it back home to Nana with his letter.

The next morning in Transfiguration, the Ravenclaw students had some interesting news. The headmaster himself had come into their first morning class, which was Astronomy lecture with Gryffindor, to see how they all were doing and make sure they were settling in well. He watched them make star charts for the polar region, and they showed him how they set up their telescopes. He even talked with a couple of students personally.

"It was scary at first," said Patience Ferguson. "He's so tall and it's like he sees everything. But he was nice, too. I thought he really wanted to be sure we were getting on all right. He says he's going to visit all the first year classes this month."

"Is he coming here?" Mitchell asked.

"I don't think so. Not today, anyway. I think he went to Dark Arts with Hufflepuff."

Russ thought about this information for a couple of minutes, but it didn't worry him. He turned his full attention to trying to transform a pin into a paper clip.

The first of Russ's classes to be visited by Dumbledore was Flying, that same Friday afternoon. Flying lessons only lasted for a month, after which it was assumed that first year students who wanted to continue on broomsticks could practice by themselves with the school brooms. Students who didn't want to continue didn't have to.

Professor Dumbledore arrived halfway through the lesson, but from some of the things he said to the students, Russ got the feeling he'd been watching from a window. He talked first to the Ravenclaws who were really good on their brooms, and to the Slytherins who were pretty good. He encouraged them to try out for Quidditch in their second year because the school could always use good players. He'd noticed some of their moves, and thought they were team quality.

Russ was now with the small group of students who could rise and descend on their brooms, but little else. There was one more lesson, but after that he was quitting brooms entirely. Even Lily's encouragement would never make him really like the experience. Mercifully, the headmaster paid no attention to the less than brilliant. It would have been mortifying to be singled out for notice because of ineptitude.

Dumbledore was enlightened so far by what he'd learned in the different classes. Young Black of Gryffindor, for example, was a definite mischief maker, and would need an eye kept on him. Three of his dorm mates – Lupin, Pettigrew, and Wintergreen – were overawed by him and perhaps a little frightened. The fourth, Potter, seemed to have already become a Black follower. There was a moment when Dumbledore worried that this boy, too, might be another Tom Riddle, but Black's skills were more physical than magical, and he was too open to be a plotter as Riddle had been.

Another good thing was that in Slytherin there had been no indication of teasing or bullying when the children went out with their brooms for the flying lesson. The more proficient students had gathered for their next instructions while the less adept had started a review, but there was no exchange of words or gestures, no offensive or defensive body language, to express any kind of ill feeling. An excellent sign.

It was beginning to look as if Hagrid was right, and whatever problem there was had been dealt with by the boys themselves.

The next observation was Monday morning Potions with Gryffindor and Slytherin together. Dumbledore intentionally delayed his arrival until twenty minutes into the class, then was able to stand in the doorway for another ten minutes unnoticed by anyone while he watched the activity.

Slughorn was on the Gryffindor side of the room showing a group of girls how to shred the suckers from octopus tentacles. Other students were scraping soot from lamp chimneys or squeezing juice from marshberries. It looked like a writing potion, Duplicating Ink, that could be written on one page of parchment then, when the page was divided, reproduce the exact text on each part in slightly reduced size.

From his great height, Dumbledore looked down across the room onto the surfaces of the cauldrons. Most of the students were still in the preparation stage, but one cauldron shimmered with iridescent purple, a perfect Duplicating Ink. The pale pointed face of its maker regarded the creation with some pride.

Then, as Dumbledore watched, Master Snape took a vial of octopus ink from his robes and added exactly six drops. A quick stir, and the mixture had changed to dull black. It was now a perfectly serviceable ink, but not the Duplicating Ink it was meant to be.

Slughorn looked up. "Headmaster! I didn't see you. Welcome to my class. Come in, look at what the students are doing."

"With pleasure, Professor Slughorn. I see the students are quite industrious. Some have already reached the brewing stage, and one has even finished."

"Ah, yes. Sometimes I wish he wouldn't go so fast. He gets careless. Now look at this. Not what he's supposed to be making at all."

"It looks like there's a bit too much octopus ink," Dumbledore said. He watched carefully, but the Snape boy had dropped his gaze modestly at their approach – or maybe it was because he knew he'd been caught.

"Octopus ink? I don't think so. Suckers, yes, but there's no ink in this one." Slughorn looked around the table. "No, no ink."

"A mistake then," said Dumbledore, smiling slightly. He glanced around at the Slytherin boys with the distinct feeling that they also knew more about the altered potion than Slughorn did, but didn't want to say anything. The feeling of foreboding returned.

"Perhaps, since he has plenty of time, Master Snape would like to try making his potion again. I remember having a bit of trouble with it myself when I was younger."

Under Dumbledore's gaze, Master Snape remade his potion, and Dumbledore was well aware that all of the Slytherin students were paying surreptitious attention. Once again the perfect, shining purple filled the cauldron, where no octopus ink tainted its purity.

"Wonderful!" cried Slughorn. "It's good to see you can make a potion. Now you have to try to do it when no one's watching."

Black eyes flickered up to Dumbledore's face and down again, though they did not meet the headmaster's own.

As soon as the lesson was over, Lily rushed out of the Potions class ahead of everyone, but then realized she'd left her quill and notebook behind and darted back in. In her haste, she bumped into Russ, murmured an apology, and was gone. Russ found himself holding a tiny piece of paper that said Trees. Dinner.

The afternoon seemed to drag, but finally it was dinner time. Russ grabbed some bread and fruit from the Slytherin table and went quickly to the meeting place. Lily was already there and wasted no time.

"He saw you!" she exclaimed even before he was safely under the shielding shade. "He knows what you did to the potion. How could you be so careless?"

"I… didn't see him. If I'd… seen him, I wouldn't have… done it."

"Do you think he'll report you? Do you think he'll tell the Ministry and have you expelled?"

"I… don't know."

"He can't do that," Lily insisted. "You're my best friend here. You're the one who prepared me for Hogwarts so that now I'm getting good marks in all my classes, so now I even understand what they're talking about and don't have to ask stupid questions. You made me fit in. They can't expel you! I'll go to Professor Dumbledore myself…"

"No." Russ's flat negative stopped Lily cold. "We can't do that. My dad… can't know you're my friend. Your dad can't know I'm your… friend. Slytherin and Gryffindor can't know either. I'll do my… best with Professor Dumbledore, but you have to stay out of it."

Lily agreed, and they returned to their separate dormitories. Russ's dorm mates eyed him speculatively as he prepared for the night, but said nothing.

There were in all sixteen classes to observe: two each for Astronomy, Charms, Flying, Herbology, Potions, and Transfiguration, and four for Defense against the Dark Arts. Dumbledore did not visit Binns's classes since there would have been little point. What he saw confirmed two major worries – both Sirius Black and Severus Snape were of concern, but for very different reasons.

Black was self-confident, arrogant, sure of the validity of his own opinions and willing to enforce them. He had the air of a bully, though he did not yet seem to have bullied anyone, and he lacked any sense of the immorality of practical jokes. He enjoyed laughing at, rather than with, others. On the plus side, he seemed to enjoy laughing at himself as well, as long as the experience was not too embarrassing. Black harvested followers the way other students gathered in grades and awards. The more students looked up to him, the better he felt.

Snape, on the other hand, was quiet and self-effacing. He seemed not to care for the opinion of others, scorned notice or approval, and avoided social contact. And yet this boy was possessed not only of an understanding of witchcraft that many adults would envy, he had that strange, indefinable quality of being remote, alien, that none of the others had.

So different, so opposite, so great a potential problem each in his own right, so separately unlike that other problem, Tom Riddle – Dumbledore did not want to create a greater problem by distressing either boy, and yet he wanted a better grasp of what he held in his hands. He arranged appointments with all the first years, sandwiching Black and Snape into the middle of the general crowd.

The interview with Black was all fire and passion. This was a rebel, not merely discarding the views of his pureblood family, but renouncing them with the fervor of a religious convert decrying his old faith as heresy. Dumbledore came away from it with a firm understanding of why the Hat had placed young Sirius in Gryffindor, and more at ease with the boy's place in the future of the wizarding world.

Now Snape stood in Dumbledore's office, mute, ill at ease, waiting for questions to respond to, volunteering nothing. There was something in his self-conscious stance, the awkward placement of his hands at his sides, the slightly hunched shoulders and the defensive downward tilt of his head as he watched a spot on the floor four feet ahead of him that suddenly reminded Dumbledore of Eileen. He was his mother's son.

"How are your classes, Master Snape? Are you having any problems."

"No, sir. They're… fine, sir."

"And Slytherin house? Are you settling in well?"

"Yes, sir."

"I notice you do not eat much in the Great Hall. Is there a problem there?"

"No, sir." The silence stretched out, compelling the boy to continue. "Too… many people," he added, then stopped.

"Do you mean that you feel uncomfortable because the Hall is too crowded?"

"Yes, sir."

It was, Dumbledore thought, like pulling teeth. This was not liking speaking to Tom Riddle. Tom would not have stood so shyly, or answered so shortly, or stuttered. _I wonder now if the problem is that he has never had friends his own age. Or any friends at all, for that matter. If that is the case, then Hogwarts must be an intimidating place. And trying to force the issue might only make it worse._

"Thank you, Master Snape. I hope your time at Hogwarts is pleasant and profitable. If you ever have anything you wish to talk with me about, do not hesitate."

"Yes, sir. Thank… you, sir," and the boy was gone.

Russ scuttled quickly down the spiral staircase, relieved that the ordeal was over. He found Dumbledore terribly frightening – so tall, with his long beard and long hands, and the piercing blue eyes that could probably steal every thought in Russ's head if he wanted to. Russ wanted desperately not to be noticed by the headmaster, and was unnerved by the knowledge that Dumbledore was aware that he did not eat in the Great Hall.

The seventh floor was the natural abode of Gryffindor and Ravenclaw. A Slytherin student ought not to be there alone, and so Russ scurried for the nearest staircase. It took him to the fifth floor and a long corridor leading to the stairs downward. Here, blessedly, there was no one, and Russ continued on to the library where he hid at a table in a corner, behind a large book.

There he stayed until dinner time, when another momentous decision loomed. Should he avoid the Great Hall altogether and miss supper, or go and take food away with him, or go and eat in the Hall? It was a question of which action would cause the headmaster to notice him the least. With a sigh, Russ left the library and headed for the Great Hall.

He saw Mitchell in the entrance hall, and walked in behind him. For lack of a better plan, he stayed near Mitchell, picked up a small plate and start putting bits of food on it.

"Where do you go with that?" Mitchell said next to him.

Russ had started at the voice, but quickly recovered. "Out," he replied.

"Why don't we just sit here. I want to ask you something."

At the teachers' table, Dumbledore watched. It was a good time to have someone to talk to. "Right," Russ said.

They didn't sit at the very end, for that had been taken over by a rough group of fifth years, but space not too far up the table was usually relatively clear. The two boys sat next to each other on a bench, and Mitchell heaped his plate. The were a study in contrasts, the big sandy-haired athlete and his small, dark companion.

"Why don't you eat more? You'd grow some if you did." Mitchell bit into a forkful of Yorkshire pudding.

"No. I'm naturally… small."

"Why? Are your mom and your dad small?"

Russ thought about this for a moment. Neither his mum nor his dad was small, but he'd grown up being told his size was natural. Now he wondered, too. "No, just me," he answered.

"Well I'm just naturally big. My uncle has me down for a beater or a keeper if Chudley'll take me. I'd rather be a chaser, but I don't have the build." He paused. "You don't know anything about Quidditch, do you?"

"It's a… game." Russ shrugged.

"Do you have to always talk like that?"

"Like… what?"

"Like th… th… this."

Russ stopped eating his dinner and was silent.

Mitchell pretended to ignore him for a moment, then relented. "Look, I'm sorry. It's just I was sure it was an act."

"Why?"

"'Cause you didn't talk like that when you were facing Aaron down. You talked really good then."

"That was… different. Aaron is… dangerous."

Mitchell chewed a bit more, then turned suddenly and made a hideous face at Russ. "There," he said, "now I'm dangerous, too, and you can talk straight."

"It doesn't… work like that," Russ said, but he was almost smiling.

"So, you're Sev?" Mitchell asked later in the dormitory.

"Severus," Russ said firmly. He wanted no undue familiarity from people potentially set on him as spies, however nice they might seem.

"Doesn't matter," Mitchell said. "They say only the first years go by given names. Everybody else uses last names. So by next year we'll be Edison and Snape anyway. I kind of like it. Sounds more grown up."

That suited Russ fine. He didn't want anyone using his own name but his family. Outsiders could use Severus, but Snape was even better. Less personal. Less of an intrusion into his own world.

Aloysius Mulciber came in then. Mitchell went out into the common room, and Russ went to his bed where he pulled a library book from his footlocker.

"Studying your hexes?" Aloysius asked from his own bed where he was laying out robes for the next day.

"Don't need to… study that," Russ replied after a moment's hesitation.

"Why? Your mum already teach you all of that?"

Russ thought of the spells his mother had taught him – Expelliarmus, Stupefy, Protego… – and of the trouble they could get into if the Ministry discovered she'd taught adult spells to a child. "No," he said.

"Where'd you learn them?"

"Didn't."

"Somebody had to teach you those spells. Didn't Mullein say something about a grandmother?"

"No."

"I'm sure he did. But my dad says healers and potions brewers aren't usually good at curses. Who else do you know?"

"Nobody."

"Suit yourself." Aloysius devoted his attention to his robes and the way they were folded over the chair. Then, "You caught old Dumbledore's attention the other day, didn't you? That wasn't a good idea."

"Why?"

"Dumbledore's looking for reasons to slap Slytherin down. Ask any of the older students. You were cheating. He saw that. Now we're in trouble."

Getting others into trouble was definitely the wrong way to be noticed. "I… didn't do… anything wrong."

"I'll admit," said Aloysius, "most people would cheat to get higher marks. Cheating to get lower marks is strange. He was watching you at dinner. You'd better be careful."

"I… will."

Aloysius left Russ alone then. No one bothered him for the rest of the evening, though Evan and Aaron kept glancing at him when they came in to go to bed. Russ lay awake that night wondering how things had conspired to make him so unpleasantly noticed when he'd tried so hard to do what his mum wanted.

After that, Russ began to notice things himself, mostly in the common room. The fifth year prefect, Rabastan, had a younger brother named Rodolphus. They seemed to be good friends with the third year student who'd threatened Russ in the lavatory. His name was Kenneth Avery. The three of them were always talking to Aloysius, Evan, and Aaron. They also got into long, earnest conversations with other students, but only when the other prefects weren't around. If Lucius Malfoy walked into the common room, they would leave whoever they were talking to and start doing something like homework.

That was when Russ also started to notice the phrase, 'You know…' It was used to refer to shared information that the Lestranges, Avery, Aloysius, Evan, and Aaron understood but didn't want to say. It was used in sentences like, 'My dad has to go this weekend to… you know,' or 'We got instructions from… you know.' They used it a lot, and with the exception of Malfoy, they didn't seem to care who heard them.

It was all very mysterious. Russ stayed out of the dorm room and the common room as much as possible. He didn't want to be noticed by anyone any more.

In the middle of October, the weather suddenly became quite cold, so that Lily and Russ couldn't meet out by the trees on the weekend of the sixteenth and seventeenth, nor on the following weekend. It was only a minor problem for Lily, who spent the time with the girls in her dorm or studying, but for Russ it was a depressing reminder of how important his weekly talks with Lily were. He hated the fact that the hills of Hogwarts were colder than the moors of Pendle.

Back in Lancashire, Russ had his parents to talk to. In fact, their company was more important than Lily's, and little routine things like cribbage with his dad or helping his mum in the kitchen were that crumb of daily human contact he needed. Meetings with Lily had been extra. Now meetings with Lily were all he had since he couldn't talk to his dorm mates. He started spending more time in the dorm, sitting on his bed studying, and once even squeezed into an isolated corner of the common room where he could at least listen to the voices of the others and not feel so alone.

It was in those two weeks that Russ learned that the Lestranges, Avery, Aloysius, and Evan were trying to get some of the others to join something. One of the people they were always talking to was Aaron, who seemed to be wavering. At first they were also interested in a dark-haired girl in third year, but stopped talking to her near the end of October. Rumor had it that her older sister 'd married a muggle, and she was no longer acceptable. Russ sympathized with her.

On the last Saturday in October, the day before Halloween, at midmorning, the school suddenly emptied. Russ was surprised at how quiet the Great Hall was at lunch that day. "What's… happening?" he asked Mitchell, who had quickly become his source of information for the more social aspects of Hogwarts.

"They're going into Hogsmeade, the village outside the gate."

"What's in… Hogsmeade?"

"Lots of things. Shops and places to eat. There's a candy store and a joke shop… It's supposed to be great!"

"Oh," said Russ quietly. It all sounded like it cost money, which meant there was nothing for him to do there. "Are you… going?"

"Can't," replied Mitchell, his mouth full of chicken sandwich. "Have to be third year or older. None of the firsts or seconds can go."

"Oh," said Russ again, but now he felt better. No one would question why he didn't join them because no one would think it strange that he didn't go. Lily caught his eye from the Gryffindor table and opened her hands as if she was reading a book. After lunch, Russ hurried up to the library to meet her.

"There's absolutely no one here!" Lily whispered fiercely after Russ found her in the corner dedicated to herbology. "The Castle's practically deserted. Wouldn't this be a great time to find a new place to meet when it's cold or rainy?"

"But if we meet inside, we'll be caught."

"Silly, this castle is huge! They don't use even half the rooms. There must be rooms all over that no one ever goes into. Now's our time to find one. We can start on the seventh floor and work our way down."

"No," Russ said immediately. "No Slytherin should ever get caught alone on the seventh floor. It's dangerous. And with a Gryffindor girl, it'd be worse. Gryffindors are mean."

"No we're not! It's Gryffindors who have to be careful about being caught alone in the dungeons. That's what everyone says."

"I've never heard anyone in Slytherin talk about going after Gryffindors, but several of the older students 've been pushed around by Gryffindors. They say Gryffindors prefer fighting to magic."

"There is a lot of pushing and shoving and horseplay in the common room and dorms," Lily admitted, "but it's all in good fun." She studied him for a minute. "Maybe we should stay off the seventh floor. But we'll stay away from the dungeons, too."

They decided to start on the third floor, then left the library separately to meet again in an alcove near the Charms classroom. There were several empty classrooms nearby, but the Charms corridor would have a fair amount of students in it on Saturday and Sunday mornings, so they discarded that idea.

The next possibility was the trophy room but that, with all its glass cabinets, was too exposed. Russ and Lily also checked the armor gallery without finding a convenient place to meet unobserved. They explored more corridors and found a passageway behind a tapestry that led them to yet another corridor. Russ, with his 'bearings' and sense of direction, reckoned it wasn't far from the Charms classroom where they'd started.

"Let's try this way," Lily suggested, and led the way to the end, where they found a door that didn't look like a classroom door. The door opened into another corridor, one clearly long disused.

"What's that?" Lily asked, pointing to the flagstone paved floor, her voice puzzled.

"A trapdoor," Russ replied, equally puzzled. _What would a trapdoor be doing here?_

Being children, Russ and Lily naturally tried opening the trapdoor. What they found was a shaft that dropped out of sight into darkness. Russ looked around for a stone or a pebble that he could toss down the shaft, but castles that are not falling into ruins do not have stray stones or pebbles lying around on the floor. So Russ extracted his wand from his sleeve.

"What are you doing?" Lily cried as Russ held the wand out at arm's length.

"Experimenting," Russ replied, and dropped the wand. The two listened for the sound of the wand hitting the bottom, but heard nothing. Russ sighed. _"Accio Wand!"_ he commanded, and the wand returned to his hand.

Lily plumped her fists onto her hips. "How did you do that?" she demanded.

"Summoning charm," said Russ.

"That's a fourth year spell!"

"So?"

"So what are you doing, doing fourth year spells?"

"Now you know why my mum's worried about the Ministry."

There was no denying this irrefutable logic, so instead Lily insisted that Russ teach her the spell. They found an empty, abandoned classroom in the trapdoor corridor and spent the next couple of hours working on charms. Russ knew more of them, but Lily caught on faster. He taught her the Accio, the Reparo, and the Expelliarmus. The rest could wait for another day. They agreed that in inclement weather, they would meet in this little out-of-the-way room rather than outside under the trees.

About mid afternoon, Russ and Lily left their new meeting place to return to the Library so it would look as if each had spent the day there doing homework. As they reached the Charms room and were about to start up the staircase, they saw Aaron on the landing above them. That was nothing strange except…

Suddenly two masked students jumped out and grabbed Aaron from behind. Aaron started to cry out, but was stopped by a silencing spell. "Think he'll do?" one of the students asked the other.

"Better if he was rounder, but he'll do. Any Slytherin would do."

As Russ and Lily stood rooted, concealed by the angle of the passageway, the two pulled Aaron to the top of the staircase, said the spell _Propulso scalae!_, and pushed him forward. Aaron hit the third step and bounced upwards, then came down again, bouncing each time as his body descended the flight of stairs. Russ, terrified, looked around and saw only a suit of armor. Pushing Lily back further out of sight and swinging his wand, he struck it, and the reverberating sound made the two attackers run from the stairs as fast as they could go.

The coast clear, Russ stepped forward, wand out, and cried, _"Arresto momentum!"_ Aaron's downward trajectory stopped, and Russ managed to get him seated on the step so that he wouldn't fall any more.

Lily joined him, her face pale with the horror of what she'd just seen. "That was…" she started, but Russ stopped her.

"I know. Look, you have to get… out of here. If anyone knows we were… together…"

"He'll know." Lily nodded at Aaron.

"I think he's… dazed. Get out now. I'll take… care of this."

Russ waited until he was sure Lily had enough time to get to the library. Then he raced to the hospital wing for help.

"Did you see who they were?" Dumbledore asked, but Aaron shook his head, still too dazed to think properly. They were in the hospital wing with Dumbledore and all the heads of houses later that afternoon. "And you?" Dumbledore said to Russ.

Russ shook his head.

"Are you sure you couldn't see who they were?" the headmaster prodded. "You watched the whole incident."

Russ thought for a moment. "Light… behind them," he said, nervous and more tongue-tied than usual. "They… had… masks." He paused and thought. "Gryffindors," he finished.

"How do you know?" asked Professor McGonagall.

"Borders on… robes. Red and… gold. They wanted a… Slytherin."

"At least we are fortunate," said Dumbledore, "that almost all of the Gryffindor boys were in Hogsmeade. There are only about ten to check and see where they were when this happened."

"I'll get on it right away," said McGonagall, and left the room.

"Are you all right?" Dumbledore asked Russ gently.

"They… didn't get… me."

"No, but you were on your way up there when it happened. If Master Wilkes had not been there, they might have gotten you. Had you thought about that?"

Russ nodded. He'd thought of little else since the attack occurred. The thought of what might have happened to himself was intensely frightening. The headmaster seemed to realize it. The thought of what might have happened to Lily was worse, but that had to be concealed.

"Professor Slughorn," Dumbledore said. "Would you see that this young man gets safely back to Slytherin house? He has had a rather unpleasant day."

Russ followed Slughorn back to the dormitories where he became the center of attention for those back from Hogsmeade. Everyone wanted details on what had happened to Aaron, and suddenly Russ felt himself part of the house, one of the group, for it was Gryffindor that was now the common enemy.

Aaron himself was back in the common room in time to go up to the Great Hall for supper.

Slytherin house went to supper en masse, to show their distrust in the honor of Gryffindor. Third and fourth years stood as bodyguards next to first and second years while the older students acted as perimeter guards. Russ's 'protector' was Avery, the student who'd attacked him in the lavatory. It didn't make him feel safer.

Rabastan Lestrange came and stood beside him, whispering in Russ's ear, "Which ones attacked Wilkes?"

"I don't… know. I didn't… see them," Russ replied. "They w…ore masks."

"You heard them, didn't you? If they were first years, you'd know the voices."

Russ couldn't explain to this older house mate that he knew who the Gryffindor attackers were, but couldn't say anything because he didn't want the possibility of involving a Gryffindor girl. He knew it was Black and Potter from the train, and Lily knew it was Black and Potter from the train, but if Russ identified them, then Black and Potter might start watching him, and he wouldn't be able to see Lily anymore.

"I was… too far… away. I couldn't… hear," Russ told the prefect.

Lestrange went away, muttering 'dumb half-breed' under his breath.

Because of the situation, Russ was forced to stay and eat supper with his house instead of going off by himself. This gave him the chance to watch as Lily pointedly refused to sit near either Black or Potter and turned away from both of them in distaste. Russ loved watching it, though he fervently hoped the two boys wouldn't deduce anything from Lily's behavior.

Back in the dormitory at the end of the supper, there was a semblance of patching things up with Aaron. "They told me you were the one that chased them off," Aaron said.

"I made… noise, and they… ran."

"How come you didn't fight them?"

"I can't… fight."

"You fought us in the lavatory. A whole bunch of us. How come you didn't make their noses bleed?"

Russ looked at the ground and shrugged. Aaron shrugged too. "Well, thanks anyway. At least you got them to stop." Then Aaron went to his own bed and put out his light.

_Sunday, October 31, 1971 - Halloween (two days before the full moon)_

Sunday was Halloween, and the Great Hall that morning was already festooned with black and orange, with pumpkins, and with silhouette figures of black cats, witches, crescent moons, and broomsticks.

Halloween was an alien holiday to Russ. They'd never celebrated it in his town, and it held no memories for him. For him the great autumn celebration was Bonfire Night when they paraded the Guy and roasted potatoes. This particular Halloween was like being in prison, for the combined students of Slytherin continued to express internal solidarity and external distrust by banding together, and he was not allowed to be alone all day, especially since he'd been the one who'd interrupted the foul deeds of Gryffindor and could therefore be presumed to be a target of retaliation.

The table that evening was loaded with sweets, which Russ didn't want to eat because he knew they'd upset his stomach. He was forced to accept them, however, since for the moment a hefty percentage of Slytherin students were still congratulating him on foiling a Gryffindor plot, and presented offerings of cake, candy, and caramel covered apples.

The being congratulated was nice. The eating sweets all evening had him in the lavatory later throwing up, but this time there was no teasing. Everyone was really quite sympathetic about it.

The next day Nelson came with the monthly message from Nana. Russ took the blue envelope outside to open and read it.

_Russ_

_I didn't send yesterday because your mum says Halloween is a big thing at your school. Did you enjoy it?_

_Your mum is concerned about what you said about Slytherin. She says if they give you grief about your dad, you just forget what she said about being nice. They don't deserve it. She hopes you didn't forget how to take care of yourself._

_Your dad says he's 'pleased as punch' that you gave them what-for. That's what he'd expect from his boy, and he's proud of you. He says you just remember that Nel Tarleton was a featherweight, too, and one lung to boot. He won two titles on pluck and skill, and your dad says you've got the pluck and the skill. You just keep giving them what-for._

_This grandmother is the same as always, but misses her assistant brewer. The other one thought your brain might do with a little exercise and sends you a gift._

_Nana_

Russ took his letter to the lakeside at lunch time to think about it, and by supper he had a reply for Nelson to take back.

_Dear Nana,_

_Thank you for the letter. Halloween was not so good because some Gryffindors thought they could push us around, but we faced them down. Tell Mum I already remembered what she told me about taking care of myself, and I'm doing it. Things are getting better. And I remember what Dad told me about Nella, so I'm sticking all fifteen rounds._

_I made a little mistake about Potions. The headmaster came into class and caught me hiding a good one. I think maybe he knows. But the professor's so thick, I don't think he'll ever catch on, so I'm probably all right._

_Thank Gra for the puzzle book. I like the logic ones best. I miss you, too. I'd like to be somewhere I didn't have to botch potions._

_Russ_

_Saturday, November 6, 1971_

Slytherin house never did find out who the boys were that attacked Aaron. They were told that the two were identified and punished, but Dumbledore and the heads of houses wanted no retaliatory feud started over the incident and refused to give Aaron or his house mates the names. Since neither Aaron nor Russ could name the attackers, the matter was forced to stop there. Slytherin was not satisfied.

The Saturday after Halloween was the first Quidditch match of the season, and by tradition it was between Slytherin and Gryffindor. Under the circumstances, things were tense, and it was probably a good thing that at breakfast and lunch the two houses were separated by Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw.

Russ met Lily right after breakfast in their meeting room on the third floor, but all she could talk about was Quidditch. For the first time in all their years of friendship, Lily confessed to Russ that she was a devoted fan of the Red Devils of Manchester, and that one of the things she missed most at Hogwarts was football. One of the things that reconciled her to being sorted into Gryffindor, apparently, was that the red and gold of Gryffindor matched the red and yellow of the crest of Manchester United.

When the whole school marched down to the Quidditch pitch for the game, Lily firmly surrounded by other Gryffindor students and clearly enjoying herself, Russ did not go. Instead he slipped into the corridor where the unused classrooms were, snuck into one, and waited until the Castle was empty. Then he scurried out the front doors and down the narrow path on the face of the cliff to the lake side.

It was cold, but otherwise pleasant, the cliff itself shielding Russ from the cheering that rose in the house stands as the game started. Russ had no intention of being in the middle of a crowd of yelling, pushing students, and was quite content alone. He was trying to work out a new spell that would throw things at an attacker from another direction than his own, to make them think he had help. He thought it might come in handy if he was ever attacked as Aaron had been. The two Gryffindor students hadn't been as brave when they thought someone besides Aaron was approaching.

Russ decided to start with stones. He was pretty good at throwing stones, his father having taught him to bag birds and coneys out on the moors. He searched the narrow beach for a good one, the right shape and weight, then looked around for a target.

The beach didn't offer too many good targets, but nearby there was the forest. That might be a place to experiment. Picking up more stones as he went, Russ studied the trees on the forest's edge. Several were about the girth of a human being, and would give him an accurate size to work with.

The first thing he had to do was work out the mass involved. Hefting the stone, he concentrated and cast a levitation spell. Since he was close enough to the stone to focus easily, he didn't bother using his wand. Satisfied with the force he'd need to lift it, he tried the stone to examine the force required to toss it and the trajectory it would follow. With practiced ease, he shot the stone at one of the lower branches of a nearby tree.

"Here! What're ya doing there? Ya hadn't ought t' be throwing stones at birds, ya know!"

Russ wheeled, startled at the gruff voice that had come out of nowhere, and found himself face to face with the monster who'd lifted him into the boat on his first night. Except, of course, he knew the monster's name was Hagrid and that he was the keeper of the grounds.

"I… wasn't," he stammered.

"Wasn't? Sure looked like ya was to me. Wha' cha chucking rocks for if not at birds?"

"Just… throwing one. No… bird."

"That's better. Why ain't ya watching the Quidditch game with yer mates?"

"Don't… want to."

"That don't sound right. All boys want t' watch Quidditch. Didn't yer mum an' dad ever take ya t' a Quidditch game?"

Russ shook his head, this question at least not needing a vocal reply. He let the rest of his carefully gathered stones drop to the ground.

"Oho!" said Hagrid. "More 'n one. You was going huntin' in the forest, then? That's two things. Huntin' birds and goin' into the forest. You oughtn't t' be doing either."

"I… wasn't… hunting."

"Ya look kinda cold. Whyn't ya come with me an' I'll fix ya somewhat warm."

There was no choice. Russ reluctantly followed Hagrid to his hut for a cup of hot tea.

"I don't know where ya got yer ideas from, but that boy ain't nothing like Tom was, with all his smooth talk an' easy answers. Don't know if it's the stutterin' or somethin' else, but he won't hardly open his mouth at all, and he's nervous an' shy t' boot."

"What did you talk about?" Dumbledore asked.

"I talked about Hogwarts an' how was he doing in classes. He didn't hardly say a thing. Drank a little tea. Didn't eat nothing. It ain't natural f'r a boy his age not t' be hungry. No wonder he's knee-high t' a goblin. Was Eileen that solitary?"

"I do not recall what she was like at that age. It is very possible, as she never did have a large number of friends. Perhaps I should ask Professor Mullein about her. If we have more information about the mother, it may give us insight into the son. Thank you, Hagrid, for bringing this information."

"Just like t' be helpful."

The next day Lily could talk about nothing but Quidditch. All during their morning meeting it was snitch this, and quaffle that, and Chasers, and Seekers… It didn't help that Gryffindor had won. Probably the worst thing was having Lily so enthusiastic about her house's victory. If Slytherin had won, Russ would never have exulted over Lily the way she did over him.

It wasn't until Lily was nearly talked out that Russ realized that Lily wasn't exulting over him. She was exulting Gryffindor over Slytherin, and for some reason she didn't connect Russ with Slytherin in this at all. For her, he was like some neutral outsider that she was recounting the exciting moments of the game to. Gryffindor had beaten Slytherin, but that had nothing to do with Lily's friend Russ.

Russ didn't know whether to be pleased or depressed by Lily's attitude. In a way, it was good because she could share with him her excitement over things like Quidditch without worrying about whether or not he agreed with her. Russ rather liked that because it made him more of a friend. On the other hand, it meant that Lily didn't think about the rest of his life, about what it was like to live in Slytherin house, at all. For her, he didn't exist except in their weekly meetings.

That made Russ think about himself and his attitude. Did he think about Lily at all except in terms of their weekly meetings? He realized that he knew almost nothing about her daily life. He started watching her dorm mates, wondering what it was like living with them, thinking about Lily as a whole person and not just his friend.

Russ's encounter with Hagrid didn't stop him from working on new spells. By the end of term in December, his Rixno spells were working well, and he could throw stones, sticks, dirt, water and, with the first fall of snow, snowballs. The only problem was that this was primarily an outdoor spell since he had trouble picking up anything heavy with it, though indoors books were a possibility.

End of term brought a profound change to Hogwarts, since everybody went home for the holidays. Everybody but Russ, that is. Even Lily left, going back to Lancashire to be with her parents and Petunia. They were going to meet her in London and stay there for a few days, then go back to Pendle for Christmas and the New Year.

Everybody but Russ… Well, that was not exactly true. Two fifth year Slytherin girls stayed to study for their OWLs, and there were in all seven other students from Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, and Hufflepuff. Then there were Headmaster Dumbledore, Professors Slughorn, Flitwick, McGonagall, and Mullein, Madam Pince and Madam Deering, Hagrid, and Filch.

On the twenty-second, two days after everyone else had left, Slughorn summoned Russ to his office just before dinner time.

"What's the matter with you, boy?" the Professor asked after Russ shut the door and came to stand in front of his desk. "Are you sick or something?"

It was Russ's second time in the office, the first being for his very short beginning of term interview, and he was decidedly uncomfortable. "No… sir," he replied.

Slughorn stared at him for a moment. "You just remember to be respectful, Master Snape. Now if you're not sick, why aren't you eating?"

"I… am… eating… sir."

This brought another stare, though a more sympathetic one. "Do you always talk like that?"

"Yes… sir."

"Humph. You should speak up more in class. Give it some exercise. That'd take care of it. Now, what and where are you eating, because you're not doing it in the Great Hall, and the headmaster has taken notice. It's rude to avoid us all, especially when we're such a small group."

"Yes… sir."

Slughorn didn't notice that Russ hadn't answered the question. "It's time to go up for supper now, and you're coming with me. You'll sit at the table like a well-behaved young man, you'll eat what's put before you, and you'll speak when spoken to. I won't have the headmaster regard Slytherin house in an unfavorable light. Do you understand?"

"Yes… sir."

Russ meekly followed Slughorn out of the dungeons into the Great Hall. Most of the others were already there, so they were all looking at him, and he blushed with embarrassment.

"He's fine, Albus," Slughorn announced, clapping Russ on the shoulder. "Just wanted to do a little extra studying. I told him all work and no play… So he's happy to join us. Sit here next to me, Master Snape. Fill your plate."

Placed securely at Slughorn's left, Russ had no choice but to obey, and he tentatively took morsels from the less exotic dishes and put them on his plate. Slughorn grunted, then reached across and loaded the plate with more food. "A growing boy needs a good appetite," he said.

Suddenly, Russ understood that Slughorn was like his father. He, Russ, was doing something wrong and, as he always did with his father, he was making Slughorn angry. Now he had to try to do the right thing, or he would make Slughorn angrier and force Slughorn to punish him. He quickly picked up a fork and took a bite of sweet potato pudding.

It was thick with cream and butter, and cloyingly sweet. Russ knew it was going to make him sick, but he had to force himself to eat it to show Slughorn he was being good. He took another bite. Slughorn was in conversation with Mullein now, and had ceased watching, but he would notice if the plate remained full. Reluctantly, Russ took a third bite.

Someone was watching him. Glancing around out of the corners of his eyes, Russ realized that it was Dumbledore. When he looked back at his plate, the sweet potato pudding was gone. Instead there was a manageable amount of plainer food, something that Russ could deal with.

Russ stared at the plate, eyes round with surprise, then shot another sideways glance at Dumbledore. Was it his imagination, or did the headmaster wink at him? Russ didn't dare look again to be sure.

Another mysterious thing about the dinner was that Russ never had to talk. The three times a teacher asked him a question, somehow Dumbledore entered the conversation and turned it away. No one even seemed to notice that Russ had not responded. Beginning to relax, Russ found that he was able to finish his food to the point of satisfying Slughorn. At the earliest possible moment, he excused himself and escaped back to the Slytherin dormitories.

Night in Slytherin house was so far very pleasant with all the boys gone. In fact, Russ had taken advantage of the opportunity to search the house thoroughly on the very first day of the break. Thoroughly was, of course, a relative term. He hadn't touched the beds or belongings of his dorm mates, nor had he entered any of the other dormitories. That wouldn't have been right. That there may or may not have been protective spells was irrelevant. What he had checked were the corridors, the boys' lavatory, and the common room.

He found that he could not identify the springy, translucent material that allowed light to filter through the lake water to the house beneath. He found that there had once, many years earlier, been a fierce fight outside the girls' dormitory farthest from the common room. The jambs and lintel were scarred by burning spells that had come from inside the dorm. He found that the scrolling of the rock surface around the great fireplace was really the marks left by generations of students scratching their initials into the stone, which had been painted over and now appeared part of the decoration, but could still be read as initials up close.

Bathing in the empty lavatory was delicious and decadent, and Russ hoped that every Christmas and Easter break for all of his seven years would be as devoid of other students as this one was. There was no bathroom in his own home, and there was never enough hot water in the sink by the toilet – aside from the fact that hot water cost money – but here at Hogwarts during the break Russ could stretch out his legs and submerge himself, and let the warmth sink into his very bones, with no fear that anyone would ever see his back. The peace it brought him made him want to cry.

This night, for a contented hour, Russ forgot all about Slughorn, Dumbledore, sweet potato pudding, or his home, and luxuriated in the warm water. Then he toweled himself dry, put on his pajamas and bathrobe, and padded barefoot back to the dorm. There he read another of the books he was constantly checking out of the library – this one on vampires – and finally went to sleep.

The next morning Russ was up early, and was almost out the door of Slytherin house into the dungeons before he remembered that Slughorn would be watching him at breakfast. The thought put a brake on his movements, but there was no avoiding the fact that he had to eat breakfast in the Great Hall, so he continued reluctantly on his way.

Only a few of the teachers and two of the students were there ahead of him. Russ considered for a moment and decided he would get into the least trouble if he sat exactly where Slughorn had placed him the evening before. Professor Mullein took his usual seat and wished him 'good morning.' The table was beginning to fill.

Then a form settled in the seat next to him, and Russ realized with a shock that it was Dumbledore. The headmaster immediately struck up an earnest conversation with Professor Flitwick concerning the effect prestidigitation had on performing spells, about which Russ understood nothing. Slughorn arrived, and Dumbledore beamed up at him beatifically.

"Horace, I seem to have appropriated your place. Do you mind switching seats for the meal? It has been a while since Filius and I could chat." Slughorn moved to the head chair. Food appeared on the table.

"Have you ever tried kippered herring?" a voice spoke near Russ's ear, and he realized it was Dumbledore's. He nodded in response, not sure what to do or say.

"The kipper over there looks quite nice," continued Dumbledore. "That is, if you feel like kipper this morning." Then he continued his conversation with Flitwick.

Kipper was what Russ had eaten in the railway restaurant, during his last breakfast with his mother before he boarded the Hogwarts express. He took some, together with bacon, toast, and eggs. It was a lot for him, but it reminded him suddenly of his mum and that morning at King's Cross.

A few minutes later, Dumbledore said, "How is it?"

"It's very… good, sir," Russ managed.

"Excellent!" said Dumbledore, as if Russ had just recited a prize-winning speech. "Maybe I'll have some, too." He helped himself to kipper and turned once more to Flitwick.

During the rest of the meal, Dumbledore requested that Russ pass the butter, a feat accomplished without talking, asked two questions that could be responded to with a nod or a shake of the head and once, just once, said, "What do you find most pleasant about Christmas break, Master Snape?"

"Less people," Russ replied, and Dumbledore nodded in concurrence.

"I, too, prefer fewer people around. It offers a measure of peace and quiet," he said.

When breakfast was over, the Snape boy said, "Excuse me… please," and scurried out of the Great Hall. Dumbledore watched him go with a mixture of concern and tenderness. _Not Riddle. Most blessedly not Riddle at all._

Then, later, from the windows of his office, Dumbledore watched as the tiny dark figure appeared from the direction of the main doors and approached the cliff face. Unerringly it found the steep, narrow, downward path and disappeared from view. Vowing to finish the rest of his business later, Dumbledore hurried down the staircases and onto the cliff edge in time to see the boy head right, along the lake shore to a stand of trees beyond the outermost bounds of the Quidditch pitch. Above him and slightly behind, Dumbledore followed.

As Dumbledore stalked his small quarry, he began to speculate, and the first point of speculation was as to Master Snape's direction, for he was definitely heading toward trees but toward a smaller stand of trees farther away than the forbidden forest. Was he overzealous in obeying school rules, or was he trying to avoid Hagrid? Dumbledore tended to think the second more likely than the first, but reserved judgment.

Another major question – why go as far as the trees at all during a time when the school was nearly empty – was soon answered. The trees were targets. The boy looked around, but Dumbledore made sure that he himself was not visible to the viewer below. Then Master Snape attacked a tree notable for its resemblance in size to a teenage boy.

The attack was with snow, which fortunately had no adverse affect on the tree whatsoever. The snow, in fact, was of minor concern to Dumbledore. What attracted his attention was that the attack was silent, and there was no evidence of a wand. Dumbledore watched, fascinated, as apparently random flurries of snow swirled against the target, gradually coalescing into more compact clouds. Young Snape then used his wand, still in silence, and the clouds of snow instantly formed into tight snowballs, striking the tree with unerring accuracy.

There followed demonstrations of rock throwing, where a much more closely targeted pattern could be observed, and of tossing up amounts of leaves and other small debris. This last supported Dumbledore in his suspicions that the exercise was one intended for defense rather than offense, since the dirt and leaf blind would be more useful in distracting an enemy while trying to escape than as a weapon of attack.

It was clearly a demonstration of variations on one basic spell, the astounding parts being the nonverbal casting of the spell and the novelty. The boy had invented it. No, to be more precise, the boy was in the process of inventing it. Dumbledore had just watched a session where a crude new spell was being refined. It was impressive. It was more than impressive. Most older wizards never attempted to create spells, yet this child was clearly no novice.

It was, however, nothing compared to what came next. Suddenly the wand was gone – Where does he keep it? Dumbledore thought – and the boy stood quite still. Nothing happened. Nothing until a small shower of pebbles skittered down the cliff face. Dumbledore was intrigued. Master Snape's wand appeared again, and again he concentrated. This time small, loose rocks near Dumbledore were dislodged as well and rolled a short distance. Along the adjacent cliff the rustle of pebbles and the soft thud of clumps of snow were clearly audible.

_Did the cliff vibrate? Did that child just cause a small earthquake?_ Dumbledore continued watching, but the boy was now finished. He turned and walked back along the lakeshore, Dumbledore once again following, until Master Snape got to the narrow path up the cliff face. Then Dumbledore waited until the boy was inside the Castle before he, too, entered and went up to his office. He had a lot to think about.

Russ was extremely pleased with his practice session. His throwing spells were improving measurably, and he considered them nearly complete. He was a bit disappointed that the focus needed for snowballs and rocks required a wand, but that was not uncommon with targeted spells. The Seismos spell at the end was just the icing on the cake.

Until the previous year, Russ had never even thought about earthquakes. Then, that Monday evening at the beginning of June 1970, his father 'd come home with a newspaper, and there it was on the front page – the earthquake that sent a landslide to bury a town in South America, killing forty thousand people. He got to read all about it for several days, too, for a disaster in a foreign land was one of the few reasons his dad was willing to spend money on newspapers at all, since he got most of his local and national news at the pub.

For weeks Russ immersed himself in fault lines, plate tectonics, and seismic research. He didn't begin to understand it all, but the concept was so alluring that he began trying his own miniature imitations, mostly by setting up vibrations radiating from a circle around his feet. It wasn't a real earthquake, but it had a similar feel for a very short distance. Today he'd gotten almost exactly the result he wanted. The only problem was that he absolutely needed a wand to focus that much energy. Russ didn't like having to depend on the wand for so many things. It was a point of vulnerability.

That evening Russ walked behind Slughorn into the Great Hall and sat next to him to obediently eat his dinner. Quiet and shy, he kept his eyes on his plate, answered briefly when spoken to, and pleased Slughorn by his polite and respectful demeanor.

"How are your studies coming, boy?" Slughorn asked him during a lull in the adult conversation.

"Fine… sir," Russ replied.

"His work in Transfiguration is showing improvement," added Professor McGonagall kindly. "If he continues to apply himself, he may become quite a competent spell caster."

"More than competent, I'd say," chimed in Flitwick. "His wand work in my class is very good."

"Excellent!" cried Slughorn. "Excellent! And if you work a little harder at your potions, well… We may make a wizard of you yet!"

"Thank… you, sir," said Russ demurely.

Dumbledore followed the exchange in silence, wondering with some amusement how the others would react if they saw what he had seen that day.


	8. Chapter 8 – More Problems

**A Difference in the Family: The First Year – More Problems**

Nana's letter at the end of December contained bad news. The miners union wasn't able to negotiate pay raises, and if talks stopped, there would be a nationwide strike. Russ's dad had never gone out on strike, but Russ knew that if you did, you had no money until the strike was over. He didn't know how his parents would make it if there was no money coming from his dad's work, and he prayed there wouldn't be a strike.

Then the break was over, and the students returned to the school. Once again Lily smiled and managed a hidden wave from the Gryffindor table. Once again Russ took food from the table in the Great Hall at mealtime and slipped away somewhere else to eat it. He'd gotten careless during the break, however, and on Tuesday he left his notebooks and quills in the dormitory during breakfast. As soon as he'd eaten, he rushed down into the dungeons to Slytherin house to retrieve them. As he entered, he heard soft voices in the common room, one of which was Aaron's.

"I said lousy muggles. I think that was why."

"Lousy gets you lice," said Rabastan Lestrange. "That makes some sense. So you think it was the insult?" When Aaron paused, the voice grew harsher. "This time the truth, Wilkes. No hedging."

"I destroyed something. That did it."

Russ set his books on a side table with a thud, and the voices stopped. He didn't want any fifth years thinking he was spying on them. He hurried down the passage to his dorm, then back out again with notebooks and quills wondering if he would be facing a fight in the common room. But the common room was quiet when he passed through on his way out. Lestrange was sitting in front of the fire while Aaron was finishing an assignment.

That evening, a select group of boys began to notice Russ in a way that was different from before. When, just before curfew, he got down to the wall that was the entrance to Slytherin house, two sixth years pushed him aside saying, "Out of the way, half-breed. Purebloods go first." In the common room as he passed by, a seventh year sneered, "We need one dormitory with a cage, just for the mongrels."

Russ pretended to ignore them and went straight through into his own dormitory. Aaron and Evan looked away, Aloysius looked smug, and Mitchell looked embarrassed. Russ said nothing, but went directly to his own bed and pulled the curtains. Something had changed subtly over the Christmas break. Russ had no idea why.

On Saturday, Russ went up to breakfast only to find that outside was a swirling snowstorm. That was a disappointment, since he'd hoped to spend the afternoon practicing his spells under the trees. Now he had to find someplace to be that wasn't already occupied by other students. This would be harder than usual since everyone else was equally castle-bound due to the snow. It was a problem he pushed aside to deal with later, however, since the most important thing that morning was that he would see Lily again.

Russ got to the third floor corridor and their special room first. Lily came in ten minutes later.

"Oh, Severus," she exclaimed as soon as the door was closed, "I had the best Christmas ever!"

"I'm glad," said Russ. "What did you do?"

"We went... you'll never guess! We went to Mallorca!"

"Where's that?"

"It's an island near Spain. It was so nice. The weather was pleasant, and it was sunny most of the time, and the water was so blue. We didn't get to see all the flowers – that'll start in a month – but it was so nice to get away from foggy old Britain. Petunia met this Spanish boy, and mum and dad had fits, but she had a good time."

"How come your parents took you there?"

"Dad's got a new job with a company in Manchester. He drives there every day, and it pays better, so now he thought maybe we could see something of the world. I really like seeing the rest of the world. Maybe soon we can go to France, or Switzerland."

Russ didn't like this idea very much, but he didn't say so. Instead he told Lily how he'd shared the table with the professors, and Dumbledore'd talked to him. Lily was impressed, and that made Russ feel important. They didn't stay together for very long because the next day, Sunday, was Russ's twelfth birthday, and Lily hinted that she had something special planned. They said goodbye, and Russ went looking for a place to practice his spells.

All the extra classrooms on the ground floor were occupied by small study groups. The library was full. Regular classrooms had tutoring sessions, and the Great Hall had clusters of students scattered around it. Russ stood for a few minutes by a window on the second floor looking down at what would have been the ice covered lake if he could have seen that far through the snow. Then he decided to try the dungeons.

The dungeons were a labyrinth of corridors and rooms on several levels going down to Slytherin house and the lake bottom. Russ had explored the corridors, but he hadn't been into all the rooms. Now he decided to look for one, maybe far from the general stairs. It was a terrible thing not to be able to be alone on the day before your birthday.

The problem with the dungeon rooms at these levels was that they were all windowless. At least the Potions room in the first dungeon had little slits of windows up near the ceiling. Below, everything that branched off the stairway was dark.

No one was on the stairs to see him, so Russ lit a Lumos spell and moved cautiously along a passage to his right, further under the hill. A locked door, another locked door, and then a storeroom full of casks and barrels. The fourth door was also unlocked, and inside Russ found crates, bulging burlap sacks, and a table and chair. There were ledger books on the table.

Russ didn't examine the ledgers, since they weren't his. He did move them aside to create space for his own books, and sat down to study. It was immediately apparent that either the chair was too short, or the table too tall, but it was definitely the wrong height for Russ. He stood away from the table and cast a spell to lengthen the legs of the chair, then settled in to study and work on his new spells. The absolute solitude of the storeroom was a blessing.

It was a solitude fated not to last. After only ten minutes, Russ heard a footstep in the passage outside the room, and a moment later the door opened. It was a Slytherin student, a third year girl with dark hair and heavy lidded eyes. Russ had noticed her before, since she was always with a group of the older students, cousins of some kind, lounging in the common room. Most of the others called her Black, but her close relatives called her Bella. She was the one whose sister had recently married a muggle.

"Oh," she said in surprise. "I didn't think anyone would be here."

"I'm… sorry," said Russ, now nervous. "I'll… go." He stood and began to gather his books.

"No, that's all right," she replied. "You were here first." There was a pause as they stood unmoving, Russ by the table and Bella blocking the doorway. "You're one of the first years, aren't you," Bella said finally.

"Yes," was all Russ could manage.

Another pause, then "I'm Bella Black. What's your name?"

"Seve…rus Snape."

She laughed. "You don't look like a Severus. Someone named Severus should be stern and cold. Untouchable. You don't look untouchable. You seem kind of nice. Look, Saturday isn't for studying. Would you like to come to the common room and talk?"

The answer to the question was a most decided 'no.' Russ did not want to go to the common room to talk to anybody, especially not this pureblood he suspected of following him into the storeroom. But she was blocking his exit, and he had few options. "All… right," he said. She turned and led the way back to the stairs.

The Slytherin common room was fairly crowded – not surprising considering the weather – but the far corner, shielded from the view of the entrance by the fireplace, was mysteriously empty. Bella went straight to that corner, Russ trailing her obediently. She settled in a comfortable chair, and patted the end of the sofa next to her where Russ sat and waited.

"So, how do you like Hogwarts?" Bella smiled cheerfully.

"It's… all… right."

"How are your classes? Are you learning a lot in your Charms class?"

"Yes."

"What, for example?"

That required a real answer, and Russ paused. "Levi… tation," he said finally.

"Oh, excellent. I love levitation. Show me some. Levitate, let me see… levitate that." Bella pointed to a small bowl of candies.

Bewildered now, Russ let his wand slip into his hand. Levitation was an early first-year spell. Even the most inept wizard could do it by the end of the autumn term. He looked at the bowl, then at Bella. Her gaze was fixed on his wand. Russ decided she would be less suspicious if he could do the spell than if he couldn't, so he pointed his wand at the candy dish, swished and flicked in the prescribed manner, and said, _"Wingardium Leviosa!"_ The little dish rose slowly into the air.

"Bravo!" Bella cried, and clapped her hands. Then she pointed to a lamp. "Do that one!" At Bella's command, Russ levitated a lamp, a chair, a small table, and a picture on the wall. Then another third year student came over, one Russ recognized as Rabastan Lestrange's brother Rodolphus.

"Putting your mongrel through his paces?" he asked Bella casually, as Russ let his wand hand fall to his side and stared at the floor.

"You have the manners of a giant, Dolph," Bella responded. "He's no mongrel, just a puppy dog, and he's nice enough to entertain me on dull day. Which is more than you've done. Now go away and leave us alone until you can act like a decent person around others."

"Sure, Bella," Rodolphus laughed. "If you're simple enough to be entertained by a half-breed jester, that's your business." He leaned forward and picked up the candy dish, searching carefully for just the right sweet. "Just let me know when you're ready for something a bit more upscale." Still laughing, he headed in the direction of the wall entrance to Slytherin house.

The entrance was about six steps up from the common room floor. As Rodolphus started up the steps, he suddenly caught his foot on one and fell forward, throwing his hands in front of him to break his fall. The dish clattered to the floor, candy skittering across the stones.

Every other student in the common room looked around at the noise, and Bella was on her feet at once, heading to the entrance to help him. No one was paying any attention to Russ, who moved quickly around the edge of the common room into the corridor and to his own dormitory.

"I thought you were going to let me work on it," Bella said icily when the little group of three met fifteen minutes later in one of the study hall classrooms. "I was doing fine. He was beginning to show off."

"Baby tricks!" Rodolphus scoffed. "You're not going to find out anything that way. You're still on probation, you know. We have an assignment. If you can't produce results…"

"We'll get nothing if he hates us!" Bella retorted.

"No? The only reason we knew anything before today was because he hated Wilkes enough to lash out!"

"And it's still all we know," interjected Rodolphus's older brother Rabastan, who'd been listening to the exchange in silence. "We're no wiser than before." He stopped because the other two were looking at him in a fashion that could only be called gloating. "All right, then. What did you learn?"

Rodolphus chuckled. "I didn't stumble. I was thrown. Something lifted me about two inches into the air so that my foot would catch the step. Don't look at me like that, I know when I've been levitated. Ask Bella."

"He's right, Rabs. Snape kept his head down the whole time, but he was watching out of the corner of his eye. I was watching him. I know he did something, but it was nonverbal. A first year who can do nonverbal spells."

"Well we know that," said Rabastan. "Wilkes already told us he could do nonverbal. Though I wish I'd seen you fall flat on your face." He grinned at his younger brother.

"There's more," said Bella quietly. "He's a dueler." The two boys stared at her. "I mean it," she continued. "He hides his wand somewhere in his robes so he can get it into his hand unseen, in a second. I asked him to levitate that dish, and he had a wand in his hand. But he didn't use it to trip you. He didn't need it."

Rodolphus let out a slow, quiet whistle. "Father will want to know. We're going to have to test this. When do you think we can do it?"

"Not right away," Rabastan replied. "We can't be caught attacking a younger student or we could be expelled. It'll have to be at the right place and the right time. Besides, we're supposed to go slow. We've got a couple of years, and we're not supposed to scare him off."

"I thought you said we were supposed to push him around," said Bella.

"Father said to do what we could to test him, make sure he really has talent, and then hold him. If getting angry is what makes him fight back, then get him angry, but make sure it stays in house. They want him to look for help inside Slytherin, not outside."

"I guess that's your job, Bella," said Rodolphus.

"Yes," said Bella. "That's my job."

"And don't forget," Rabastan added, facing her directly, "you're not in yet. With a sister disgracing herself and a cousin in Gryffindor, you still have to prove that muggle loving doesn't run in the family."

"Don't worry about me," Bella smiled back at him. "As far as I'm concerned, blood traitors don't exist. He'll find he has no one more loyal than me. All I ask is a chance to prove it."

"See that you do," said Rabastan.

_Sunday, January 9, 1972 (the day after the last quarter)_

The next morning, Russ was up early and out of Slytherin house before anyone else was awake. He took his History of Magic book and went up to the third floor corridor to wait for Lily. He wasn't hungry, and didn't want to go into the Great Hall in any case.

"Happy Birthday!" Lily greeted Russ two hours later, and hugged him. "I got up early today just to surprise you, but you beat me up here. I guess that means you didn't eat anything." She was carrying a small basket.

Russ shook his head, then smiled as Lily began to unload the basket. It was full of wonderful things, hard boiled eggs, bread rolls, and sausages, a little flask of tea, another of pumpkin juice, and a sweet roll with a tiny candle on it. This time Lily used a spell to light the candle.

They spent most of the morning together just chatting. Lily did most of the talking, Russ only speaking to encourage her or if he could think of something pleasant to say. He didn't want to spoil Lily's fun by telling her depressing news, and he didn't want her to know how scary the day before had been. He was turning into a very good listener. By the time Russ and Lily were finished celebrating the fact that he was twelve, it was nearly lunch time.

The next day Russ got an owl from Nana. The note contained a brief, belated wish for a happy birthday, and bad news. The day before, while Russ had been celebrating with Lily, British miners had gone out on a nationwide strike. Toby was out of work.

To make matters worse, after that life for Russ in Slytherin house became more and more miserable. It seemed as if everyone was conspiring to make him feel bad. It started with Aaron and Evan.

"Why are you always hiding behind those bed curtains?" Aaron accused him that same evening. "Is there something wrong with you? Do you have some terrible skin disease or something?"

"It's the muggle blood," Evan sneered. "Muggles aren't like normal people. They have tails. Long mongrel tails that wag when they're happy."

"Maybe he's just neat and prissy like a girl."

"Maybe he is a girl."

"How about that, Miss Prissy? Is that why you won't take a bath or change clothes without hiding behind a curtain? Are you a girl? Miss Snape! That's what you are! Miss Prissy Snape." Aaron laughed about his own joke for the next fifteen minutes, until the lights went out and they went to sleep.

In Slytherin house, other students either ignored Russ completely, which was what he preferred, or they acted like they smelled something funny when he was around. Or they went out of their way to avoid touching him, as if he carried a loathsome disease. It was harder to keep clean because the little streams of water he had been using to wash with were frozen in the winter cold, so Russ started to get up around four-thirty every morning to be sure he could wash in peace. He wanted to be sure there wasn't any real smell for them to tease him about.

The only nice person in the whole house was Bella Black. She said 'good morning' and asked about his classes, and when she was talking to him, the others left him alone. They never had any long conversations, nor did they talk every day. It was just that when she was in the common room as he passed through, he felt a bit safer.

There was something that Bella had said to him that Russ was thinking about seriously. It was his name. Someone named Severus should be stern and cold. Untouchable. Russ wanted to be cold and unmoved by the taunts. He wanted to be untouchable, to be able to listen to the insults with calm superiority. _If I was Severus instead of Russ, I could do it._ He began to think of himself as this other person, this Severus.

"Severus?" Mitchell was following him out of the Great Hall. Severus turned and waited for him. "Could I ask you a favor?"

Severus regarded him with calculating dark eyes. Mitchell never teased him or insulted him. Mitchell was all right. "Sure," he replied. "What do you want?"

"I need help with some of my classes. I'm not really good at some of the things we have to learn. I mean, Charms and Transfiguration are all right, but Astronomy and Potions – I really need help with Astronomy and Potions. And you're so good at it…"

"Me? I'm barely getting passing marks in Potions."

Mitchell grinned. "You're weird. You're trying to get low marks. Just because old Slughorn can't see beyond the end of his nose doesn't mean the rest of us are blind. You could be top of the class if you wanted to, and do it without hardly trying."

In a way it was nice that someone recognized his abilities. Severus thought for a moment. "All right," he said at last. "I'll work with you on your assignments." The two boys began meeting in one of the unused classrooms on the sixth floor to do their homework and to practice potion-making techniques.

January flowed into February with relative normalcy. Lily's birthday was also on a Sunday, and this time Severus supplied the food and a piece of cake. He wrote frequently to Nana with messages for his parents since the strike was dragging out for weeks, and on February 9, the Prime Minister declared a state of emergency in Britain. Severus was worried sick about his mum and dad, but no one in Hogwarts even noticed that anything unusually was happening. It was like living on two different planets.

The next morning, however, Severus got his first inkling that something was wrong in the wizarding world as well. This came from an overheard conversation between two first year girls, Wilhelmina Alderton, whose father wrote for the _Daily Prophet_, and Sonya MacFusty of the Hebridean dragon-breeding MacFusties.

"It's going to be in the paper today," Wilhelmina was whispering to Sonya. "Father wanted me to know first so no one would surprise me."

Severus paused to rearrange the contents of his book bag.

"Where was it?" Sonya breathed excitedly.

"Right in the yard in front of his house. Not a mark on him. Flat on his back and staring at the sky."

"Wicked. What's Paladin going to do?"

"I don't know. I don't even know if they've told him yet. The _Prophet_ always gets the news before the family does."

"His own father. Wicked."

Severus continued up the stairs and into the Great Hall. Paladin. _That must be the Gryffindor first year – what's his name? Wintergreen? That's it – Paladin Wintergreen._ In the Great Hall the Gryffindor table was full, but ominously silent, many of the students glaring at the Slytherin table as if the students there were responsible for whatever had happened. Severus decided to stay for breakfast and find out.

While it was true that Slytherin and Gryffindor never talked to each other except in insult or challenge, Gryffindor did talk to Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff, and they talked to Slytherin, so the news was not long in coming. Paladin's father, Pellinor Wintergreen, had been found at midnight, stark dead in his own front garden, cause of death unknown. Paladin was with Dumbledore and would probably be leaving Hogwarts soon, perhaps permanently.

Gryffindor might be stern and withdrawn, but Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff, and Slytherin were discussing the news freely. That is, except for a few students at the Slytherin table who were uncharacteristically silent. Silent but with knowing eyes, Rabastan and Rodolphus Lestrange chief among them. Bella Black was also ominously quiet. Severus suspected this was because they already knew what had happened and had no reason to discuss it. Maybe a reason not to.

A quick glance around the table was revealing. Of the other first years, Aaron and Evan were equally quiet, as were Doris Gamp and Claudia Higgs. _So whatever source of information the Lestranges have, the four of them have, too._ Severus wondered what it was.

Later it became known that Paladin had left Hogwarts for good. He was, rumor had it, an only child, and his mother didn't want him far from her now that she'd lost her husband. That meant that the first year boys' dormitory in Gryffindor had only four students in it.

"Hey, it's my little puppy!" Bella said, looking up from her Transfiguration text at Severus, who had just come into the common room. She was sitting right in front of the entrance, as if waiting for him. "I've been hoping to talk to you. Here, sit next to me." She slid aside to make room on the sofa, and Severus gingerly sat down. "Tell me all the news," Bella went on, and though it made Severus nervous, it was also flattering to have her pay attention to him in such a kind way.

"There's… nothing new," Severus said quietly, looking down at his hands rather than at her.

"That isn't true. I've noticed you looking glum."

"It's just… what happened. So… fast."

"You mean about the Gryffindor boy? That's nothing for you to worry about. Besides, you've been worried about something for longer than that. Anything wrong in your family?"

"No," said Severus quickly. "No, they're… fine." For some reason he did not want Bella thinking about his family.

"I'm sure they are. And I'm sure they'll stay fine. Well, I'm glad nothing serious is troubling you." It was clearly a dismissal, so Severus got up and went into his dormitory room.

The next afternoon, Severus noticed Bella and the Lestrange brothers talking earnestly with Mitchell in a corner of the entrance hall. Severus continued on to his classes without stopping, wondering what the three of them would have to do with Mitchell.

Suddenly, in the last third of February, things began to look better. Nana send an extra letter on the twenty-second with a message from Gra that the Russians had sent an unmanned probe called Luna to the moon to pick up rocks. Nana supplemented it with word that the picketing (whatever that was) was called off because a settlement seemed near. The end of month letter came three days early, on Saturday the twenty-sixth. Russ ran up to the third floor to share it with Lily.

"That old miners' strike?" said Lily, wrinkling her nose. "My dad says it's blackmail. He says Mr. Heath says the miners are driving the country to economic ruin with their unreasonable demands. They've asked for a forty percent pay increase."

"Settled for less than twenty-five percent," countered Severus, who'd never heard Prime Minister Edward Heath's name mentioned before without the word 'bloody' in front of it. "And deserved it, too, all the years they've been bottom of the pay scale, and them doing the dangerous work."

"That's right," Lily struck back. "Your dad's one of those dirty pit men, isn't he?"

"And your dad's one of them lazy managers sipping tea in a posh office all day collecting money from the hard work of others!"

"Socialist agitator!"

"Capitalist bloodsucker!"

The two stomped away from their meeting place in high dudgeon, and refused to speak to each other for a good four hours. Then, across the intervening tables at lunch, Lily made a sign to meet again.

"I'm glad your dad's getting a pay raise," she said, and there was a note of contrition in her voice. "I guess I forgot all the things you didn't have all those years. Maybe now you can get a television."

"And miss watching the moon missions with you? Never." And so they made up and agreed to be friends again.

Things went well until the middle of March. Throughout that time, Severus and Mitchell studied together and worked together on assignments, but they weren't what is normally considered 'friends.' That was more because of what they didn't talk about. They never mentioned their families or their lives before Hogwarts. They never talked about other students. They never discussed their successes, disappointments, or plans. Theirs was a professional relationship, and they talked about their courses and their studies, and nothing else.

Severus found this perfectly normal, since he had never before shared any part of his life with another person his own age except Lily. For him, just having a study partner was a novel and enriching experience. There were occasions when it seemed that Mitchell might want to carry a conversation into more personal topics, but he always caught himself and backtracked before he could be accused of prying. Occasionally Severus saw Mitchell talking to Bella or the Lestrange brothers, but this didn't alarm him. They talked to everyone now.

Then, in March, Mitchell asked the first question. "What part of Britain are you from, anyway?" was the exact phrasing.

"Northern England," Severus replied.

"I'm from Hampshire myself. Never been north 'til I came here. What part?"

This was strange because Severus remembered having been asked this before. It was odd that Mitchell was asking again. "Lancashire," he replied, wondering if Mitchell just didn't recall.

"Merseyside?" Mitchell asked hopefully, and Severus realized the other boy knew something about muggle music.

"No," Severus answered. "Out in the... country."

What followed was even stranger, for Mitchell again asked where, and it seemed to Severus that Mitchell was pressuring him to give the name of his home town. This was something that Severus suddenly didn't want to do. London or Birmingham – that would have been all right, a city large enough to lose the entire school in. But a little Pendle town – that was too close, too vulnerable.

"Just… country," Severus told Mitchell after a moment of interrogation. "I don't… think it has a… name."

"Okay," Mitchell responded, and he seemed pleased.

Several days later the investigation resumed. "You know," Mitchell said, "I've been wondering since September what you did to give Aaron lice."

_I already told you what I did. Don't you remember? Or did you try what I told you and find out it wasn't right?_ "I didn't do... anything."

"Come on. You said you just thought the word lice, but that can't be it. At least it didn't work for me. Maybe you were lying and you didn't really give him the lice, but he didn't have lice when we got here. Where else would he get it?"

"I don't... know. Where do people... usually get lice?"

"Nowhere overnight. One minute, no lice. The next minute, lice. I didn't do it. I didn't know who did back then, but I thought it was you. Then you said it was you. Since then I've gotten to know all four of you in the dorm, and the others couldn't have done it. They're not good enough. The only one good enough to do it was you. So I want to know – What did you do to give him lice? And don't tell me you just thought the word 'lice' because I know it isn't true."

Severus thought for a minute. "Who do… you want to give… lice to?" he asked.

"Nobody, silly! I just want to know how to do it."

"I don't think… I should tell you. You… might use it to attack… one of my friends."

Mitchell laughed. "Me? Attack anyone? Besides, you don't have any friends but me."

Severus paused to think of an answer, then said, "How do… you know?"

Mitchell looked embarrassed. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make you feel bad. I just never saw you talking to anyone else."

Behind Mitchell, Severus saw Aaron enter the dormitory room. The air was suddenly charged with danger, and Severus immediately began to shut down. He couldn't ignore Mitchell, however. "Just because I don't talk to people in your presence doesn't mean I don't have friends," he said, not noticing Mitchell's sudden amazed stare.

It turned out that Aaron was looking for Mitchell. "She wants to see you," was all that he said, and Mitchell raced out of the dormitory to the common room, only to return twenty minutes later looking depressed and nervous. He lay down on his bed and didn't talk for the rest of the evening. Severus had no doubt who 'she' was, and watched Mitchell with a growing feeling of sympathy. It was now obvious that Mitchell was assigned to procure information about Severus. Sympathy did not, however, lead to any sense of obligation or desire to cooperate.

Life, which only a couple of weeks earlier had begun to improve, was becoming difficult again.

_Sunday, March 19, 1972 (three days before the first quarter)_

The third Sunday in March, Severus and Lily met as usual for a couple of hours after breakfast. Their chat was routine, except that they agreed that the weather had improved enough that, although it was still cold, they could resume meeting under the trees on the west side of the lake. Lily left first, and Severus followed several minutes afterwards.

He ran right into Aloysius, Evan, and Aaron. "Funny," said Aloysius as Aaron moved behind Severus and Evan watched his wand hand, "funny how we just saw a Gryffindor girl come out of the exact same corridor as you."

"I don't know what you're talking about," said Severus, his eyes dark and cold.

"That Gryffindor named Evans. She was with you. That corridor has a dead end. The only reason you two 'd be there so long is if you were together. Slytherins don't go with Gryffindor girls. Maybe we have to do something to make sure you remember that." Aloysius was enjoying threatening Severus. It showed.

"Maybe," Aloysius continued, "you should forget her. Wouldn't want anything to happen to her, now would we?"

Severus shook his head, and they let him go.

The next day was Monday, Potions day. This Monday the first years were making Forgetfulness Potions, which would be on their exams. Severus glanced around at the rest of the students as he set up his cauldron. The four Gryffindor boys (now that Wintergreen was gone) and the five Gryffindor girls didn't interest him at all, not even Lily. They weren't the cause of his problems or his pain. It was Slytherin that merited his attention. Even there, it wasn't the girls, just the boys. _Still, if you got in the way, then you got in the way._

Forgetfulness Potions. Severus smiled to himself. Considering what he'd just been told to do, forgetfulness was an apt and just revenge.

It would be easier if Severus had access to potions ingredients outside of class. Then he could brew things in secret, away from prying eyes. Since he didn't, he had to use this Potions class to make what he wanted, and he had to do it while at the same time making the assigned potion and under the full scrutiny of his house mates.

This time, Severus made no attempt to sabotage his own work. Instead he produced a perfect batch of Forgetfulness Potion in record time, bottled the required amount, and proceeded to divide what was left into beakers, making precisely five batches. With blatant audacity, he crossed the classroom to the supply cupboard, carrying several little vials on a small tray, and selected and measured ingredients from the cupboard into the vials. He was below Slughorn's radar, and he knew it. Slughorn didn't notice him at all.

Back at his table Severus carefully added various combinations of ingredients to each of the five beakers, then bottled and labeled each with care. When he was done, he cleaned his station and looked up. All of the Slytherin students were watching him, as was Lily.

Throughout the day, Severus was constantly aware that he was being spied on. Doris Gamp and Claudia Higgs were one team, and Aaron and Evan another. Aloysius would come by from time to time to talk to one or the other of them, and seemed to be directing the operation. Severus had no chance to get to Lily and tell her what had happened in the third floor corridor. After supper, Severus returned to his dormitory well before curfew to find that the others had been trying to open his footlocker. Trying, but not succeeding, though the reddened, rash-covered hands of Aaron and Evan left no doubt as to their persistence. Aloysius had been watching from his bed. Severus was pleased they were taking an interest in his potions.

Severus then spent a couple of days in the library compiling a list in his small, cramped handwriting. He consulted his notebook frequently, and kept changing the list, apparently oblivious to the students watching him. When finished, the list said

Blue – enhance Ch, Tr,

Green – enhance He, Po.

Yellow – enhance Ast, Hist, DA.

Purple – forget

Red – anti. to pur.

March was coming to an end, and the end of term tests loomed. Students all over Hogwarts were studying madly, hoping to go into the Easter break with the term successfully completed. On Saturday the twenty-fifth, Severus went early to breakfast and waited until Lily came, ate, and left the Hall. He hadn't told her about the threat of the previous weekend, partly because he'd been so closely watched, and partly because they'd already agreed to abandon the third floor and meet outside. After waiting a few minutes, he rose and left the Hall, too.

Aloysius and the third year named Avery were standing at the head of the stairs leading down into the dungeons. When he saw Severus, Aloysius smiled. Realizing immediately what was happening, Severus raced for the oak doors and burst through them into the pleasant spring morning. Lily stood on the lawn in front of the castle, her way to the cliff blocked by the Lestrange brothers, her retreat cut off by Aaron and Evan.

Rabastan's voice wasn't loud, but it was clear. "We're not going to hurt you. We're not going to touch you. We're not interested in you at all. We're just telling you what your own house mates would tell you if they knew. Go to them now, in fact, and ask them to help you meet a Slytherin boy. See what they do. They'll probably thank us." He looked over at the doors and saw Severus standing on the steps. "You can go now," Rabastan told Lily.

Lily turned and ran past Severus into the castle. She was beginning to cry.

Rabastan walked up to Severus and put an arm around his shoulders, steering the smaller boy down the steps and across the lawn toward the cliff. "It's for your own good," he explained gently. "Do you have any idea what the Gryffindor boys would do if they caught you meeting a Gryffindor girl? We're just trying to keep you out of trouble. Your own house is all the friends and family you need at Hogwarts. You should stick to your house."

"I… thought you… didn't like… mongrels."

Rabastan stiffened and looked down, turning Severus so they faced each other. "Don't get cheeky with me. I'm a prefect, and I…"

"What's going on here?" came a commanding voice from the castle entrance. It was the seventh year prefect Malfoy. Rabastan released Severus's shoulders as Malfoy approached them. The others backed away.

"I spotted a couple of your toadies standing sentry duty in the entrance hall," Malfoy continued, his dislike of Rabastan unmistakable, "and then a Gryffindor comes running in, in tears. What do I find outside but every piece of riffraff Slytherin has to offer."

"You'd better watch your step, Malfoy," replied Rabastan. "The world is changing. You don't want to end up obsolete."

"Obsolete? I don't think so. The wizarding world knows the difference between gold and dross. Why are you detaining this first year? What rules has he broken?"

"He's… Nothing."

"Good," said Malfoy. "Then he can go back inside and study. End of term's on us and we want all of Slytherin to get good marks. You," this was addressed to Severus, "get up to the library and work on your assignments."

"Yes, sir," Severus answered, and scurried past the others into the castle and up the stairs, thankful to be saved from Rabastan, but perfectly well aware that the confrontation outside hadn't been about him. It was between Malfoy and Rabastan, and Severus was merely an excuse.

Severus was also aware that the reprieve was only temporary. Malfoy might be able to order Rabastan around while he was outside Slytherin house, but every one of Severus's dorm mates followed Rabastan, and there was no way Severus could escape retaliation unless he obeyed Rabastan and stopped seeing Lily.

It was time to show them that he, Severus, was not entirely helpless. His plan was going forward.

After breakfast on Monday of the last week before the break, Severus opened his footlocker and removed the five little bottles with their colored liquid. Measuring out about a teaspoonful of the green potion into a tiny glass cup, he drank it, then put the vials into his robes. What he managed to conceal was that the bottle he drank from, containing only colored sugar water, went back into the footlocker.

That morning in Herbology, Severus excelled in his test. His answers were long and detailed, and he wrote at least two feet of parchment longer than anyone else in the class. Aaron and Evan watched him carefully, but he affected not to notice. After the class was over, Severus left the castle for a few minutes to get fresh air before his next class. He was reviewing his list, which he held in his left hand.

A sudden breeze blew the paper from Severus's hand. As he spun to seize it before it blew away completely, his wrist was imprisoned in Aaron's fist. About ten feet away, Evan bent to pick up the piece of paper.

"What's this?" Evan sneered. "Are you using memory enhancing potions to cheat on your exams? Bet this would get you detention in a heartbeat."

"Give that… back," Severus whispered hoarsely. "It's… mine, and you have no… right to… look at it."

"I think we do," Aaron said. "If one Slytherin cheats, it tarnishes the honor of all. We're just going to have to be sure you don't cheat anymore." He looked at the steps going back into the castle where Rodolphus Lestrange was watching the little scene.

At a jerk of Aaron's head, Rodolphus came over. "Got a problem?" he asked.

"This Slytherin seems to be using memory potions to cheat on tests," said Aaron. "I think he's carrying them with him. See this paper? He drank something green this morning and then flew through the Herbology test. Isn't that what it says? 'Green – enhance Herbology and Potions.' That's what it means, right?"

"Give it… back!" Severus hissed. "It's… mine!"

"It's… mine," Rodolphus mimicked, laughing. "Not anymore, half-breed. Let's see what's in those robes." Aaron and Evan held Severus's arms while Rodolphus frisked him, removing the five vials of potion. "Now you can just finish the rest of your tests without any help from these." Rodolphus tucked the little bottles into his own robes, and strode back into the castle with Aaron and Evan in tow, leaving Severus fuming on the lawn.

Nothing happened during Charms class, but the afternoon was Defense against the Dark Arts. Aaron and Evan swaggered into the class as if they were masters of the world. Each had a little bit of yellow potion in a dosing cup that they covertly swallowed just before the tests were distributed to the class.

Severus was enjoying the situation tremendously, hoping that in other classes at other levels the same scenario was being repeated by other students. It was a treat to receive his paper, glance sideways at his tormentors, and watch the look of blank incomprehension spread over Aaron's face, mirrored by Evan's two desks away. The colored potions were, in fact, subject specific, so both boys were keenly aware of what they were unable to remember.

After an hour's careful writing, Severus turned in a length of parchment that was good enough to merit a relatively high mark without being in any danger of earning an excellent one, thus preserving his own reputation for being good, but not that good. The parchments handed in by Aaron and Evan were blank.

"Hey! Half-breed!"

Severus turned to face Rabastan Lestrange in the fifth floor corridor, the tip of his wand tickling his palm where it lay hidden in his sleeve, ready if he needed it. He was shutting down already. "What do you want?" he asked.

"I want to know what you gave my brother."

"I didn't give your brother anything."

"I've told you before, little first years shouldn't be disrespectful to fifth years. It gets them in trouble."

Bella's voice reached them from down the corridor. "Is my puppy giving you trouble, Rabs?" She approached quickly. "I'm sure he doesn't mean anything by it, do you?"

"He gave a potion to Dolph that made him fail his test in Charms."

"I didn't give…"

"No," Bella laughed, "Dolph took it. He and cousin Aaron. They took it and used it, and it backfired on them. It serves them right, the bullies."

"He set it up. He tricked them."

"No, Rabs, he dangled bait in front of them, and they were dumb little fish and they took it. You've got to teach Dolph not to be so trusting. The world is a dangerous place. He can make it up at end of year exams." Bella smiled up at the older boy, who glared for a moment, then shrugged and left them.

"Thank you," Severus said after Rabastan disappeared.

"It's nothing. I like you. I think you need a friend or two in this place. Like that Mitchell boy. He's nice, too. It's good of you to help him with his homework, and you should let him help you."

"What can he… help me with?"

"I don't know. Things. Got to go. Transfiguration calls." Bella hurried down the stairs, leaving Severus in thought.

"Can I talk to you?" Mitchell asked on Friday as Severus was leaving the Great Hall, his meager lunch in hand. "Not in the Hall. Someplace quiet?"

"First floor… lavatory?"

"Good. Meet you there."

The first floor boys' lavatory was empty. Severus ate his sandwich as he waited for Mitchell, wondering what the other boy wanted. Mitchell arrived about seven minutes later and immediately checked the stalls.

"There's no… one here," Severus said.

"Good. Look, I'm going home tomorrow for Easter break, but there's something you need to know. Don't trust that Bella. She's dangerous."

"I don't… trust her. I don't… like her."

"No, not like that, I mean really dangerous. You've got something she wants. I don't know what it is, but she wants it. She and those friends of hers. I'm supposed to talk to you about her, get you to like her, to trust her, to do what she says. She said if I didn't she'd make me so miserable I wouldn't want to stay at Hogwarts."

"I didn't… know. I thought you were… I wasn't sure. I'm sorry."

"That's all right. Listen. She also wanted information. Like what you can do – the locking spells, and the stuff you can do without saying anything, and how you're faking Potions to make it look like you're no good – she thinks that's all really interesting. I'm supposed to be spying on you."

"Why are you… telling me?"

"I don't want to do it anymore. I don't like her controlling me. After the break it's only a couple of months until the year's over. I think I can take it for a couple of months. I've been teased before. I've got to go. Aloysius is waiting for me in the Hall."

Mitchell left, and the two boys, by unspoken mutual consent, didn't talk to each other for the rest of the day. The next morning the train left for London carrying all the students who were going home for Easter, Lily among them. She and Severus hadn't spoken all week. Once again Severus was left in a nearly deserted school.

The Easter break was, quite frankly, boring. More students remained at Hogwarts than had during the Christmas break, but this was primarily because they were studying for exams and were thus mostly fifth and seventh years. Rabastan Lestrange was not one of them.

Severus was once again alone in his dormitory, and was once again able to use the boys lavatory inside Slytherin house with some freedom since the older students tended to study late and sleep in during the break. He still avoided the common room because it tended to be a congregating point for the others. Mealtimes were rather pleasant as there were enough students so that the teachers remained segregated at the high table, but few enough so that the students spread through the Hall in small groups or studying individually. Severus was able to remain in the Hall to eat without feeling nervous about the presence of others. He did a lot of thinking.

Mitchell had said that he could take being teased and bullied for a couple of months until the summer. Severus wasn't sure if he himself was that strong. _I could take the bullying before, but that was because I knew I had Lily to talk to on the weekends. Can I take not having anyone to talk to for a couple of months? Can I hold out and stay free from whatever Bella's planning? It's only a couple of months, and then we'll go home for the summer. Then Lily and I can talk together any time we want, and we won't have to worry about what Slytherin and Gryffindor think. We'll be back home in Lancashire, and we'll have the whole summer to talk._

It was a good thought, and Severus resolved to be strong. The promise of the summer would sustain him.

Then the break was over, and the students returned to Hogwarts for the final term of the year. Aaron and Evan arrived on the train on Saturday evening. Lily came on the train, too, and exchanged glances with Severus at supper, but neither tried any further contact. On Sunday, Mitchell apparated in with his father, who left immediately after seeing his son was safely inside the gate. It was the first weekend of the last term, and Severus already missed talking to Lily. He spent the second half of Sunday afternoon in the Library.

Shortly before supper, Severus went downstairs to the Great Hall, but was told by a Hufflepuff prefect that he needed to go to the Slytherin common room where Professors Dumbledore, McGonagall, and Slughorn were addressing the entire house. Severus didn't know if this was normal at the beginning of the final term, but he rather thought not. He went down into the dungeons wondering if he would be the last to arrive since he saw no one else on the stairs. The common room was quiet when he entered, most of the students looking shocked or sad, and several of the sixth and seventh year girls crying.

Mitchell came over to Severus. "It's Malfoy," he said softly. "He's not coming back to Hogwarts."

It took a moment for the information to sink in. "What happened to Malfoy?" Severus asked after a moment.

"His mother – she was killed in a bombing in Northern Ireland during the break."

"Wizards don't plant bombs." Severus was shutting down, his few memories about Malfoy locking themselves away in the vaults of his mind.

"Wizards didn't set the bombs. It was a muggle attack."

"How? Why?"

"She was visiting a cousin in County Armagh. The cousin lived outside Crossmaglen. Professor Dumbledore says there's been lots of trouble among the muggles, and on Friday one group of them set off two dozen bombs all over Northern Ireland. The cousin was so nervous about the violence, she even had a Disillusionment Charm on the house to make it look like a derelict building. Professor Dumbledore says it was just a coincidence that the bomb was put where it would kill Malfoy's mother."

Severus remembered Malfoy putting Rabastan in his place just before the break started, and felt his mouth twitch a little, almost like a smile – one of those bitter half-smiles that wasn't really a smile at all. "They work fast," was all he said, knowing that Mitchell wouldn't understand.

The students went to their rooms, and Headmaster Dumbledore, with Professor McGonagall as Deputy Headmistress, spent some time talking to the girls and boys in small groups in their dormitories about the loss of their friend and senior prefect. When Dumbledore got to the first years, Aaron and Evan did most of the talking – about how nice Malfoy was, and how he was always helping them and giving them advice. Severus, who knew Malfoy had scarcely paid any attention to them at all, except for the day he rescued Severus from Rabastan, sat quietly on his bed, looking occasionally at the walls, but mostly at the floor.

"And what of you, Master Snape?" Dumbledore asked gently before leaving. "Will you miss Master Malfoy?"

"He was… nice," Severus said without looking up, and left it at that.

Bella was first. She came to the dormitory and asked to speak to him. "How're you doing, puppy dog?" she said when Severus went to the door. "I know Malfoy was like an older brother to you."

Severus knew that Rabastan had told her all about the scene outside the castle. He shrugged. "No more than anyone else," he said, jet-black eyes fixed on her face. "You must miss him, though. After all, you knew him a lot longer than I did."

She stared at him. "Why are you talking like that?" she asked.

"Like what?" Severus responded, then turned and went back to his bed. The next day he began haunting the library looking for spells. What he really wanted to do was talk to Lily. She might be able to help him sort things out and see them clearly. Lacking that, he acted on instinct. He had no illusions about the role of coincidence. Malfoy had helped him and thereby made himself a target for Rabastan Lestrange. That meant that he, Severus, was already involved, and the only one left who could orchestrate Malfoy's revenge.

It took awhile to construct the first spell, which involved localized aging. A week later, as Severus slid by the common room on his way to breakfast, he looked at Bella and thought _Phalakros_, then exited through the wall, not knowing if his spell would work since he had no opportunity to test it.

Bella realized what was happening halfway through breakfast when she absent-mindedly ran her hands through her hair. Clumps of strands parted from her head and came away with her fingers. She stared at them in horror, then ran her hand through her hair again. More hair was detached from her scalp. She began to shriek, her initial incoherence gradually resolving itself into the words, 'Bald! I'm going bald!" By the time her friends managed to steer her out of the Great Hall, she was in hysterics.

Rodolphus got a silent Schizo spell as he crossed the entrance hall. Instantly, the seams of his robes split, and his clothing began dropping from his body in tatters. In less than a minute he was nearly naked, clutching the shreds of his garments around him as he raced for his dormitory.

Rabastan, being older, required more planning. In the end, Severus decided to wait for the OWLs, and started a series of memory-slowing spells at the beginning of May. Rabastan began suddenly to spend more time in study halls and with paid tutors.

In mid May, Severus paused in a fourth floor corridor at the sound of a familiar voice. It was Rabastan, and he was talking to Rodolphus.

"…says there's no proof he can do anything, and I'm beginning to agree. We've never heard a spell or seen the wand since Bella tested him in January."

"What about at the beginning when we tried to give him a bath? That was him, for certain. And the way he can lock up his stuff."

"So he knows a couple of locking spells. That doesn't mean anything. And they say muggle-borns first know they're magical because they can do things when they're angry or scared that they don't intend and don't understand. Could be the same with half-bloods. He was scared. Something happened. Anyway, except for that, we have nothing but a couple of parlor tricks. They say it's a waste of time."

"I don't know, Rabs…"

"Look, if he's so good, why isn't he getting better grades? Why isn't he threatening us, or defying us about that girl in Gryffindor, or making a power play? Why's he always sneaking around the edges of rooms like he's scared of everybody, and why's he always alone? If I had the kind of talent you think he has, you know what I'd be doing with it! He's a waste of time. We're to drop him."

"What about making my clothes fall off?"

"Geez, Dolph, that could've been anyone! It could've been one of the girls checking you out!" Rabastan was laughing now. "We've got better things to do with our time than test babies. Come on! I'll race you downstairs!"

The two rushed past while Severus flattened himself into a statue niche where they wouldn't see him. It was good news. They were going to leave him alone for a while. It was the best news he'd had all year.

The rest of the term was quiet. It was so quiet that Severus had time to notice that Lily got quite a few owls around exams time. Severus himself passed his exams with good enough grades to be somewhere in the middle of his class – acceptable but not noticeable. The end of term feast was noisy and lasted well into the night, but that only meant that most of the students would sleep on the train back into London. Severus had no intention of sleeping on the train. The train was his opportunity to speak to Lily.

This time Severus wasn't the last one on board, and he managed to find an empty compartment where he was soon joined by two other first years, one Hufflepuff and one Ravenclaw, whose names he still didn't know. It didn't matter, because both dozed the entire trip. About an hour after the train started, Severus left the compartment to look for Lily. He went first to the rear to check by the baggage car.

Lily was already there. "I knew you'd come," she said. "I've missed talking to you ever so much."

"Me, too," said Severus.

Lily told him all about her Easter trip to Kent, and the new wiring in May that allowed Petunia to have her very own princess phone. "Which I'm going to use when Petunia isn't in," she added decidedly. Then Severus told her about Malfoy and his mother's death, something Lily found very depressing.

"It'll be great this summer, though," Severus said. "We'll be able to meet by the river any day we want and just talk. It'll be a lot nicer back home than it was at Hogwarts."

Lily didn't look at him. Instead she looked out the train window. "I'm not going back to Lancashire," she said finally. "Dad's company in Manchester's transferred him to their office in Reigate. They've already moved. They'll meet me in London and we'll go right to Surrey."

There wasn't much else to say. A few minutes later, both went back to their compartments. Severus was already shut down, and remained shut down as he watched Lily greet her family in London. Petunia was there looking smug.

King's Cross was crowded. It took Severus several minutes before he located his mum. She was standing quietly to one side, just waiting. There were no hugs, because there never were. "You all right?" she asked, looking him over.

"Yeah. I'm a survivor."

Eileen nodded brusquely. "And never forget it. Our train leaves tomorrow and your dad's meeting us at Colne. You got your bearings?"

Severus and his mum left King's Cross station, and she watched patiently as he took in the confusion of cars and buses, and the evening bustle of people on their way home from work. Then Severus pointed to the right. "It's over there," he said firmly. "We can use the underground entrance to cross Euston Road."

Eileen smiled. "Good boy," was all she said, but Severus knew she was proud. She let him lead the way down Euston Road to Euston Station where they checked his things, then across to St. Pancras church, where Evensong was under way. They sat during the service like members of the parish, then managed to conceal themselves while the church was locked up. When they were alone, Severus and his mother huddled in a pew in the nave by the light of a tiny Lumos spell.

"Here's your supper, then," she said, pulling sandwiches and apples from her pack. "Now, tell me about Hogwarts."

Severus told her. First about classes, and how he'd kept his marks at a respectable but unremarkable level, except in Herbology because Professor Mullein knew about Nana. She nodded, but was unhappy about Potions.

"It isn't the professors you worry about, Russ, it's the students. Now you've got Slughorn thinking you're mediocre, which is good, but the other Slytherin students know you're faking it. I should've guessed you had too much pride to just botch a potion, but you shouldn't have let them see what you can do. Well, I suppose the damage is done. Next year you can go for better marks in Potions. Be sure you make them think you have to work hard at it. Just don't go showing off in Charms or Dark Arts."

"Yes, Mum," Russ replied.

Early the next morning, the two slipped out of the church and across Euston Road to Euston Station where they got something simple to eat and boarded the train for Lancashire. This train had second-class cars, and Russ settled comfortably into the familiar seat where he didn't feel out of place. He and his mother pointed out things they noticed along the way, chatted more about Hogwarts, ate their sandwiches, and napped a little. The train stopped frequently, and it was early evening before they pulled into Colne.

Toby wasn't there. After half an hour, Eileen settled Russ in the station waiting room with his bag and his books and went out checking pubs. She found him in the second one she entered, not yet too much the worse for wear, and hauled him out while he informed his companions of the hour, "Gotta go see m' boy. Just got back from a la-di-da school, he is. Gotta take the la-di-da shine off 'im. Where is 'e, Leen? Too high an' mighty to come down an' be with 'is father?"

Russ stood as his parents came into the waiting room, judging rapidly how much his dad had drunk and just how touchy he might be. _Not too bad_, he thought. It could have been worse. He waited for his dad to speak first.

"Go on, Toby. Say something to your son." Eileen had already made the same assessments and felt on relatively secure ground.

"Hey there, Russ," Toby grinned. "You didn't grow none. Still knee-high to a midget. That school polish you up all nice and pretty?"

"Don't nobody polish me. If they try, I give 'em what for."

"Let's see how much they taught ya." Toby bent down and stuck out his left hand, palm forward. "Let's see how ya go all fifteen."

Russ looked at the hand and imagined Aaron Wilkes's face. Then he balled his right into a fist and punched out straight into his father's palm. Toby looked surprised, then impressed. "Y' picked up a bit on that right jab," he said, rubbing the reddening palm.

"Told you. Don't nobody polish me."

Nodding appreciatively, Toby turned to Eileen. "There's a fish 'n chip place just down the street. Wha' say we get supper here an' then drive home? It 'd give the boy a chance t' tell me about his battles."

Supper was good, and Russ tucked into his fish and chips with relish. He had to tell his dad three times about the fight in the lavatory where he'd bloodied another boy's nose. He just didn't mention that he'd done it with a spell, and Toby was happy that his boy was a fighter. Eileen was happy that Toby stuck to beer, and just a pint of that.

By the time they finished, it was nearly ten o'clock, and the sun was setting. It would be fully dark long before they got home, and the moon, full and bright, would light the way. Luckily, Toby was perfectly capable of driving the car, and they loaded Russ and his things into the back and set off, arriving about twenty minutes later at the little brick house at the end of the shabby row on the edge of the old mill town where they lived.

On the way, they'd passed through the better part of town, and Russ had noted that Lily's house was dark, the shutters closed, waiting for a new family to move into it.

Things in the Snape family were going so well that Eileen had taken a chance and had Toby stop by the local so that she could run in and get a couple of bottles of beer. With luck, she could keep him home until after last call. Toby'd started to insist that he go in instead, but she told him to stay in the car and talk to his son. "I was with him on the train all day. Now it's your turn."

"You know," said Russ from the back seat, playing his mother's game, "I haven't had the chance to skunk anyone for near ten months."

"You betting you could skunk me?"

"I'm not betting I can't."

"We'll just see when we get home."

Eileen got the beer, and as soon as they were inside their home, Toby pulled out the cribbage board. While Toby and Russ were occupied with the cards, Eileen put her son's things away and turned down the beds. Then she fixed tea in their tiny kitchen and brought Russ a cup. Father and son were neck and neck down the last pegging row, and Toby counted first, pegging out and winning.

"Ya got to give me another chance, dad," Russ insisted, and the two of them played until it was too late for Toby to go to the pub.

In their room, getting ready for bed, Toby mentioned to Eileen, "It's good to have the boy at home again."

It was a good summer, even with Lily not there. With the strike over and settled, Toby had work the entire time at decent pay, which meant he spent less time at the pub except on Friday and Saturday nights. In addition, there were special occasions, the first coming at the middle of July, less than three weeks after Russ arrived home.

"I saw Mrs. Hanson at the market this morning," Eileen told Russ on July fourteenth, a Friday. "She thought you might like t' visit her this evening. Maybe stay over 'til Sunday."

"What for?" Russ asked, not looking up from the second-year Transfiguration book he was studying.

"She said maybe you missed Dr. Who, and maybe you'd like t' go t' Manchester with her tomorrow."

That sparked Russ's interest, for he'd only left his own town a couple of times in his life before going to Hogwarts. "Sure," was all he said, but he was ready to leave well ahead of time. He also had the feeling that maybe this was one of the times his mum and dad wanted to be alone.

Mrs. Hanson had hot chocolate and cookies for him, then Russ soaked in her marvelous tub where he could close the door against the whole world, and at last watched television all Friday evening seated on the floor with his knees pulled up to his chin, for Mrs. Hanson let him, and in her house it was even possible to laugh. The next morning they set out early with one of her borders who drove them to Colne. The trip to Manchester was a long one because for some reason they had to go all the way to Blackburn to change trains, but Russ enjoyed the journey nevertheless.

Mrs. Hanson had a bigger surprise in Manchester. "Didn't you used to enjoy listening to the Beatles?" she asked when they left Victoria Station. "One of their movies is showing here. It's a sort of revival. The one called Help!" And so Russ saw his very first motion picture.

He was fascinated by the recording studios, alpine skiing, Caribbean beaches – and Ringo's vain attempts to fend off villainous ruffians by striking at them with the edge of his hands.

"What's he doing, then? That's not fighting!" Russ scoffed. Certainly not Nel Tarleton's style of fighting.

"I think it's called karate, dear, but he's not very good at it, is he?"

There was no one else to ask about karate until Russ visited his muggle grandmother, Gra.

"Sure I've heard of it. From Asia, I think. I know Toby doesn't think much of it, but your great-grandfather Wensley did. The ships used t' pull into Hong Kong and other parts, and I know he saw some. Your dad and your grandfather always said it was just circus tricks, but Wensley thought they could give a boxer a run for his money."

"Do you have any books about it?"

"Love you, no, dear. What would I be doing with books like that?"

It waited until Toby took them to Blackpool in August. Toby and Eileen wanted to spend time together, so Russ was free to roam the town for two days. He went to book stores and read as much as he could before the shopkeepers realized he wasn't buying and told him to leave.

Russ wasn't impressed by the idea of breaking bricks with your hands. It was the idea that falling was an art, and that an opponent's momentum could be used against him that captivated Russ. When they returned home, he began to spend time out on the moors, practicing falling and rolling the way he'd seen in the pictures. It went well with wand work, and soon he could dive and come up with his wand ready and pointed at his target in one swift motion.

It was much easier than flying on a broomstick.

On the last Monday of the summer, less than a week before school was to start, Russ was out on the moors working on his dueling, incorporating everything he'd been practicing. He came up from a dive and roll to hear his mother's voice behind him. "That's an interesting technique. Where did you learn it."

"From Ringo Starr," Russ replied, turning to look at her. She had her arms crossed over her chest.

"Lovely. Now tell the truth," she said.

"No, it's true. He was doing this karate act in that movie, so I checked on it. Falling and getting out of the way so that you can attack is important."

"Keeping your mind closed and reading theirs is important, too."

"Of course, but I can do both at the same time."

"Show us, then." Eileen opened her arms to reveal that she was carrying her wand. It meant a real training session. Though the spells they used were harmless, they were actual spells. Out here, unidentifiable and away from muggle homes, they could not get into trouble

Russ was already shutting down completely. It was the first thing his mother would check. She had this idea that he would be careless and didn't seem to believe him when he told her that in moments of real danger it happened automatically. Eileen never shut down. She'd told Russ it was because she was imitating his opponents. He sometimes wondered if that was really true.

Eileen started with an Expelliarmus that Russ blocked easily. She then sent out a steady stream of stinging hexes, confusion jinxes, and body-bind curses that Russ parried, blocked and avoided, sometimes using his new techniques, at first awkwardly, then with growing confidence. Within about five minutes, she stopped coddling him and began to fight seriously and in earnest. After twenty minutes of strenuous dueling, with both of them tiring, Russ dove to his left, stayed on the ground when Eileen was expecting him to stand, and disarmed her with a numbing hex to the wrist. It was the first time he'd beaten her in a no-quarter fight.

"Impressive," was all Eileen said, but it was the highest praise she'd ever given him, and Russ was quietly proud. "We'd best get home before your dad's shift is over. Don't want him knowing we've been wand waving now, do we? Just let me check first that you remember all your lessons. Don't want to send you back t' that school with your guard down."

From the time he was a baby, his mother had checked frequently to be sure he never gave himself away, so the moments of intense eye and mind contact with her were as normal to Russ as the air he breathed. Eileen was looking for fear, for doubt and wavering, and she saw none and was content. What she saw was what a potential foe would expect to see – the moor, herself, anticipation of future dueling success, an interest in what was for supper – the things a twelve-year-old should be thinking about. A twelve-year-old whose calm self-control and analytical mind were things Eileen prided herself on.

There were other things that Eileen didn't see – didn't see and didn't miss because she'd never seen them and didn't think to look for them – the moments he shared with others that infringed on her possession of him, like his talks with his grandmothers and his brief laughter at Mrs. Hanson's, and especially his friendship with Lily – the bitterness, shame, and anger at the poverty and blood status that she'd warned him all his life would make him a target, and that his brief stay at Hogwarts had now confirmed – the fierce drive for sheer survival that she'd drilled into him, that inspired his defenses with a preternatural cunning and a talent for manipulation. She didn't look for these things because she didn't know they existed. He hadn't shown them to her and never would. More things closed down automatically than even he knew, and he gave himself away to no one. Not to her. Not even to himself.

In the last days of summer, Russ concentrated on his mother's old second-year books, glad now that he had permission to show more of what he could really do in his upcoming classes. In the early afternoons, he and his mother went out on the moors to duel, and in the evenings he played cribbage with his father. He was rather looking forward to his second year at school, since he had evidence that the Lestrange brothers and Bella would leave him alone, and he was reasonably sure he could control Wilkes and Rosier. And maybe he would find a way to be able to talk to Lily again.

On the morning of Thursday, August 31, 1972, Toby Snape drove his wife and son to Colne and saw them onto the train to London where they would once again arrive at Euston Station, spend the night at St. Pancras, and where the following day Russ would depart from King's Cross Station on the Hogwarts Express for another year, one that promised to be much less eventful than the first one had been.


	9. Chapter 9 – Portents

[A note to the reader: This story was not written in the order in which it is presented. The first part, _In Principio_, was written last. The part starting around mid October in this next chapter and continuing onward was written first, in the fall of 2005. After _Deathly Hallows_ was published, a few scenes from Chapter 33 of that book were incorporated into this one, and minor alterations were made to reflect canon Severus and Lily's pre-Hogwarts friendship, but other than that, the story has remained unchanged. As a result, there may be some small continuity problems. The author apologizes for this, and hopes they do not interfere with your enjoyment of the story.]

**A Difference in the Family: Second Year – Portents**

_Friday, September 1, 1972 (the day after the last quarter)_

The first year Severus attended Hogwarts, Eileen Snape had stayed with him all morning and said goodbye just as the Hogwarts Express was about to pull out of Kings Cross station. This second year, she got him to Kings Cross early with his things, then hurried back to Euston Station to return to Colne on a morning train. Severus didn't mind. They didn't have very much to talk about, having already said everything several times. Farewells in train stations have a tendency to be awkward.

Severus wandered around the station for a while, pushing his trolley with his school books and clothes, and then around ten o'clock he quietly slipped through the barrier to Platform 9 3/4 where he found a bench about half way down the platform. There he sat watching as the platform slowly filled with people. He didn't even try to see Lily, since she wouldn't be able to come over and speak to him. He'd find her on the train.

At about a quarter to eleven, Severus got his things to the train crew, except the Gladstone bag he carried his robes in, and boarded the train at about the center, moving toward the rear as he looked for an empty compartment. Passing one where the curtains were drawn, he overheard a familiar voice.

"…doing it all wrong. Dad says He said we should take time to check before we start talking to them." It sounded like Rabastan Lestrange.

"Who's he?" The voice was Aaron's.

"You know who - Him." This was Kenneth Avery. "They think if we move before we're sure of what we've got, we'll scare them away. They say we scared lots away last year, and we're not to repeat the mistake with this year's new students."

"What about the ones from last year?" said Evan's voice.

"Go slow," said Lestrange. "Business as usual. Not too nice, and not too nasty. Just normal."

There was the sound of someone coming into the car behind him, so Severus quickly moved on, wondering about the conversation he'd just eavesdropped on. _Was I one of the ones they scared away last year? I'd better be careful._

Severus found an empty compartment almost at the end of the train where he quickly changed into robes. Just before the Express started moving, three older Hufflepuff students pushed open the door. It looked like they were going to leave again as soon as they saw what house he was in, but then seemed to decide that one small Slytherin by himself probably wasn't dangerous, and came into the compartment.

"Mind if we sit here?" one of them said. He wore a prefect's badge and looked to be sixth or seventh year.

"Suit yourself," Severus replied. After a moment he added, "My mum was in Hufflepuff."

"So how come you're in Slytherin?"

"Retrograde Mercury."

The Hufflepuff students nodded sagely. "Tough luck," another of them said.

"Thanks," Severus replied.

The first Hufflepuff held out his hand. "Macmillan," he said.

"Snape," Severus responded and shook hands. The other two introduced themselves as Roper and Hopkins.

"Don't know as I've ever seen the name Snape in the Hufflepuff archives," said Macmillan.

"Her name was Prince."

"That'd be it. Did she play Gobstones? Team captain?"

"Yeah," Severus said.

"Rotten luck about Mercury."

After that, Severus stared out at the passing scenery, not trying to join in the conversation, a move that seemed to earn him more respect. An hour later there was movement in the corridor, and then the door slid open and Lily entered. She nodded to the Hufflepuff boys and walked past them to sit opposite Severus. "How was your summer?" she asked.

"Pretty good. We went to Blackpool. Yours?"

"Southern Italy and Malta."

Next to them the three boys from Hufflepuff carefully ignored the conversation, but the sight of a Slytherin boy talking to a Gryffindor girl clearly had them silently cursing the whims of Mercury in retrograde.

Lily only stayed an hour because she was afraid the other girls would get too curious about where she was, but that hour was just like old times. Amidst talk of Capri and Pompeii, of Manchester and the Beatles, Severus and Lily also managed to decide that he would help her with her Potions work, and that they would make no effort to see each other Saturday or Sunday mornings. Instead, Severus would immediately establish his old routine of not eating supper at the Slytherin table, and from time to time Lily would join him somewhere in the castle or outside.

After Lily had gone, Severus resumed watching out the window while the Hufflepuff students alternately talked or dozed. It was actually a rather comfortable train ride.

Hogsmeade station brought something new. Everyone except the first years, it seemed, went from the station to the castle by carriage – a carriage that moved by magic, since Severus could see nothing that pulled it. This time he wasn't able to avoid his house mates, and he found himself in a carriage with Aaron, Evan, and Mitchell. They nodded in greeting, but none of them said much as the carriage took them along the darkened road, through the gates, and up the hill to the castle.

It was amusing to watch the sorting from the Slytherin table, then boring to sit there for the whole welcoming feast. Severus didn't join any of the conversation, and nobody talked to him. It didn't surprise him. Nobody 'd ever wanted to talk to him except Lily, and he'd always avoided the Great Hall at meal times and thus never gotten to know them anyway. He listened to some of the chatter, but wizards weren't any more interesting than muggles, so he thought about other things.

One of the things he thought about was how dumb wizards could be. Like pens. It hadn't taken long for Severus to become completely disenchanted with quills and bottles of ink. It gave you more to carry around, the quill needed constant sharpening, and the ink stained the most careful fingers and needed to be continually blotted. A handful of ball-point pens would be much more convenient, but it took muggle brains to come up with an idea like that. Just like it took muggle brains to come up with television and lunar excursion modules. Severus was proud that he wasn't a pureblood wizard. All his brains were on the muggle side.

Then he started thinking about the others around him and what he might do if he wanted to. Like the distracting way Doris Gamp's hair kept flopping into her eyes. Severus was sure he could come up with a hair trimming spell to cure Doris's problem. Or Aaron's irritating habit of cracking his knuckles all the time. Maybe a spell to make the knuckle bones all soft and gushy so they wouldn't make that horrible sound. Severus wondered what the Greek for knuckles was.

When the feast was over, the students went to their dormitories. Everything was as it had been at the end of the first year. Severus went straight to his bed and pulled the curtains shut. He waited for Aaron to call him 'Miss Prissy,' but no one said anything about it.

Mitchell stretched and yawned. "This is going to be the best start of term ever," he commented.

"How do you figure that?" Evan asked.

"Tomorrow's Saturday. We have a whole weekend before we start classes. I'm going to sleep the whole time."

Severus hadn't thought of that. He immediately put a little awakening spell on his bed so he could get up early and into the lavatory before anyone else was awake.

Aloysius came in from the common room and dumped a handful of chocoballs on a side table. "I got extras on the train," he said. "Help yourself."

Despite the fact that they'd just finished a feast, the boys pounced hungrily on the candy. Aloysius looked over to the far side of the room where Severus was getting out his pajamas. "You too, if you want, Sev," he said, and turned to open his own footlocker.

That presented a little problem. Severus had only a second to decide what to do because if he waited too long it would look suspicious. He walked over and took one chocoball from the little pile. "Thanks," he said, and bit into it. It tasted good.

Aloysius shrugged and didn't say anything. That was fine with Severus. He liked his world predictable. Business as usual.

They were all tired, so there wasn't a lot of conversation. Severus got into his curtained bed and changed into his pajamas, then crawled under the covers. He'd already put a locking spell on his footlocker and a guard spell on the bed. It didn't pay to be careless, even if Aloysius was handing out candy. Soon all five boys were sound asleep.

The next day, Severus spent the whole time outside of Slytherin house checking out all the old places he used to go. His spot by the lake was probably the best, since it was shielded from the view of the castle by the cliff itself, and you could hear if anyone started down the steep little path. Besides, there were four ways to escape – either direction along the lake shore, up the cliff, and into the boat grotto. Nobody was ever going to trap him or Lily in a corridor again.

Severus spent Sunday in the library, and then on Monday classes started.

Severus noticed several important things that first week of classes. The first was that he was followed when he left the Great Hall, having taken some food with him for supper. He'd anticipated that from the conversation he'd overheard on the train, and he made no attempt to lose his 'tail.' Instead he led the follower all over the castle, finally stopping each night in a different and remote spot where he curled up in a corner to eat his supper and study one of his textbooks. Meanwhile he knew, because it was part of their plan, that Lily was sometimes staying in the hall and sometimes slipping out, and when she slipped out it was to do as he did – find a spot to study alone. Once they had everybody believing that was all they did, they could start meeting from time to time.

The second thing was that people were being nice to him. It wasn't really a 'nice' nice; it was more a 'not so mean as usual.' Still, it was something. Aaron absentmindedly stood aside to let Severus pass when they almost ran into each other at the dormitory door. Aloysius asked about a point on a homework assignment. Evan told a joke and looked to see if Severus was laughing along with everyone else. Mitchell was emboldened to say things like, "Good morning," and "See you in Charms."

Bella Black seemed to have risen in the world. Even though she was a fourth year student, and Rabastan Lestrange was a sixth year prefect, Rabastan seemed to be listening to and taking orders from Bella. This was totally mystifying to Severus, especially since he had no idea what they meant when they said, 'You know…' to each other, something they now did with great frequency.

On September twelfth, Severus and Lily met by the lake for the first time since the term started. The rest of the school was in the Great Hall eating supper.

"Why did you give your note to Madley?" was practically the first thing Severus said when Lily arrived. "Couldn't you have thought of something else?"

"Thurstan is nice," Lily replied primly. "At first he didn't want to pass notes to Slytherins, but I told him to talk to the fifth years – one of those boys on the train was a Hufflepuff prefect, you know – and I guess they told him you were all right. When did he give it to you?"

"In Herbology. It was kind of funny, him dropping that mandrake. And then I realized he was using it to give me something. It was a pretty good idea, I guess."

"Of course it was. I always have good ideas. How's the opening of term been for you?"

"Decent, actually. Nobody's been mean yet. I keep waiting for it to change."

"Maybe they finally figured you were a decent person."

Severus snorted in disdain. "Their idea of decent isn't the same as yours."

"Do you know about gift horses?" Lily asked. "Stop looking in their mouths."

The whole rest of September was like that. The students in Slytherin were reasonably civil to Severus, but they still occasionally spied on him. Lily met him from time to time, and was wondrously supportive in most things, but pooh-poohed his suspicions. Severus trusted nothing and no one – except Lily.

By the beginning of October, the honeymoon was over. Aaron began once again to refer to 'Miss Prissy,' and even told Severus he wasn't to return to Slytherin house before supper or after supper until curfew. "We need time to air the room out," was the stated reason. Severus began spending more time in the library and in the deserted classrooms, of which, it turned out, there were many. Lily was a peripheral issue.

After the beginning of October, another phase began. Slytherin students again began actively spying. Whenever Severus cast a spell in Charms, another Slytherin was there to register how he did it. Whenever a potion was brewed, another Slytherin was there to record how it was done.

Severus was beginning to get very irritated with Slytherin house, and very protective of his relationship with Lily.

_Thursday, October 19, 1972 (3 days before the full moon)_

The Slytherin dormitories were not far from the Potions classroom. A group of Slytherins headed there to relax for a couple of hours before supper, and Severus fell in behind them as they went deeper below ground to the bare damp wall that concealed the entrance to their common room under the lake. Skirting the green-lit common room and its gathering of students, Severus slipped through an opening and down the short passage that led to his dormitory.

Two of his roommates, Wilkes and Rosier, were already there, but they stopped talking to watch Severus when he walked in. "Aren't you here a little early, Miss Prissy?" sneered Wilkes. "Thought we told you never until after supper."

Severus ignored them and crossed to his bed in the far corner. His potions book went into his footlocker, and he took out his black cloak with the Slytherin badge of a coiled serpent. He rather liked the Hogwarts robes, the straight, black, belted medieval gown with its green and silver embroidery on collar and cuffs, the black academic robe bordered in front and on its wide sleeves with the same Slytherin colors, the green and silver biretta, and the black cloak. They made him looked less scrawny.

He didn't worry about the safety of his belongings. The others had tried to rifle through them the year before, as evidenced by their raw, blistered hands, but none of them had been able to break through the curse he kept on his possessions. They'd tried to tease him more the first year, too. Then a family of spiders had taken up residence right over Rosier's bed, dropping from time to time into his mouth as he slept, while Wilkes had come down with the worst case of head lice Hogwarts had seen in thirty years. After that things were more peaceful.

Swirling the cloak around his shoulders, Severus closed the footlocker with a snap of his fingers and left the dormitory and common room, unconcerned about the others or what they were doing. Wilkes and Rosier followed his small departing figure with wary eyes, then resumed their conversation.

The first stop for Severus was down the hill, into the copse behind the North Tower. The spring of a tiny stream hid there, and he went to it from time to time to wash up. It wasn't satisfactory, but he didn't care as his own appearance was of no daily concern to him. The place he avoided above all was the boys' communal lavatory with its frightening horseplay. A few of the older boys had once tried to humiliate him by forcing him to strip there, but it's hard to focus on tormenting a smaller boy when your eyelids and lips are swelling and your nose bleeding from multiple hexes, and they desisted from their sport. All in all, he considered it a success since none of the other boys had ever glimpsed his scars. Being called 'Miss Prissy' by Wilkes was insignificant by comparison.

_A few years in Hogwarts will teach you to defend yourself. Never let them see you're afraid. Never let them see you're weak. Don't be fooled into fighting them on their ground. Make them fight on yours._ His mother's words. Words to live by, and he'd lived by them. _Oderint dum metuant_, she'd taught him, and he found part of him enjoyed making them fear.

Once into the copse he made sure there was no one to spy on him, then slipped out of cloak and robe and loosened the cuffs and belt of the gown. A quick, modest wash was enough, and he was ready to return to the Castle. It was still an hour before supper.

October was well advanced, and the Great Hall of the Castle was resplendent with harvest decorations. Even before supper was served, the Hall was crowded with hungry students. Severus slipped over to the very end of the Slytherin table nearest the doors, hoping that no one would notice his presence. Normally he'd grab a few bites to eat and sneak outside to consume them. This time, for no particular reason he glanced over at Lily.

She was near the end of the Gryffindor table with a few friends. It was amazing how comfortable she seemed with them, talking and giggling. He watched them without watching, eyes averted and head down. Once, once only, she looked back at the Slytherin table, and for a fleeting half second their eyes met. _Did she wink? Or not? Does she want to meet by the lake?_ He snatched a few tidbits of food from the now groaning tables, rose and left the Hall.

"Is everything all right?"

Severus jumped at Lily's sudden appearance. She'd followed him down to the lake where the moon, three days from the full, was beginning her climb into the crisp autumn sky. "Wilkes was being mean again," he answered. For some reason he felt better out here in the cold and the dark.

Lily looked down at the scraps of meat and vegetable he'd stuck inside a small bread roll. "No wonder you're so small. You don't eat anything. I never noticed that before." She sat down on a smooth boulder and untied the ends of a large dinner napkin she carried. It fell open, full of meat, bread, and sweets. "I already finished most of my supper, but I thought we could share some dessert."

Severus settled on the grass beside her. The food was delicious, and they ate in silence, Lily nibbling slowly and pressing most of it on Severus. He hadn't realized how tasty the tarts and sweetmeats would be. He hoped too many sweets wouldn't make him sick. "How come you wanted to meet tonight?"

"I just thought you looked a little down. I was afraid they were picking on you. Why didn't you tell me at the beginning of last year that things were rough in Slytherin? I could have helped."

"I didn't want to upset you. Besides, what could you have done?"

"I don't know. Maybe let you talk about it. That helps sometimes."

"I don't want to talk about it. I want to forget it. Talking to you helps me forget."

"Okay, but when I'm upset, talking helps." Lily looked up at the moon. "This is a beautiful place to watch the sky. When did you start coming here?"

"Last year. It's hidden from the castle. That's why I chose it. It gets cold, though."

They talked for a while, and Severus felt better when they returned to the castle. He kept to the edge of the common room as he made his way to the dormitory for the night. A group of older students was talking and laughing by the fire on the other side of the room. One glanced up. It was Rabastan Lestrange.

"The place stinks of mongrel," he commented loudly. "Hey, Rosier. You ever have to fumigate your dormitory?" Rosier laughed with the others, but his laughter was strained and uncomfortable. He'd never been as free with his insults as Wilkes. Thinking of spiders, no doubt.

Severus didn't respond to the mockery, but continued calmly to the dormitory, passing Wilkes and Edison on his way to his own bed. His cloak and robe went right onto the chair next to the bed. Then he took out a plain flannel nightshirt and pulled it over his head before unfastening the belt of his gown and removing it, too. He tucked his wand into the sleeve of his nightshirt.

After checking his bed automatically for hexes, Severus climbed in and nestled in the bedclothes. His mother had given him permission to show more of what he could do, and he had to think of just the right response to Lestrange's comment. So far this year, Lestrange had paid no attention to him, so this was part of the general switch from nice to mean. _There's no such thing as idle jesting. They'll be testing you, probing you for weaknesses. Never let them find one._ He smiled suddenly to himself, then rolled onto his side and went to sleep.

The next morning Severus was up and dressed first, sitting quietly on his bed reading his potions book. His very presence put a damper on the conversation of the others, and they quickly got ready for the day and hurried out of the dormitory. When Severus was sure that most of Slytherin house was awake and beginning to gather in the common room before breakfast, he stood, put his potions book into the footlocker, adjusted the wand he kept in his sleeve, donned his robe and biretta, and left the dormitory. Though he looked wrapped in his own thoughts, his black eyes were darting back and forth behind lowered eyelids, assessing the position of everyone in the room.

Just as he entered the common room, Severus glanced up. The Lestrange brothers were once again by the fireplace with Bella Black, talking and laughing loudly. He fixed his glance and the hidden wand on Rabastan's back for two seconds, then walked around the edge of the room and out the door into the main Castle. He knew that Rosier had seen him, and that Rosier's eyes followed him.

About ten minutes later, as the Slytherins were moving out toward the Great Hall, Bella Black wrinkled her nose and said, "I don't want to get too personal or anything, but someone should visit the lavatories more often."

There was a general chuckle, then the others began sniffing the air as well. "Well, it isn't me," laughed Rodolphus Lestrange, then turned to his older brother. "I do believe you're the one who needs a bath."

The others began to edge away from Rabastan, laughing. The faint but unmistakable pungent odor was now permeating the air around him. In the Great Hall, the rest of Slytherin house left a comfortable space of open air between themselves and the smell. Rabastan spent all his free time in the lavatory, scrubbing his skin, but it was three days before the aroma of wet dog was gone.

Severus didn't stay to watch Rabastan's discomfort. He never gloated over the effects of curses because the only thing that mattered was the long-term result. This one was eminently successful, for Rosier didn't tease him again for the rest of the year.

_Monday, November 20, 1972 (the full moon)_

That was the last time for nearly a month that Severus and Lily were able to meet together and talk. Things were happening in Slytherin house that Severus didn't quite understand, and he was part of it. It was as if certain people were trying to push him into losing his temper, and it extended out into the corridors and classrooms of the school. Wilkes stole his quill in History of Magic, and Severus had to use a silent Accio spell to get it back. Gamp insulted his long, lank hair, so he made her own get tangled in horrid knots when she tried to comb it. When Rodolphus Lestrange called him a skinny little runt in the middle of the common room, Rodolphus began to gain weight so that a week later he was twenty pounds heavier.

_If they want to push, I can push back,_ was becoming Severus's main tactic and general attitude.

He kept trying to find a way to talk to Lily. It wasn't easy since he was once again being followed. A month after their October meeting, Lily and Severus did manage to sneak off to the lake again, primarily because Severus ducked behind two of the Hufflepuff boys who'd been on the train, and they concealed him from Mulciber. This time Severus took away more food from the Hall, and together he and Lily had a very respectable feast. The moon was full, and soon Lily was skipping stones across the cold, flat surface of the water.

"How do you do that?" Severus asked. Her last stone had skipped three times before it sank to the bottom.

"Petunia's boyfriend showed me. You just hold it like this between your thumb and forefinger and throw it sidearm… Like this. Didn't your dad ever teach you to throw when you were little?" Lily regretted the words almost instantly, for Severus's suddenly embarrassed look spoke volumes about how little his dad had taught him of such things. "Do you know how to throw at all?" she finished a bit lamely.

"Oh, yeah. I can snag birds pretty good," he replied. He picked up a stone, pointed to a pine tree a short distance from the water's edge, and with a quick, overhead snap, brought one of its pinecones to the ground.

Relieved that she didn't have to teach him everything, Lily set about her instruction on the fine points of stone skipping. Severus picked it up rather quickly, and soon they were side by side, skipping stones across the lake water.

"What do you miss most?" Lily asked after a while.

She didn't have to explain. He knew what she meant. "Fish and chips on Friday nights," he said.

Lily laughed. "That's a good one. We haven't had fish and chips one night at Hogwarts. I miss – listening to the latest songs with all your friends huddled over a transistor radio, and singing along with the song."

Severus didn't respond directly to this, as Lily was his only friend, and he'd never had a transistor to listen to in any case. He thought about his next answer, though. "Bonfire night," he said. "Dad always goes out and finds some old piece of junk furniture to leave in the yard for them to pick up for the bonfire. Then when they come into the yard to get it, he goes out and yells at them for being hooligans. Then they yell back, and we follow them to the old quarry for the bonfire. We all throw things at the 'Guy' and roast potatoes. It's exciting."

"Yeah," said Lily. "Bonfire night is pretty good, too. I miss the airplanes. Our new house is near Gatwick, and you can always hear the planes overhead. I like to imagine that I'm in one, flying all over the world."

"Have you ever been in an airplane?"

"Not yet, but I will."

"Me either, but I will, too."

Severus dreamed that night of airplanes flying to Timbuktu, Zanzibar and Mandalay. Thinking about it the next morning, he realized they were the most exotic names he knew. Next to his dream, Hogwarts seemed dull and pedestrian.

The following Thursday, Severus came into the dormitory just before curfew to find the other four boys kneeling in the center of the floor in a circle. Wilkes, Edison, and Mulciber seemed fascinated by something in their midst while Rosier, though interested, kept a bit of a distance.

Severus started to go around them to his bed, but at just that moment Mulciber sat back on his heels, and the two bumped into each other. "Sorry," they both said at once, and Severus continued to his bed.

"Hey, Snape," Mulciber said suddenly. "You know how to control spiders, don't you?"

Severus thought for a moment. "Some… times," he said.

"See what you can do with this one."

Severus approached cautiously and looked into the circle. There was a big, fat, black spider there that for the moment wasn't moving. Severus suspected a Petrificus spell, and guessed that this was why Rosier didn't seem quite as happy as the others. "What am I… supposed to do?" he asked.

"Anything you want. All we've been able to do is make it run around and then stop. Except I think the running around is something it's doing on its own. So that means the only thing we can make it do is stop."

"Why?" said Severus.

"Just for fun. Just to practice spells. You're not a spider lover, are you?"

"Can you… make it go… backwards?" Severus asked.

"How would you do that?" responded Wilkes.

Severus let his wand slip into his hand, concentrating enough on the spider that he didn't see the surprised look on Edison's face or the admiring one on Mulciber's. Thinking for a moment, Severus pointed the wand at the spider and said, "Libera corpus!" then "Retroverso!" The spider, which had started to scurry away upon being released, began instead to step carefully backwards.

"Good one!" crowed Wilkes. "I'll have to remember it. Wonder if it works on people."

"I don't… know," said Severus. "I never… tried it before."

Mulciber looked at Severus closely. "You did that on the first try?"

Severus shrugged. "It isn't a… hard spell. You just… say it. There are… others that are… harder."

Mulciber said nothing at first. He just contemplated the spider. "Make it do something else," he demanded after a moment.

"Like what?"

"I don't care. Anything."

Pointing the wand at the spider again, Severus opened his mouth, then changed his mind. "Don't know… anything else." The wand was back in his sleeve. He turned and walked over to his bed.

"Hey!" Wilkes shouted across the room. "You can't just walk away when…" then suddenly stopped.

Severus looked up, and for a moment it looked like Mulciber was trying to communicate something silently to Wilkes that involved glaring and shaking the head. Then Mulciber stood up. "I'm tired of playing with spiders anyway. Let's go see if anything's happening in the common room."

They all left except Edison, who climbed into his bed and opened a book for his Dark Arts class. "Do you really know more spells?" he asked after a few minutes.

"Couple," Severus replied.

"Wilkes 'd be happy if you'd teach him to use them."

"Against who?" said Severus.

"I see your point," Edison replied, and went back to studying.

On a whim, Severus walked out of the dorm and down the passageway until he got to a spot where he could see most of the common room. Mulciber and Rosier were in a corner talking to Bella Black and Rabastan Lestrange. Severus pondered this as he returned to the dorm and prepared for sleep. It was all very mysterious.

_Friday December 1, 1972 (4 days before the new moon)_

It had rained the night of November thirtieth just as the temperature fell below freezing, and Hogwarts woke to a world shimmering in ice diamonds. Everything outside was slick with glare ice, and Severus found himself forced to eat breakfast in the Great Hall. Around him groups of students were planning forays between classes to slide down the hill or go skating if the shallow areas of the lake were solid enough. Severus had not yet thought of what he would do in his enforced imprisonment, knowing only that he would stay far from Slytherin house.

Someone called, "Mail's here!" and the buzz in the room grew more excited. Owls came swooping in from all sides, dropping letters and packages into the hands of lucky recipients. Severus was not usually in the hall for mail call since he was no longer getting monthly letters, and watched with some curiosity, noting how different students reacted as they got, or did not get, their mail.

Suddenly he spied a shabby, brown owl that looked like Nelson. _Not possible. She has nothing to send me._ But the owl saw him and swooped down, missing his head by inches and depositing a square blue envelope in front of his plate. Then it was gone, well aware that there would be no response.

Severus didn't want to touch the envelope. _It can only be bad news._ Still, bad news had to be faced eventually, and after a minute he reached for his letter. Inside was a scrap of paper and another, smaller envelope. The scrap of paper said only, 'The other one thinks you want this.' He looked at the second envelope with new interest, for it represented an unusual event. Why would his muggle grandmother ask his witch grandmother to transmit a message by owl? Carefully he opened the envelope. The only thing inside was a newspaper clipping from the _Guardian_. He read it twice, tucked it into his Charms textbook, and signaled Lily.

Lily met him on the seventh floor and together they crept up the spiral staircase to the top of the Astronomy Tower, a particularly appropriate place that afternoon. They had to be careful not to slip on the ice, but as everyone else was out playing and skating, they were guaranteed not to be disturbed.

"They're going on the seventh, at five-thirty in the morning. I'll be watching."

"You won't be able to see them."

"I know that. It's just… I want to be part of it."

"Well I'm not getting up at five in the morning for this. You're watching on your own."

"But you'll watch the landing, won't you? It'll be in the evening. It'll be easy."

"I don't know…"

"You have to watch. One of them's named Ronald Evans. He could be related to you or something."

This information cast a whole new light on the matter, and she agreed to join him for the landing.

_Monday December 11, 1972 (2 days before the 1st quarter)_

Once again Lily and Severus met by the lake, but this time it was a kind of pilgrimage. Lily brought the food, and Severus brought a telescope that he'd sneaked out of the astronomy classroom. With only minor mishaps, they managed to set the telescope up on the lake shore and train it at the moon, now moving into its first quarter. There was a sense of history for, as far as they knew, this would be the last time in their lifetimes that this event would happen.

"You're sure they're not going to do this again next year."

"Certain. They're not going to spend the money. This is the last mission."

"If I find out you're wrong, I'll thump you so hard…"

Severus straightened from tightening the support screws. "And what if I'm wrong? This is still just the sixth time that anyone's walked on the moon. It's historic. You can tell your grandchildren you were watching. Just like the first time on television. And Apollo 13."

"All right. Where are we looking?"

"The east side of the _Mare Serenitatis_. Here, in the upper right side. This dark patch right here." Severus lit the map with a Lumos spell, and they both studied it for a while. Then they went back to adjusting the telescope. By the time they had to return to their respective dormitories, they were both convinced that they'd seen light glinting off the lunar landing module in the Sea of Serenity.

Lily went home to Surrey for the Christmas break, but Severus stayed at Hogwarts, content to be alone for once in his dormitory. The one major disappointment of the break was that the Lestrange brothers were also staying.

_Boxing Day, Tuesday, December 26, 1972 (1 day before last quarter)_

"Hey, Half-Breed!" The voice was midway between a command and a sneer. "Turn around when you're spoken to, Mongrel."

There was no escape. Severus was on the path leading to the lake, dark trees many yards ahead of him, a dusting of white snow all around, and just out of sight of the windows of the castle. No teacher would come to his defense, and no ally would watch his back. Slowly, deliberately, he turned to face Rabastan Lestrange, with Rodolphus right behind. No one else, just the two. Severus said nothing, but his black eyes flicked from side to side, assessing the terrain. The two above him with a downhill slope at his back was not good.

"We need wood for the fire in the common room, and you're going to collect it and carry it on your back like a good little donkey, and then you're going to scrub all the floors in Slytherin house, and maybe entertain us all with a little dancing and singing. How does that sound, Half-Breed?" Rabastan stopped about twenty feet away, a malicious grin on his face. Behind him Rodolphus was chuckling.

"I don't think so," said Severus.

"I think the little second year needs a lesson in respect, don't you, Dolf? A dip in the lake, a roll in the snow. We'll leave your robes on the entrance steps and you can get dressed again there. After you bring up the wood."

Severus didn't answer. He was shutting down and closing off all the parts of his mind that might be seen during eye contact. His mother's presence was palpable. _Keep your mind closed, child. Don't give them weapons to use against you. Don't watch my hand, watch my thoughts. You'll see the wand in my brain before you see it in my hand._ Poised and ready, he fingered his own wand where it lay hidden in his sleeve. Then his black eyes met Rabastan's brown ones and he saw the Petrificus spell forming behind Rabastan's eyes.

_Petra!_ He thought the spell rather than say it, and a rock dislodged itself from the hill behind the Lestrange brothers and slammed into the back of Rabastan's shoulder. The brothers wheeled, searching the hillside for hidden enemies. "What was that?" yelled Rodolphus.

"I have friends," Severus said quietly.

A furious Rabastan turned on him. "We'll see about that." His wand was out and he screamed, _"Petrificus Totalus!"_ at the same time that Rodolphus attacked with an Expelliarmus, but Severus had already cried out, _"Protego!"_ while his brain was sending a stream of Petra and Chioni spells.

As rocks and snowballs pelted the brothers, Severus turned and ran fifty feet to his right and a little way up the hill, still not far enough to be seen from the windows. Spinning around with another Protego already spurting from his wand, he barely managed to avoid two Pugnatio spells, but the combined impact of the double hit against his own shield knocked him down.

Severus started to scramble to his feet, saw another Petrificus coming, and dove to the left. He was truly frightened now. Rabastan was sixth year, and Rodolphus was fourth. Either one he could take alone, but the two together were stronger than he was. They could keep him here, pinned on the hillside, until his strength waned, and then he would be theirs. And the fight would have made them angrier. Fear inspired desperation, and desperation focused every ounce of his slender being into one last-ditch effort to escape. Rolling onto his back, he pointed his wand at the rocks beneath the Lestrange brothers' feet and, concentrating all his energy into the one spell, hissed "Se-e-ismo-o-os" in a long serpentine sigh.

The earth of the hillside heaved and rocked, chunks breaking off and striking at Rabastan's and Rodolphus's ankles. The brothers lost balance and fell, sliding several feet down the hill in a miniature avalanche. Like a flash, Severus was up and running for the castle. By the time the brothers were able to stand, he was over the rise of the hill and out of their range.

Rabastan laid his hand on his brother's shoulder. Far from being angry, both brothers looked immensely pleased. "Never saw that one before, and I bet no one else has either," Rabastan said calmly, "Mulciber was right. The little half-breed's a fighter. Back him into a corner and he's worth half a dozen of the others. Potions and spells… I think the Dark Lord will be very interested in him."

"I'll tell Bella she was right," said Rodolphus. "She can begin recruiting him as soon as the new term starts."

_Saturday, January 6, 1973 (2 days after the new moon)_

The Saturday after New Year's Day, everyone arrived back on the train – Edison, Mulciber, Wilkes and Rosier, Bella Black, and especially Lily. In fact, if Severus hadn't been so eager to catch a glimpse of Lily, he might have noticed the Lestrange brothers talking to Bella in the common room, and Bella alternately nodding and shaking her head.


	10. Chapter 10 – Nets

**A Difference in the Family: Second Year – Nets**

_Tuesday, January 9, 1973 (3 days before the 1st quarter)_

She came from behind him as Severus left the Great Hall with his meager supper to go outside and eat. "Hi," she said softly near his left ear. "I remember you. You're Snake, aren't you?"

Severus recognized the voice before he turned to almost look at her. Bella Black, the fourth year student who didn't tease him so much about being part muggle, but asked him to perform like a trained dog. He was amused at her mistake, and didn't correct it. She wouldn't pay attention anyway.

Bella took his silence for assent. "They say," she whispered conspiratorially, "that you're a genius with potions work."

Severus shrugged. Danger bells were ringing in his mind.

"I'm looking for someone who can help me with my potions. I'm so far behind now I don't know how to catch up, and I've got my OWLs next year. I can make it worth your while."

Severus wasn't sure what she meant by that, so he didn't say anything.

"Look, do you want to help me with my potions, or not? It's a little weird talking to someone who doesn't talk back."

"I thought you were the one who wanted me to help you with your potions."

Bella's face tightened in restrained anger. "You little… How dare you talk to me like that, second year. I've offered to let you help me with my class work. I could make you more comfortable in the common room than you've ever been in your life. You don't get snotty with me." Behind her, Rabastan Lestrange was hovering in the doorway of the Great Hall.

"I'll let you know if I ever want to get comfortable in the common room."

Her eyes narrowed. _She's going to slap me._ Severus braced himself for the blow that didn't come. Bella was visibly seething, but seemed to be trying to control herself. _She despises me, but she's forcing herself to stay. Never trust anyone who tries too hard to be nice. They just want something for themselves. They'll use you and throw you away._

"I still need help getting ready for my OWLs. The offer stays open. You help me with my potions, and I'll take care of you. Life gets better when you have friends."

"It depends on who the friends are."

Bella's mouth dropped open. She spun on her heel and stomped back into the Great Hall, nodding curtly at Rabastan, who stood aside to let her pass. Then he advanced to tower over Severus.

"You really like to live dangerously. I know all about you. You're good with spiders and dog smells, but I can skewer you to the wall and wrap your guts around one of the pillars. I never hurt people that Bella likes, but if Bella doesn't like you, you're fair game. You and I have a grudge. I'm going to make you pay, so you need all the help you can get." And Rabastan followed Bella back into the Great Hall.

Severus watched them go, wondering why, all of a sudden, people like Bella Black and Rabastan Lestrange were taking an interest in him. The back of his neck prickled and a shiver ran down his spine. Alert at once, he glanced around. Above him, looking down from the railing of one of the staircases, was Hogwarts's headmaster, Albus Dumbledore. _Did he see what just happened? Did he hear anything?_

Feeling suddenly vulnerable, Severus backed away from the Great Hall, turned, and left the Castle through the main entrance. Tonight, of all nights, there was at least someplace else he could be.

Dumbledore slowly descended the staircase, pondering what he had just seen. The Blacks and the Lestranges were from influential pureblood families that were rumored to be joining the ranks of the former Tom Riddle, who now called himself 'Lord Voldemort.' But the boy, he was no more than Eileen Prince's son, and half muggle into the bargain. The Princes were pureblood, but hardly in the same league as the Blacks. Why ever would Bella Black and Rabastan Lestrange be interested in such a… Dumbledore did not really think of any of his students as nonentities, but he knew that Bella and Rabastan would. So why were they after Eileen's little boy?

Severus did not go directly to the lake, but rather took a longer, more roundabout route so he could check whether or not he was being followed. All seemed well, so he picked his way carefully down the slope to the water's edge. Lily wasn't there. _She won't have remembered. A lot has happened since last year._

Ice rimmed the lake, solid and laced with the marks of skates nearer the shore, thinning to a bare crust over the deeper water in the middle. Something lived down there, just as things lived in the forest, and in the walls of the castle. Mice, rats, spiders, beetles, whole worlds teemed just out of sight and hearing. He thought of things he wanted, but couldn't have. A telescope to look at the moon, a microscope to look at the water, an airplane to visit strange places – anywhere but Hogwarts…

Severus heard the faint slithering of someone coming down the hillside and fingered his wand. Quietly he turned to face the intruder, and it was Lily.

"I'm sorry I'm late," she said.

"Not… a problem. I was looking… at the moon."

She eyed him suspiciously. "What happened?"

"Nothing… happened."

"Yes it did. You're nervous. You only ever talk like that when you're nervous."

He frowned slightly, puzzled.

"Hullo. You're stammering. What happened?"

"A couple of… Slytherins tried… to start a fight. I got… away though. I don't what they wanted. They never noticed me much before." He hadn't told her about the fight with the Lestranges during the break.

"Well, it's gone now, so you must be feeling better. Do you still stammer when you talk to people, like you did in the other school? Besides me, of course."

"No. When I'm really scared, everything gets very clear, and it's like I can see all the details. Then I can say anything."

"Good. That's when you need it. Here, I brought you this." She handed him a small covered dish. "It's why I'm late. A friend in Hufflepuff bribed a house-elf for it."

Severus opened the cover. Inside was a tiny cake, just the right size for two people. Its green and silver icing had red and gold letters on it spelling 'Happy 13th B-day.' "Thanks," he said. "It's perfect."

Later, when it was time to return to the dormitories, Severus remembered Rabastan. After December's fight he'd expected trouble with the brothers, but had gotten none. He had no illusions about his luck repeating itself. Sure enough, there in the almost deserted common room were the Lestranges, Rosier, and Avery. Bella Black was not present.

Severus was halfway to the passage leading to his dormitory when Rabastan uncoiled himself from a chair and, pointing his wand at a spot two feet ahead of Severus, sent a stinging hex into the stonework. Rodolphus and Avery blocked his exit through the wall and back into the corridor.

"Thought we'd be asleep by now? Little second years shouldn't be up so late. It's not good for their health."

Severus fingered his hidden wand. His brain was feverishly calculating distances to the center of the common room and to the exit in the wall. Rosier moved suddenly, and Severus's attention flickered to the left. In the instant's distraction, Avery pinned his right arm while Rodolphus extracted the wand. Severus's back was against the cold stone wall, but otherwise he was surrounded. The ease with which they'd cornered him was humiliating.

"Does a baby want his little wand back?" Rabastan stood directly in front of him now. He pulled Severus's wrist from Avery's grasp and twisted, forcing Severus onto his knees. As he heard the sound of Rabastan's belt unbuckling and being drawn from its loops, Severus began to struggle. He was already too familiar with the feel of a belt buckle across his back.

"What's going on here! What do you think you're doing? Let him up! Let him up now!" Bella stood framed in the passageway to the girls' dormitories, her wand pointed at Rabastan. "You disgusting bully! Pick on someone your own size."

Rabastan laughed, and the others drew back. "No harm meant, Bella. Just wanted to scare him a little. We weren't going to do anything."

"You're not now, for sure. Drop his wand. Get out of here, the lot of you. If I find out tomorrow that you've touched him, I'll go after you myself."

They melted back into their dormitories while Bella picked up Severus's wand and knelt beside him on the floor. "Don't worry," she said soothingly. "They won't hurt you. I won't let them."

Severus stood, shaking uncontrollably, and accepted his wand back from her. "Thank you," he said.

Bella smiled. "I told you. I take care of my friends."

_Up until Thursday January 18, 1973 (the full moon)_

The next morning Bella was waiting for Severus as he left his dormitory. The Lestranges and Avery watched from their fireplace stations like a pack of wolves watching a deer. Bella was all gentle consideration, though, and steered him through the common room with a protective arm around his shoulders. All the while she talked about potions.

"…and then it went all chalky, and for the life of me I don't know what I did wrong."

He knew, and couldn't resist. "You… beat it instead of… stirring it. Never whip… air into a potion like… that."

"There. You see. I knew I was right getting you to help me with this."

It was flattering, even though he had no illusions about the night before. Bella guided him into the Great Hall and sat him beside her for breakfast. She heaped his plate with eggs and sausages, toast with jam and marmalade, a choice of three kinds of tea. He barely uttered the syllable "kip-" and she was reaching for kippers, kidneys, fried tomatoes and mushrooms, bacon… And all the while she plied him with expert questions: How many ortolan eggs to the pound? How do you strain hairs from fresh-pulled badger claws? Which phase of the moon is best for gathering nightshade blossoms? Several members of Slytherin house wished him 'Good morning,' students who would have sneered down their noses at him just yesterday.

Lily came in for breakfast, and the shock on her face cut Severus like a knife. He wanted to explain to her what happened, but it was impossible. To make matters worse, she never once looked back at the Slytherin table, leaving with her Gryffindor friends as soon as she had eaten.

Classes were strange, too. Slytherins nodded greetings to him, and no less than three came over during morning breaks to tell him how pleased they were that he was a member of their house. No one whispered 'Half-Breed,' no one pulled aside to avoid touching him, no one tried to hit him with wadded up pieces of parchment. Life was pleasant. Life was good.

And all day his mother's voice resonated in the center of his mind. _They're using you. They don't want you, they want your abilities. The instant you aren't useful, they'll sell you. They'll chew you up and spit you out. No one wants just you._

The next day was double potions, but Severus couldn't talk to Lily during class. Too many Slytherins were watching him. Too many were asking his advice about their potions and copying his movements around the cauldron. To have tried to talk to Lily would have directed their attention towards her, and that was the last thing Severus wanted to do. She had to stay clear of the circus.

And still all that day, as the day before, wherever he went there was Bella Black. And if not her, there was Avery, or Rodolphus Lestrange. It was as if all these former enemies had become his best friends, and the experience was making Severus feel dizzy. Dizzy, and trapped, and exhilaratingly important. For the first time, he began to wonder if his mother had been wrong.

In Severus's own dormitory, things became more relaxed as well. Mitchell Edison spoke to him freely, and the two worked on their History of Magic homework together. Wilkes got sweets from home and passed them around, including Severus as if it were something they'd been doing routinely since the previous year. During the Friday night pillow fight, Rosier noticed that Severus was nervous and tentative, and toned down his roughness. And he didn't tease Severus about it either.

It was, in fact, the first time in Severus's life that he'd related, in a positive way, to a group of boys his own age. He remained wary and ready to shut down at any moment, yet at the same time he was beginning to look forward to evenings in the dorm.

Several times Bella asked him about Potions, so Severus stayed in the common room to go over her work with her. He completely forgot his mother's warnings about making it look as if he was laboring for good marks. The work Bella was doing was still basic, and he was still Nana's grandson. He didn't notice that he was getting a reputation.

During this time, Severus wasn't able to meet with Lily, but somehow, with all the attention he was getting in Slytherin house, it didn't seem quite as important as it used to.

Monday added a new wrinkle to the situation. Severus was making his way along the fourth floor to the library, for once free of attendant Slytherin toadies. It was just after noon, and most of the school was at lunch in the Great Hall. Without warning, a tall, stocky, dark-haired boy about Severus's age stepped from a niche and confronted him in the corridor. It was the boy named Sirius Black. The one from the train in first year.

"If it isn't cousin Bella's little stooge," he said, the pitch and cadence of his voice exactly like that of Rabastan Lestrange. "Aren't you afraid to be wandering about without your guards, Slytherin?"

Severus backed away a few steps. Black was a Gryffindor, but Severus had never before had problems with any of the other houses. "I'm not bothering you," he said.

"Anyone Bella fancies bothers me," the other boy responded. "But I'm still trying to figure out why Dolf doesn't wring your scrawny neck. Then I thought, maybe she doesn't fancy you. Maybe someone a little darker fancies you."

Severus didn't understand what he was talking about, but with every sentence the boy advanced on him, and he retreated an equal distance. Black's plan became clear a moment later when Severus backed into someone else, someone who seized his arms and pinned them behind his back. Severus jerked forward and twisted to the side, but his new antagonist held him too tightly for him to escape.

"Now," said Black, "we're going to clarify a couple of things. First, you meddle in dark arts. We've checked. You use curses all the time. That's going to stop. People who study the dark arts don't last around us. Second, you're not helping Bella. Not now, not ever. Whatever she threatened you with is nothing compared with what we can do. Third, you stay away from the Lestranges, from Avery, from those second years Mulciber, Rosier, and Wilkes. They're mixed up in things that 're going to get you killed. Did I leave anything out?" The last was addressed to his companion.

"It sounded good to me." It was the other boy from the train, Potter. He released Severus by pushing him against the wall. "Remember, we're watching you."

The two sauntered away down the corridor, not even glancing back at Severus, who quickly dodged into the boys' bathroom and leaned against the cool tile. He felt sick. After a minute, he turned on the tap in one of the sinks and splashed cold water on his face. _Why? Why me? Why now? No one ever cared before. _The answer, of course, was obvious. They didn't care about him. They cared about his contact with Bella Black and the Lestranges.

His choices were narrowing. Stay with Bella and be the target of Gryffindors, or defy Bella and be the target of Rabastan and Rodolphus. Life was neither pleasant nor good.

A week had gone by and little more seemed to change. Little that is except that Bella began hinting about people and goals larger than Hogwarts and its classes. She was never direct or specific about her allusions, and Severus was not sure what it had to do with him. The other Slytherins seemed to understand, though.

It was Thursday again, and double Potions in the afternoon. Severus was once again the center of a group of Slytherins while Lily remained surrounded by Gryffindors. There was no contact between the two at all.

At the end of class, as he was nearing the door to the dungeon classroom, Lily suddenly hurried past him. She misjudged the space, knocked into his left arm, and sent her and his books crashing to the floor. "Stupid Slytherin," she hissed as she gathered up her books. She picked up one, realized it was his, and sent it sliding under a table. Then, with a toss of her long red hair, she stormed out of the room.

"Dumb Gryffindor," said one of Severus's house mates, and the group of Slytherins laughed.

Severus picked up his books and returned to his dormitory. There he sat on his bed and opened the book that had gone under the table. In it was a note: 'Moon, tonight.'

It wasn't easy slipping away from the Great Hall. Gone were the days when he could grab a bite and leave unnoticed. Now he made an excuse about checking something in the library and escaped before dessert was served. He saw no one in the entrance hall, so he went to and out the great doors and down the steps into the moonlight. The back of his neck was prickling, but it had been doing that all week.

Having watched Eileen Prince's son leave the Great Hall and dart into the night, Dumbledore decided to take a stroll around the grounds. A small set of snowy footprints leading from the entrance steps toward the lake determined his choice of direction, his curiosity increasing when they met another set of footprints descending the hill from the north side of the castle.

From the edge of the copse, Dumbledore watched the two children, red hair and black hair nearly touching as they conferred earnestly in the glow of the full winter moon. He knew the girl, Lily Evans, a sweet muggle-born witch who was slowly becoming one of the most stabilizing forces of the second years. She had a good heart and an honest vision. Professor McGonagall had nothing but praise for her. It was unfortunate that Professor Slughorn didn't have as thorough a knowledge of the students in Slytherin, for the boy, beyond his shyness, was more of an enigma.

Dumbledore coughed loudly and made ostentatious noise as he moved away from the trees. The two by the lake separated suddenly and faced him, clearly discomfited by his presence. "Good evening, Miss Evans. Good evening Master Snape," Dumbledore said cheerfully. "A pleasant night to be enjoying the stars. And the moon." The two students shifted uncomfortably under his gaze.

"It is most fortunate that I have encountered you here, as I have been hoping to exchange a few words with you Master Snape, if I may. I hope you will excuse us, Miss Evans." Lily nodded and said a quick 'Good night,' then scurried off in the direction of the castle. Dumbledore settled himself on the same boulder Lily had sat on the first evening she and Severus met in this spot. He motioned to Severus to approach him.

The boy sidled in Dumbledore's direction, but his reluctance was obvious. He kept his gaze fixed on the ground and seemed to shrink inside his robe.

"You know," said Dumbledore gently, "I am generally accustomed to having the people I am speaking to look at me."

His words seemed only to intensify the boy's nervousness. The black eyes darted around the lakeside like a bird trying to escape a cage, looking everywhere, anywhere except at Dumbledore. Dumbledore reached forward and cupped the boy's chin in his palm, thumb and forefinger forcing the young face up and around. No doubt whose son he was, for he had Eileen Prince's long, pale features and lank hair. _It must be his father's nose, though._ For just an instant, the boy's eyes met the Headmaster's then flicked away again, but Dumbledore's expression became suddenly worried.

"I see your mother has been teaching you. She had a difficult time at Hogwarts, and I'm sure she means well trying to protect you from similar problems, but this isn't the way for someone as young as you. Not everyone is going to hurt you."

The boy flinched, and Dumbledore made a mental note to talk to Professor Slughorn about the teasing and bullying that went on inside Slytherin house. "I will be honest with you, Severus." The boy looked up then, and quickly back down, at hearing his name. "I was planning to talk to you about being wary of the friends you associate with, but I think maybe I did not perfectly understand the situation. I should like you to participate in a little experiment with someone else on the grounds. A little secret just between the three of us." Dumbledore rose.

A firm hand on Severus's shoulder steered the boy away from the lake, and a few minutes' walk brought them to Hagrid's hut. Dumbledore knocked politely. The gamekeeper opened the door quickly and was greeting the Headmaster when he saw the student a pace behind.

"Bless me, it's Severus, Eileen's boy," he said.

"Yes, Hagrid. May we come in? The night is still young, and I need to talk to you about something."

An hour later, Severus was dismissed back to Slytherin house, but Dumbledore remained to confer longer with Hagrid. Hagrid was at first insufferably pleased with himself.

"Didn't I tell ya he weren't no Tom Riddle? That child ain't no more looking for power and influence than I am. Maybe less."

"I must confess, Hagrid, that you have proven the better judge of the situation. I fear, however, that I had some time ago reached the same conclusion. It was not the boy's own ambition that I was attempting to curb tonight, but the ambition of others and his utility to them as a pawn. That has now been overtaken by another concern."

"Y're worried about him? In his own right, I mean?"

"Very worried. So worried that I should like to appoint someone to look after him. He is undersized, his health seems fragile, he is nervous and frightened, and he needs to be drawn out of himself. Made more comfortable with the world around him. I should like the person looking after him to be you."

That gave Hagrid pause. "D' ya think I'm the right one for this job, Professor? I mean, I'm more used t' dealing with the animals."

"You care for magical creatures, Hagrid. What more magical creature can you find on this earth than a young wizard? And this one needs a very large amount of care. Not books or classroom work, but real care. He has not had an easy life. I would never have guessed, trying to read him, that he was only thirteen."

"Trying t' read him, eh? Well that's yer business, though I'd like t' know somewhat about it. I can tell ya a few things just by looking up close, though. He's not just undersized, he's seriously undernourished. Needs t' be put on better feed. Then ya usually see that kind of skittishness in a beast that's been mishandled. Beaten maybe. What d' ya know about that muggle Snape that Eileen married? I don't think Eileen 'd beat her son, but maybe his dad."

"I think you are right. I worry now that Eileen may have suffered as well. She was never an open person, never talked about herself. I fear she has passed that trait on to the boy, and made it worse. She has been teaching him occlumency."

"No! Ya don't say so! He's a child! Ya don't lock a child up inside hisself like that and expect him t' turn into any kind of normal human being. What can she be thinking of?"

"I think she means to protect him. But there is some protection worse than any danger. Do you remember what Professor McGonagall said about the boy after the sorting last year?"

"Like reaching fer a bird to find yerself holding a dagger. Thought she was being fanciful."

"No. I fear now she was being quite accurate. I am sorry that I did not follow up on it. We might have been able to intervene earlier."

"What can I do 'bout this occlumency part o' the problem, Professor? I can feed him and tend his hurts, but I don't know how t' deal with occlumency."

"We must get him to express honest emotions, Hagrid. Get him to break through that shell and really feel something, and feel it strongly. Any emotion will do, as long as it is honest. The easiest is anger. Get him to express his anger at what has been and is being done to him."

"Well I don't know. Should I tell him what I'm doing, and why? Or just let him get angry at me?"

"I do not like being devious, but an occlumens's whole intent is to hide thoughts and feelings. If the boy knows what we are doing, he may counter it. I fear we shall have to work on his feelings without telling him our purpose."

The wheel of fortune turned, and suddenly things were back to normal. Or almost normal. The next day it was made clear that the Headmaster had taken an interest in Severus. Not only did Dumbledore bid the boy 'good morning' in the Great Hall as he passed to the staff table for breakfast, but Slughorn actually spoke to him the same evening in the common room and inquired about his health and that of his family. Bella and the Lestranges backed away, not wanting attention from Dumbledore, and Severus once again found himself more isolated in Slytherin house.

On the up side of things, no one teased him anymore. At least not in Slytherin. On the down side, he still couldn't talk to Lily in Potions class because he was no longer anonymous in his corner, the other Slytherins turning to him from time to time for advice on their own class work, and Slughorn keeping his eyes more open. Severus and Lily still met by the lake as often as she could escape from her friends without causing comment. Maybe once a week.

Another small problem was the unwanted notice of Gryffindor house. The two Gryffindors who'd accosted Severus near the library continued to let him know that they were watching him, making cutthroat gestures across the Great Hall, or 'accidentally' jostling him in the corridors. He contemplated hexing them, but decided it wasn't worth the risk, especially since their attentions were sporadic now that Bella seemed to have forgotten him.

Of course, there were his visits to Hagrid.

The first session was purely medical. In a way it was demeaning, for Hagrid treated him almost like one of the animals he tended. On the other hand it was fascinating, for Severus had never been to a doctor before and the attention was a novelty. And no one would ever know about it except for himself, Hagrid, and presumably Dumbledore.

"Open yer mouth now. There. Yer adult teeth are coming in crooked 'cause yer jaw is too small. Don't know if we can fix that. Ya may have to live with it. Gums are not good, not good at all. More fruit, I think. D' ya like lemons? That may help a lot.

"'T is a pity about the bones in yer legs. Just a tad rickety it strikes me. Arms too, but they don't bear the weight. We can keep it from getting any worse, though. Milk 'll do it. That and lots o' greens.

"Ya've got to grow, lad. Y're way too small for yer age, an' I don't think it's in the blood. I think it's in the rearing. Meat's what ya need. Lots o' good, red meat."

A prescription was sent to the house-elves for a change in diet. Aside from a general direction to eat more, Severus was to be given a special glass of milk with each meal, and his intake of meat, fruit, and green vegetables was to be monitored. It was a blessing that the others were paying less attention to him now for, overall, it was a little… embarrassing.

And then there was the matter of the irresistible force and the immovable object.

"Now, lad, if ya'll just lower the top half o' yer gown so 's I can look at yer spine and back muscles…"

Severus froze, doors slamming and sealing. "No," he said quietly. "I don't think that will be necessary. My back is fine."

"Well I think I need to be the judge of that. What with the rickets and all, I need t' check fer curvature and alignment. Just part of the examination."

Severus turned to gather up his cloak and robe, and in doing so moved three feet closer to the door. "My back has never bothered me. There's no reason for you to be concerned."

"Well it ain't concern so much as doing my job. Part of it is checking yer back."

"I have class now. It will have to wait until another time. I'm sure Professor Dumbledore will arrange it for us." And he was gone back to the safety of the castle and his house.

"And I'm as sure as I'm standing here that the reason was he has something on his back he don't want me t' see." Hagrid accepted a glass of firewater from Dumbledore and downed it with enthusiasm. "It ain't that he don't want me touching it. He don't want me seeing it."

"Scars, perhaps? You did say the skittishness of a creature that has been mishandled. The scars of a beating, maybe? Or of many beatings? And from his father, or his mother, or both? At least he is not being beaten here. We have some time to sort this out."

"Just so 's you know, he ain't said one word 'gainst either dad or mum."

Dumbledore sighed. "They seldom do," he said.

The spring advanced, life went on, and the owls came again, his grandmother's among them. This time there was no extra scrap of paper inside the blue envelope, just the message.

"May 14. It's going up May 14." Severus told Lily that evening. "I have to watch."

"You. Won't. Be. Able. To. See. It! I told you last time, and I was right. What can you see here of a launch in Florida?"

"It isn't the seeing. It's the…"

"Being part of it. All right. I'll watch with you. At least it's in the evening this time instead of the morning."

_Tuesday, May 15, 1973 (2 days before the full moon)_

The day after the launch, Severus got the second owl.

Lily found him standing on the edge of the lake, his face tilted to the moon, now almost full. "What happened?" she asked.

"Do you know that the Saturn V rocket has never failed on a mission? Never."

"So something happened. What happened? There wasn't anyone on that rocket. It wasn't manned. No one could have died."

"The sun shield is gone. The solar panels are damaged. It hasn't got any power."

"Are they scrubbing the mission? Are they just going to leave it there?"

"No. They're still going up. It's just been delayed."

"Then why are you so upset? No one's died, the mission is still 'go.' "

"Don't you see? So many things can go wrong. Don't you remember the Russians put up a space station a couple of years ago? They called it Salyut. Everything was fine until the cosmonauts came back. Then something happened to the reentry vehicle, and they… died. Out there in space. The Skylab crew could die, too."

"Oh. I'm sorry. I didn't think about that."

"No, no. It isn't sad. The cosmonauts saw things no one else has seen. They were living their dream. They died doing something the world will remember forever. How can you find a better way to die? There are so many worse ways to go."

They lay on their backs on the grass at the verge of the lake, looking at the moon. "Would you like to go like that, like the Russian crew?" Lily asked.

"Doing something I wanted to do? Oh, yes! It's the perfect way to die."

Talk of death made Lily uncomfortable, for she could see no 'perfect' way to die. "If that's the perfect way to go, what would be the worst way to die?"

For Severus, that answer was easy. "Like Professor Binns. Stuck in Hogwarts until you die, and even then not being able to leave. Never going anywhere. Never doing anything. Never exploring anything new. Can you think of anything worse than ending up a teacher at Hogwarts for the rest of your life?"

Skylab was a success. An owl arrived nearly every day with news of repairs and space walks. Severus and Lily now had a whole new vocabulary that included 'solar sails' and 'extravehicular activity.' One disappointment was that they wouldn't be able to keep vigil together for the astronauts' return, for that was scheduled for the very day that they were to leave Hogwarts and return to London.

Then came final exams, and the whole school hunkered down with books, notes, wand practice, and late night potions. And finally it was over. Another year at Hogwarts. Just a week left to clear out cupboards, pack clothes, exchange addresses, be given the marks on the exams, and get ready for the train back to King's Cross Station from Hogsmeade.

Two days before they were to leave, Professor Dumbledore stopped Severus in the entrance hall on his way from dinner. He held a legal-looking envelope in his hand. "If I may, Master Snape, this letter arrived for you from Hogsmeade this afternoon. I trust it is not bad news, but if it is you must feel free to come to me for any assistance."

Severus said, "Thank you," but instead of either looking at the letter or continuing to Slytherin house, he walked slowly up to the first floor and sat on a staircase near the hospital wing. It was certain that no one would bother him there. He examined the letter; he had already recognized his mother's hand in the address. Then, with a shrug, he slipped his thumb under the flap and opened it.

Inside was a second-class ticket for the Saturday morning train from Euston station in London to Colne, Lancashire. A hurriedly scribbled note said 'We'll meet you at Colne.'

_Friday, June 22 to Saturday, June 23, 1973 (the last quarter of the moon)_

The change in plans meant a change in packing. Severus sought out Professor Slughorn for permission to leave his books and other school paraphernalia locked in Hogwarts for the summer. He took with him only his battered Gladstone bag, which was more than sufficient to hold his robes after changing on the train. That, and a few other clothes and small personal items.

The morning of departure was a flurry of activity for most students, but Severus waited quietly in his dormitory until everyone had gone to breakfast. His bag was only half full, since his muggle clothes were on under his robes. Hearing the bustle die down, he glanced once around the room, stood, and walked out, holding the bag close to his left side.

Arriving at the Great Hall, he settled at the end near the doors, separate from the others, and slipped the bag under the table, its latch unfastened. From time to time as he ate breakfast, he would sneak a roll, meat, fruit, into the bag. He didn't want to take too much, but it had to last for two days.

The ride to Hogsmeade was different from his first year. Severus 'd said goodbye to Lily the evening before. It 'd been short and simple – have a good summer, and we'll see each other in September. On the train he made his way to the last car and, finding no empty compartment, preferred to sit in the aisle by the door at the end, even though he knew Lily wouldn't join him. Nearing London, he took off his robes. Underneath he wore a pair of gray trousers and a cotton shirt. Shoving the robes into the bag, he replaced his cloak with a gray sweater, a little worn at the elbows.

The train pulled into London and spilled students onto the platform, jostling, laughing, hugging, waving goodbye, greeting their families… Once more Severus waited until most had left, then he followed the remaining students through the barrier and into King's Cross station. From that moment he was indistinguishable from any other muggle child of a respectable working class background.

One unexpected surprise was that Lily was still there. She was talking with her parents and a skinny blonde girl who Severus realized was a fifteen-year-old Petunia. They seemed upset, and Lily seemed to be resisting them, glancing back from time to time at the entrance to the Hogwarts platform. When she saw Severus, she smiled, pointed at a newsstand to her left, and abruptly ended her argument with her parents by turning and walking toward the exit, leaving them puzzled in her wake. Severus approached the newsstand. The article in the evening paper was small, but on the front page. The astronauts' splashdown had been without mishap.

One of the things that Severus hated about London (and this was, after all, his fourth time in the metropolis) was the traffic. Outside the great tan brick bulk of King's Cross and its red brick neighbor St. Pancras was a bedlam of cars that careened through a huge open transit area in apparent total chaos. Severus turned right out of the main entrance and joined the evening rush to the underground station. He had no intention of boarding a tube train since he had no money, but the underground was also a convenient subway passage to the other side of Euston Road.

The walk to St. Pancras Church was not long. Evensong was in progress, and Severus had no trouble finding an empty pew. Most of the pews were empty. The tricky part was avoiding being seen as the church was closing down for the night. Still, no one really expected a thirteen-year-old boy to be spending the night in the church, and so what they didn't expect to see, they didn't see. It was, in fact, easier alone than it had been with his mother the year before.

The next morning when the church opened for morning prayer, he simply crossed Euston Road to Euston train station. The worst thing at this point was thirst, but handfuls of water from the tap in the men's room were enough to keep him going. He wandered around the station for a couple of hours, watching the people and reading the fronts of the newspapers until it was time to board his train. He did that at the earliest possible opportunity, and was able to get a seat by a window. He was pleased at how smoothly things were going.

The journey to Colne lasted eight hours. Basically it was boring as he had nothing to do. Severus thought about Apollo 17 and Skylab, about Bella and Rabastan, about Dumbledore and Hagrid, and about possible reasons why his mother hadn't been able to meet him in London. Mostly he thought about Lily and decided two things. The first was that he could pretend he was talking to her, and then he wouldn't feel so lonely. The second was that he still couldn't tell his parents about her, even though now she lived so far to the south. It didn't do for management and labor to fraternize.

It was early evening when the train pulled into the station at Colne, and Severus was the only person left in his car. He stood quietly on the platform for a few seconds, then saw his mum. She waved, and he lifted a hand in response. Together they went onto the street where his dad waited by the car. It was the old black car, held together in places with rope, but he knew every broken spring in it. He'd even helped keep it running.

"Did ya give 'em what for?" his dad asked.

"Whupped 'em every time."

"That's my boy."

The long northern evening stretched out before them as they left Colne, and the stark silhouette of Pendle Hill loomed to their left, backlit by the sun, whose red glow suffused the omnipresent smoke and haze with a crimson and vermilion worthy of Dante. It was less than a quarter hour's drive to the small mill town where the Snape family lived. No one talked during the ride. Severus was home.

The brick house at the end of the row was dim inside, but they lit no lamps. Summer was no time to be wasting money, and the sun would be enough light for a couple of hours yet.

"What'll ya be wanting for supper yer first night home, boy? No expense spared. Anything that fancy school can give you, we can better yer first night home."

"Fish and chips. And chocolate taffy," Severus replied.

His dad roared with laughter. "Did I tell you, 'Leen? No fancy school's going t' spoil him. Did I call it? Did I?"

"You called it, Toby." Eileen smiled at her husband and her son, and got the bag out of the icebox. "Your dad picked it up before we drove to Colne." Plates, cups, and forks were laid out, with the fish and chips, salt and vinegar, tea for Eileen and Severus, and a bottle of small ale for Tobias. They set to the meal hungrily, not talking for several minutes.

"Anything else ya missed, boy?"

"Double skunking m' dad. Can't do that at Hogwarts. None of them puddings knows nothing."

Tobias Snape laughed again and went to the sideboard. From it he pulled a battered deck of greasy cards and an ancient cribbage board. Great-grandfather Snape had been a seaman, and cribbage was a family tradition.

Father and son played three full games, Severus winning one and Tobias the other two. It had by then grown so dark in the small house that they could hardly see the pips on the cards. "You're tired boy, best go to bed. Tomorrow's Sunday. We'll have a good old time."

There were two bedrooms upstairs. The back one had long before been divided in two to form a tiny sleeping area and a storage space. Undressed and in bed, Severus listened to his parents downstairs. Funny that in all these years it had never occurred to them that he could hear them.

"The boy's growed, Eileen. Wrists sticking a mile out his sleeves. He's growed, and he'll need new togs."

"He won't need them yet, Toby. We've got all summer to figure it out. We can piece it out, a bit here, a bit there. We can sell the old things. He can use my old books next year; we won't have to get any of them new."

"We got to keep the expense down. We can't afford them things. Look, I know I promised to be good, but I got to think this out. I got to go out and think on it."

Severus heard the door close and knew his father was off to the local boozer. It was his fault. He'd taken food from Lily, from Bella, from Hagrid. It was all that extra food. That was why he'd grown, and that was why his father had gone out to get drunk. _I can't do anything right. Everything I touch turns out wrong. Now I've ruined it for Mum, and I've only just got home._

He did not go to sleep that night.

Severus's bed stood next to the window where he could look out at the night. So many nights watching, estimating the time by the moon and stars. Now it was 'last call.' Now the final patrons left and the doors were locked. Still his father didn't come home, which meant he was with his mates and a bottle.

Not until after two o'clock did Severus hear the uneven steps on the cobbles and the rattle of the doorknob. Eileen heard it, too, and crept quietly down the stairs. Before she reached the bottom, the door slammed open.

"Where's m' boy? Where's m' son? Come back from that big fancy school! He should be 'ere t' talk t' his dad! Russ! Get down here an' keep yer dad company!"

"Shh, Toby. Come to bed. He's tired, he's asleep. You can talk in the morning."

"Get out th' way, woman! That's m' boy. Needs t' be learnin' a man's business…"

"Please, Toby. Not so loud. You'll wake him. Wake the neighbors."

"A man's job! Not some jumped-up college pudding, fancy…"

"It's late. Better in the morning…"

"My son! Not some witch's brat!"

"Toby!"

Severus heard the sound of the blow and his mother hitting the wall. He was up and halfway down the stairs in a second. Eileen was standing against the wall, her left arm up to protect her face, while Tobias advanced on her, fist raised.

"Russ!" Eileen yelled. "Get back upstairs! Stay out of this!"

"You!" Tobias roared. "Come back from yer fancy school, think you're better 'n everyone! Takin' a man's wage out his pocket fer fancy clothes! Get down 'ere! I'll show ya what for!"

Tobias charged up the stairs, but Eileen lunged for his arm. "Toby!" she screamed, "Russ!" Tobias turned, unsteady, her weight dragging on him, and struck her backhanded across the mouth, sending her into the wall again. Severus turned and ran for his room, to his bed where his wand was hidden under the pillow. From the top of the stairs he pointed it at his father's distorted face and hissed, "Stupefacio!" A bolt of red light struck Tobias, and he fell forward to lie unconscious on the steps.

Eileen and Severus stared at each other over Tobias's limp form. Both were breathing hard. "What," Eileen forced out, "do you think you're doing? Give me that thing. Now!"

Dumbly Severus handed her the wand. It'd all been so fast that he still wasn't sure what had happened. His father lay sprawled on the stairs, beginning to snore. But he had done that. He had taken his wand and used it against his father. He was no better than Rabastan or the Gryffindor bullies. His mother's anger was righteous and justified. A deep sense of shame began to fill him.

"You'll get this back when you go to London in September," Eileen said. "Now see if you can help me get him into bed. If you're lucky, he won't remember anything tomorrow."

They had managed to pull Tobias up onto the upper landing when they heard a flurry of wings against the sitting room window. "Oh, no," whispered Eileen, and she hurried down the stairs to admit the owl. The letter was brief to the point of rudeness. An underage wizard had used a stupefying spell and was now in danger of being expelled from school. Both he and his parents were warned that any repetition of this behavior would result in disciplinary action.

"That's done it," said Eileen to the house in general. "Now the Ministry of Magic is watching us." She waved the letter in her fist as she came back up the stairs. "You know what your dad 'll do if he finds out the Ministry's got its eye on him! You had to go for the wand!"

"I'm sorry, Mum, I didn't think…"

"Obviously not!"

"It's just that I got so used to having to be ready, and sometimes you don't have time to think…"

Eileen patted her son on the shoulder. "So you didn't whup 'em every time, eh? That's all right, Russ. I forgive you the fib. It made your dad happy. Let's get him to bed now. Won't any more owls be bothering us tonight. But you and me have to work on this fighting thing. You have to decide in a second whether to react or not react, and you can't afford to get it wrong. We start Monday after your dad goes to work."

The next morning Tobias was sick with a fierce hangover. He knew from the bruise on Eileen's face that he'd done something the night before, but he had no memory of what it was. Both Eileen and Severus acted as if nothing had happened, and soon Tobias accepted that they were probably right.

The summer quickly settled into a routine. Tobias left early each morning for work while Eileen and Severus practiced until noon honing his reaction skills. Then, depending on what she could take in, Eileen sewed, washed, or charred in neighboring villages, while Severus explored the surrounding moor country, collecting seeds and roots for his potions. Friday evenings Tobias spent with his mates, and was the worse for wear Saturday mornings, but aside from that he kept his promise to Eileen about being good. Except, of course, for the last day in July when they got word of the eighteen killed in a cage accident at Markham No 2 Colliery in Derbyshire the day before. Every mining man in the district was angry and drinking that night and Eileen, forewarned by a neighbor with a radio, sent Severus out with a pillow and a blanket to sleep in the area behind the kitchen before Tobias got home.

And of course, Eileen looked for clothes. Fortunately the cloak and biretta could still be worn. The robe was loose enough, but getting too short, so Eileen invested some of her hard-earned coin in black cloth to add a strip about the bottom. Some of the same cloth provided plackets and gores in the gown, as well as a band around the waist to add length. Her seamstress work was so expert that it was hard to tell that the robes had been reworked.

The other clothes for a growing boy – shirts, trousers, sweaters, underwear – were harder to come by. There were charity shops and church poor-bins, and some things Eileen got as castoffs from the families she worked for. In the end it was all good, sturdy, serviceable working-class cotton, gray and dingy from too many washings in mineral-hard boiling water and cheap soap, but solid and durable. And Tobias didn't have to lay out his own wages, so familial peace was maintained on that score.

One day Eileen and Severus went to visit Nana, his witch grandmother. It was an all-day expedition, for they had to hike over the hills and moors to another town. Nana had a modest cottage on the edge of town with an extensive garden. Bees hummed, butterflies fluttered languidly, and you could practically hear the earthworms plowing up the soil. The brown owl Nelson lived in a little hutch by the rear door and kept the pigeons away from the insect life.

Nana, many generations back, had the blood of Katherine Hewitt in her, and was renowned in the district for her potions. She had three cauldrons bubbling in her kitchen the day her daughter and grandson came to visit, and hauled Severus inside at once to try his newly learned and supposedly improved skills. Love potions sold best, and sleeping potions were easiest to make, but the healing potions were Nana's greatest gift. Bone-knit and headache remedies, salves to stop bleeding and poultices to draw stings, syrups for coughs and catarrhs, Nana supplied the whole region. She and Severus roamed the garden, snipping buds, plucking hips, scraping twigs, stripping grass heads. He could learn more in one day from his grandmother than Slughorn had taught the whole last term.

The 'other one,' Gra, had been married to grandfather Snape and, though she never said so, Severus had the impression that she was pleased to be a widow. Gra loved puzzles. She had a jigsaw puzzle, a different one each visit, in progress on the dining room table, and so they could never eat there. Gra kept Britain's most extensive collection of murder mysteries on her bookshelves, and an equally impressive collection of real-life murder case clippings stored in a small filing cabinet. When Severus was six, she had him working on the fox, goose, cabbage puzzle and, as he grew, the logic problems became more complex.

Visiting Gra was always amusing, for she knew a little of everything that was happening. She kept newspapers for months and extracted the ones with the most interesting stories to hold for her grandson. Everything about the Apollo missions was in her house, as well as the Skylab program, but most recently she had begun collecting articles on something called deoxyribonucleic acid. Severus was entranced, and carried an armload of newspapers and magazines home with him. Suddenly, his passion was biochemistry.

The letter came from Hogwarts, and Eileen began preparing Severus for his third year.

The first thing they did was break open the boxes in the half storeroom. Every book on Severus's list was there, though in a edition at least twenty years old. They pulled them out and dusted them, then experimented with ways to cover them so as to hide their age. Eileen thought of white wrappers, but Severus suggested newspaper and magazine clippings arranged in themes. That way, if anyone challenged him on the covers, he could challenge them back on their knowledge of the world.

One of the things they pulled out was Eileen's old 'Advanced Potions' book. "You can't take that with you, it's a sixth year book," she chided him.

"But Mum, I was using this when I was nine," Severus responded, turning the book over to look at the signature he'd written on the back cover four years earlier. That was the year that Nana 'd told him he was still half a Prince on his mum's side, a wizard, as well as a Snape on his dad's. He'd been so proud of his Prince blood that he'd inscribed the name on the book's cover. Today, at the advanced age of thirteen, the inscription seemed childish.

Still, he tucked the potions book, with all the notes and inscriptions he'd started making, into the box of books he was taking with him to Hogwarts. He had no doubt that something in it would prove useful in the coming year.

Tobias started talking about going to Blackpool once as a special excursion, but both Eileen and Severus regarded this as a potential disaster, especially since the wage settlement from the strike the previous year was being eroded by price increases, and money was an issue. In the end, they talked him down to a Sunday picnic on Pendle Hill. That afternoon, Severus stood at the top of Pendle Hill and looked down on all of east Lancashire. He thought of Katherine Hewitt and the others that had been hanged with her, of his seaman great-grandfather, and of all the Snapes and Princes in his life. He had a past that had nothing to do with Hogwarts. It was no backwater of ignorance and grinding poverty, but a rich heritage of individual strength and initiative. He could stand up to any Black or Lestrange in the world.

His mother didn't go with him to London at the end of August. He was thirteen, and a man who could take care of himself. Though he carried more than just a Gladstone bag, it was still his job to transport everything from Euston Station to King's Cross, and to get himself on board the Hogwarts train. His parents drove him to Colne for the Friday morning train to London. He took with him his lunch, supper, and breakfast, plus enough money for a locker at King's Cross to store his extra baggage. The night at St. Pancras was like spending an evening at a favorite and preferred hotel. On Saturday, September 1, he crossed through the portal to platform 9 3/4 and was on his way back to Hogwarts.

That weekend, Tobias Snape was drunk two nights in a row and gave Eileen a black eye.


	11. Chapter 11 – Battles

**A Difference in the Family: The Third Year – Battles**

_Saturday, September 1, 1973 (3 days before the first quarter)_

Students in various stages of semi-Muggle dress wended their way through King's Cross Station trying not to be too noticeable. It was actually amusing watching how hard they and their parents worked at being invisible. Severus got his trolley and retrieved his meager packages from the locker, then made his way to Platform 9. He stood there as if waiting on the platform until there was a lull in the Hogwarts traffic, then calmly slipped through to Platform 9 3/4. As he pushed the trolley to the baggage area, he overheard snippets of conversation.

"…have to pass as many OWLs as possible or that new broomstick I want…"

"…and then we spent another two weeks on the Riviera…"

"…I heard the whole house just burned down, with them…"

"…fairly reeks of mudbloods and mongrels this year…"

"…tons of extra galleons because I'm so looking forward to Hogsmeade…"

Leaving his baggage with the handlers and carrying only the Gladstone bag with his robes, Severus headed for the rear of the train where he hoped to meet and talk with Lily. He was surprised to hear his own name called from behind him.

"Snape! Wait. Hold on a moment."

Severus turned and waited as Bella Black hurried up. She smiled winningly at him as if they had been lifelong bosom friends. "I'm so glad I caught you here. Some of us Slytherins are getting together in the first cars, and you should join us. It's like a back-to-school House party. Come on. It'll be fun."

"I'm always… dull at… parties," Severus replied. "Not my favorite… thing."

"You'll be fine. We have too many clowns as it is. We can use quieter ones to tone things down." She hooked her arm in his and steered him back along the platform to the front of the train where a crowd of familiar faces was milling around prior to boarding.

"Look who I found!" Bella called, and others came up to greet him and shake hands. Severus felt very out-of-place in his working-class clothes among all the children of rich old families, but everyone seemed truly pleased to see him. Then they boarded, and Severus found himself in a kind of club car with little tables. He was sitting with Evan Rosier, who started talking about his summer like an old friend. Tea, coffee, and various juices were brought to the tables along with an assortment of sweets. Severus was amazed at the variety.

At the other end of the room, out of earshot, Bella was in conversation with Rabastan. "I've done my part. He's here. Are you sure He's interested?"

"Are you joking? A second year who can conjure up an earthquake? Father was practically salivating when I told him. He told… you know, and he's interested. He's just a kid now, but with the proper training he could be a powerful spell caster. We're supposed to take it easy, be sure he stays with us, not scare him away. We've got five years before he'll be ready, but… you know who is willing to wait."

"What if Stumbledore is still hanging around him?"

"We back off. I told you. We have time. We can afford to do this slowly. We just be sure he develops in the right direction."

After an hour of listening to Rosier and to Wilkes who had joined them, Severus left the club car. He needed someplace quiet where he could think. Bella tried to stop him and lure him back, but Rabastan restrained her, mouthing the word 'slowly' as he did so.

Severus met Lily near the other end of the train as she was making her way back from the baggage car. "What happened," she whispered, so that no one in the compartments could hear. "I was waiting for you."

"I was kidnapped," Severus replied, smiling slightly as their eyes met. He could feel the doors sliding gently open in his mind, and relaxed with a sense of homecoming that he didn't feel even in his parents' house. At her look of surprise, he added, "Bella Black wanted me to come into one of the front cars for a bit. They're having a Slytherin reunion." The two moved back to the area in front of the baggage car where they could talk freely.

"I thought they teased you all the time. Isn't that what you said last year?"

"Yeah, but Bella's in fifth year now, and she has her OWLs at the end of the year. I think she's already worrying about them and wants to be sure I'll tutor her in Potions. I'm not going to complain. Whenever she shows an interest in me, everyone else leaves me alone. It's almost pleasant."

Lily look puzzled. "That's not how her cousin talks about her in our common room. But he hates everything about his family and Slytherin, so maybe he's not exactly objective."

They chatted for a while, then Lily returned to her mates.

The sorting that evening was a revelation. Severus suddenly realized that he was no longer the smallest student at Hogwarts. Almost all of the new first years were shorter than he was. Nothing else about the sorting was remotely important. He didn't pay attention to a single name.

Lily sat, as usual, at the foot of the Gryffindor table. She and Severus exchanged 'thumbs up' and smiled at each other. Further contact could wait until a safe and opportune moment. The feast was sumptuous, and this time Severus stayed to eat his fill. After all, the shock of his growth was now history, and his mum had figured out how to handle it. And the students around him seemed prepared to tolerate his presence.

At the moment when the sweets were served, there was a sudden interruption in the festivities. An explosion stopped the talking, and a huge smoky banner began to form in the middle of the hall. The banner carried a representation of a human hand balled in a fist with one finger extended and the legend, "Slytherin Sucks, Gryffindor Rules" emblazoned across it.

The entire Gryffindor table was stricken by sudden giggles. The Slytherin table expressed requisite rage. Severus thought it was mildly amusing. Only a few seconds passed before Headmaster Dumbledore rose and dispersed the banner, with a gentle admonition about courtesy and school unity. No one could identify who had perpetrated the dastardly act.

The feast being over, the four houses repaired to their respective dormitories.

The tenor of the term was set the next day as Slytherin house left its under-lake dormitories for a relaxed Sunday breakfast. The first out slipped and slid on a slime of seaweed that coated the floors. Rotting fish hung from the stone walls, and the stench of aged shellfish permeated the air. The members of Slytherin house gagged and retched, and swore vengeance on Gryffindor, for all were convinced that Gryffindor it must be.

War had been declared. Slytherin was in a state of siege.

Rabastan sat as head of the war council. "We can't let them get away with this. The honor of Slytherin is at stake. We stand now against our enemies, or we go down to glorious ruin in a blaze of vengeance!" (Rabastan was always in his element where drama was concerned. A pity that Hogwarts had no drama department.)

"Yes, but what're we going to do that'll half make up for what they did to us?" Avery had more of a talent for cutting to the quick of things.

"We could move the seaweed and stuff to their tower." Wilkes was roundly cuffed for his total lack of imagination.

"Let's make badges that say 'Gryffindor is garbage'."

"We can wrap toilet paper around their tower."

Severus spoke up then in a quiet but confident voice. Curses always made him feel secure. "The fish and seaweed was because we're under the lake. They're up in the air. We have to do something with birds."

"But they're lions. That's not birds," Wilkes sneered.

Severus waved a hand in disgust. "And we're snakes, not fish. They didn't care. Why should we?"

"Go on, Cursemaster," cried Rabastan. "How can we destroy them?"

"Bird dung, feathers, and eggs. Tar and feathers. Rotten eggs. Not when they come out by the Fat Lady where they're expecting it, but dropping on them from the ceiling later as they come down to supper. Hitting them from the air outside during broom practice. And I would suggest…" they all paused to listen, "the ones who hit us were the boys. Target only the boys. Let their own girls laugh at them. Let them be shamed by their own house. Divide them against each other and make them weaker against us!"

They cheered him then, and formed into groups to learn the Koutsoulia, Phtero, and Augo spells. Severus was mostly glad that Lily would not be a target, although the thought of a real fight against an open enemy was more exhilarating than he would have imagined.

By supper time it was understood that no quarter would be given by either side.

"It wasn't very nice," Lily said as they huddled in a niche along the north wall watching it rain. They'd brought lunch from the Great Hall and found a sheltered place. No one else was out in the cold and wet, and they didn't fear being disturbed.

"What they did to us wasn't very nice." Severus pulled a little vial of slime from his robes. "Smell that." Lily backed away in disgust from the stench. "That was all over the corridor. People were slipping and falling in it. It was almost impossible to get out of the robes." He'd been lucky. By the time he was leaving the common room, the corridor problem had been discovered. How he would have paid for new robes, he didn't know. "And we could've done worse. Someone suggested tar with the feathers, but we kept it to eggs. That washes." He didn't think she needed to know that the tar had been his idea.

"But a lot of the boys that were hit with that stuff had nothing to do with the first prank."

"And none of us had done anything at all to Gryffindor. We were all innocent."

Lily frowned. It was true. "It'd be better, though, if the only ones attacked were the ones who started it."

"Do you know who started it?"

"There's a group that loves practical jokes, but I'm not sure it was them." And that was all she would say, so Severus let the matter drop.

"How is Arithmancy?" Lily asked after a few minutes.

"It's all right. I wish it was something harder, though."

"Harder? You must the only student at Hogwarts who wants the classes to get harder."

"Yes, but the classes we have here aren't going to help me. I need physics, and chemistry, and algebra, and calculus…"

"Why?"

"I'm going to be a scientist." The look on Lily's face said she thought it was a stupid idea. Severus wasn't sure he could explain it to her. He loved the pictures of laboratories in the magazines he'd gotten from Gra. They were so clean and orderly. And when you worked out a math equation, you didn't have to worry about nuances, or how someone felt. The answer was there in front of you on the paper. Severus's favorite voice in the world was the voice of the man counting down the rocket launches: "Six… five… we have ignition… three…" Total and perfect calm while doing something truly interesting and important. That was what it was like in a laboratory.

Severus showed Lily the double helixes he'd been doodling in his notebook. He tried explaining about them, but Lily seemed mostly impressed with how pretty they were. Severus realized she was bored. Something had changed between them, and he wasn't sure what it was. When they parted, both were thinking of other friends and things to do, not of the next time they would meet.

"Hey, Cursemaster!"

Severus paused on the steps outside the entrance to the Castle. He was on his way to Professor Kettleburn's class on magical creatures. Rabastan joined him and walked with him down the hill.

"I wanted to ask you about your hex work." Severus didn't reply. "I mean, you know, you're really good at little baby stuff, but did you ever try anything bigger?"

"Baby stuff?"

"Yeah. You know. Spiders and snowballs. I mean, Wilkes told me about the lice, and that was truly brilliant, but all you do is throw things and do hexes with small animals and insects."

"I seem to recall an earthshaking moment."

"Now that's what I mean. Something big. Something, well, dangerous. Ever invent a spell for something like that? Besides the earthquake."

"Not really. I never needed one."

"Well you should think about it. This thing with Gryffindor is getting bigger, and some of them are nasty and mean. I don't think they've realized yet that you're the source of the new hexes, but if they do, you're a target. You should have some good defense ready."

Rabastan returned to the castle while Severus continued on to his class. He didn't pay much attention to the magical creatures (in this case glumbumbles) because he had other things on his mind.

Back in his dormitory before supper, Severus dug into his footlocker and took out the Advanced Potions book. His mother had used it during her sixth year, and had taken notes in it on various potions. Nana, too, had added an occasional note when she saw place for improvement. But most of the copious annotations on many of the pages were in Severus's own cramped, spidery, almost illegible handwriting. His mother had given him the book when he was nine, and he'd spent the next years trying out the potions.

There were many that he couldn't do because he couldn't get all the ingredients, but where he could, he did. Things like gnat wings and dried lizard eyes were easy, as were most of the herbs. He'd nearly gotten the skin clawed off his right arm trying to get badger nose-hair, and shavings from the wooden leg of a one-eyed seaman had turned out to be more trouble than it was worth, yet overall the experience had been invaluable.

Here and there among the potions, though, he had experimented with charms. This book was the intellectual godparent of all the little hexes he'd used at Hogwarts. Many of them were accidents. Next to a potion requiring louse legs was the hex he'd stumbled on that later produced Wilkes's fine crop. Severus began to turn the pages, studying each note carefully. Rabastan was right. They were all simple hexes involving bugs and rocks.

But what if Rabastan was right about having to protect himself? He forced himself to remember the fight with the Lestranges on the hill, and how it had felt to realize that they were going to take him. The two Gryffindors – well, they had been two as well. Face to face was one thing. What if he was face to one and the other coming behind his back?

The first step was to decide what kind of spell might be useful, then try to make it. Severus went to the Great Hall for supper, grabbed a few things to take with him, and returned to Slytherin to work. It was just like first and second year all over again, but with a bigger enemy.

The short pudgy boy with the watery eyes and colorless hair glanced around the Great Hall. The two he was looking for were right in the center of the Gryffindor table, holding court as usual. Jokes, judging from the laughter around them. Moving sideways between the benches, the boy edged nearer until he caught the eye of the slender, dark-haired boy with glasses. He touched the side of his nose, and the boy nodded and whispered something to his companion. The taller, stockier boy looked over, gave a thumbs up sign, and continued his conversation.

After supper, they met in a corner of the Gryffindor common room. "…and then Rabastan ran out and down the steps. He was calling somebody. 'Cursemaster' was what he said."

The two others exchanged a significant look. "Cursemaster. Now that sounds like exactly what we're looking for, don't you think, James?" said Sirius Black.

James Potter, the boy with the glasses was grinning. "Got to be. Peter, did you get close enough to hear what they were saying?"

"Whoa. First things first," said Sirius. "Who was this spell caster so powerful that Rabastan lord-love-you Lestrange, for crying out loud, calls him 'Cursemaster?'"

Peter chuckled. "You won't believe. He's the same year we are. The little pasty-faced one with the long black hair. The one that's so good in Potions."

James pursed his lips and made an I'm-trying-to-remember face. "Sirius, didn't we warn him last year about being your cousin Bella's lapdog?"

Sirius barked a loud laugh. "Sounds like the lesson didn't take. Sounds like he's moved up to Rabastan. Sounds like we're going to have to get our pretty little hands dirty."

James turned back to Peter. "Did you get close enough?"

Peter had to admit he didn't, but he'd remember one piece of information. "Snape," he said. "His name's Severus Snape."

"That's his name all right," said Sirius. "Snivellus Snake. There's a proper Slytherin name for you. Maybe we can rechristen him. Shiverus Shake sounds better, don't you think." Sirius jabbed an elbow into James's ribs and grinned.

This time it was four to one, Sirius, James, and Peter being joined by a thin boy with light brown hair named Remus. The whole school was in the Great Hall for supper the next day, and Severus had grabbed his handful of food to return to his dormitory when Sirius stepped out from behind a staircase right in front of him. James and Remus moved in from the sides to hold his arms, and James clamped a hand over his mouth. Together they hustled him into the chamber where first years generally waited before the sorting, then Remus and Peter stood guard outside.

"Cute," said James as he extracted Severus's wand from its loop in his right sleeve. "I'll have to remember that one. Must save a lot of time." He tossed the wand into the far corner. "Now, Cursemaster, you will sit, and we will talk." They pushed Severus into a chair and used rope spells to bind his wrists and ankles to the arms and legs.

Severus was thinking feverishly. He couldn't plead ignorance, since they'd overheard Rabastan. "I'm sorry…"he started, but Sirius didn't let him finish.

"Apology? We don't want an apology. You got bird poop and eggs in my hair. We want payback."

"Rules first," said James. "We told you this last year, but you didn't want to listen. Now we have to slap you around a bit. You don't help Bella, or Rabastan, or Rodolphus. You don't attack Gryffindor students. You don't dabble in dark arts."

Sirius pulled out a tiny vial. "This is for you. Who knows what it'll do. You're a slimy Slytherin slug, and you're going to drink it." He pulled Severus's head back while James pinched his nose, forcing him to open his mouth to breathe. They tipped the contents of the vial down his throat.

Untying the ropes, they pulled him along the underground corridor to the entrance to Slytherin house. Severus's stomach was swelling, and he realized with horror that things were moving inside him. Depositing Severus on the floor in front of Slytherin, and setting a body-bind curse on him, they left, laughing. The things in his stomach were crawling into his throat, and Severus began to retch, vomiting up a huge slimy slug. Slug after slug spewed out of him as he lay helpless and mortified until Bella and Rodolphus found him twenty minutes later. They released the binding curse and helped him expel the slugs, assuring him that they would never again leave him to face enemies alone.

Severus was not cowed, however. A cold, murderous fury had settled in him, and he set his whole heart on vengeance.

Bella went back to the waiting chamber to get his wand, and then Severus sat up all that night in bed, analyzing what had happened to him. He was singled out. Why? Because Rabastan had called him 'Cursemaster' for all to hear. What was the worst part of what they did? That was easy. It was being forced to swallow the liquid in the vial. He could still hear Black's voice, 'Who knows what it'll do.' As it was, it was an uncomfortable and unpleasant prank, but the liquid could have been anything. Fear. Vulnerability. That was the worst part. Public humiliation and physical discomfort were important, too, but the sense of helplessness would stay with him the longest.

_So. I make them feel helpless, too. Uncomfortable and publicly humiliated would also be nice, but fear is the most important._ All night he thought, but no plan would come, and finally Severus understood that his fear had nothing to do with magic. Brute physical force could not be met with hexes and jinxes. _I have friends now. I can use them._ But that wasn't the answer either.

_Never trust others for your safety. Just when you need them most, they desert you. If you can't take care of yourself by yourself, then you've been beaten._ In the end Severus settled for public humiliation, leaving the intimidation for a later time.

The next day both Sirius and James were hit by tripping jinxes and stinging hexes. Neither did them any damage, and they laughed and slapped each other on the back. "Is that Slytherin's best? Come on back, Cursemaster, we'll even give you the first two jinxes free." The retaliatory attack had been so pathetic that neither boy even considered a response. They assumed they had won.

Two days later, Nelson brought a small package. In it were homemade candies from Nana. Severus opened it at the table in the Great Hall, extracted one particularly tasty-looking one, and ate it with obvious relish. Then he tucked the box under his arm and returned to Slytherin house.

That afternoon Black and Potter found him in the fountain courtyard with his box from home. "Little Slytherins should share with their friends."

Severus sprang up, closing the box and taking out his wand. "They're mine. Leave me alone." He tried to leave, but they split to take him from both sides. Gryffindor was victorious while Slytherin fled ignominiously from the field of battle.

The box of sweets was small, but delicious, and Sirius and James finished them together in their room. Just before climbing into bed, James leaned forward, his hand on the bedpost. "Somehow I didn't think he'd be so easy to push around. I'm a little disappointed."

Sirius laughed. "You just like a fight. Go to sleep."

Severus, meanwhile, was not in bed. He was creeping past the Hufflepuff dormitories to the kitchens in the lower levels of the castle. A touch of his wand, a whispered, "Alohomora," and the doors opened. He had no trouble finding the great vat of pumpkin juice and emptying the contents of a small flask into it. The liquid was colorless, odorless, and harmless. Unless one had eaten certain candies the day before.

Morning dawned without incident, and all was well with Gryffindor. James stretched luxuriously in bed, then decided he was hungry. Together he and Sirius went to the Great Hall and sat down for breakfast.

A few minutes later, the giggling started. Sirius glanced around to see half his table staring at him. He turned to James and choked on his toast. James's hair was mottled with green and silver. From the shocked look in James's eyes, Sirius knew his hair must be blazoned with the Slytherin colors, too. In the minute that followed, the stares and giggling spread to Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff. The Slytherin students were less restrained. En masse, they stood and cheered. Sirius clambered onto the bench and glared at the Slytherins. Severus wasn't there. "Coward!" he yelled. "Where's the slimy little coward?"

He raged out of the door, James behind him, and teachers beginning to spill from the front table to head off the fight. There in the middle of the entrance hall stood Severus, wand in hand, calmly waiting. "Nice hair," he said.

Black stopped several feet from Severus, his own wand now in his hand. Behind him, Potter was trying to talk him out of his rage. Students were spilling out of the Great Hall, and they could hear Dumbledore, Hagrid, and the teachers telling people to step aside and let them through. The two antagonists were glaring into each other's eyes now, but only Dumbledore would have been able to warn Black of what that portended, and he was still battling his way through the crowd.

"You did this!"

"I presume you're talking about the hair. When am I supposed to have done it? I only just left Slytherin house and I haven't been in…"

"Petrificus!"

"Stupefacio!"

"Accio wands!"

The air between the two combatants vibrated and expanded with the impact of their spells on Dumbledore's shield, and then both wands flew across the entrance hall into his hand. The Headmaster was furious. "You will both of you remain standing where you are. You will not move, and you will say nothing. The rest of you will either return to breakfast in the Great Hall, or you will go immediately to your dormitories to prepare for classes. Any student left in this hall after one minute, except for these two… ah three, will be serving detention this evening."

The hall cleared. Dumbledore turned to the teachers, who were herding the students as quickly as possible up the stairs and out of the way. "Minerva, Horace, I am afraid I shall have to ask you to accompany me upstairs for this conference. And do you think you might find the prefects of your houses and bring them along, too."

"So, I am to understand that Gryffindor house and Slytherin house have been hexing each other all week, and no prefect has seen fit to inform the heads of their houses or to take any steps to stop the fighting."

The prefects hung their heads in shame, and both McGonagall and Slughorn vowed to watch their charges like hawks watch rabbits, and then the only ones left in Dumbledore's office were Dumbledore, Hagrid, James, Sirius, and Severus. Sirius was speaking first.

"Look at our hair. Look at what he did to us. He's making fun of us in front of the whole school. Will it even come out?"

Dumbledore looked to Severus for an answer, and met the quiet black eyes. The boy was totally shut down, tight as a Gringotts vault. _O Eileen, is there no child in there at all?_ "Have you a response to this accusation?"

"I don't know when their hair turned green. I wasn't in the Great Hall. I didn't see it. Why would I want to turn their hair green anyway?" Severus turned his inscrutable gaze on Sirius.

James gripped Sirius's arm, seeing the pit opening in front of them. "He's right. There's no reason to think it's him instead of some other Slytherin."

"But he gave us something that made this happen!"

"You're mistaken," said Severus. "I've never given you anything in my life."

Sirius saw the trap then and shut his mouth. All three boys were silent. Dumbledore sighed. The trio was dismissed, but both Sirius and Severus were given detention for having raised their wands against each other.

Outside the office the three boys were forced to go as far as the staircases together. Potter placed himself between Black and Severus in an attempt to avoid physical violence so close to Dumbledore's office. "We know it was you," Black growled.

"And I'd love to be a fly on the wall while you explain to Professor Dumbledore why you think so."

"It isn't over."

"I didn't think it was." As the two Gryffindors started up the staircase, Severus added. "You might try shaving your heads."

Only the realization that Hagrid was watching from the end of the hall prevented bloodshed there and then.

"Did you?"

"Will you hate me if I say yes?"

"You did! Why"

Severus buried his face in the arms he'd wrapped around his knees. He really didn't want Lily to know about his own humiliation, but if he didn't tell her she'd think he'd instigated his attack for no reason. "They jumped me," he said.

"Go on."

The story came out slowly, about being dragged into the waiting chamber and losing his wand, being forced to drink the liquid, then lying paralyzed for twenty minutes vomiting up slugs…

"Ugh! That is so disgusting! What horrible, vicious bullies! And all you did was turn their hair green? They got off lucky." Then she began to feed him information.

"The tall one, Sirius Black, he's Bella Black's cousin, but I think you know that. They're arrogant purebloods, but he pretends not to be. The one with glasses is James Potter. He's our new Quidditch Chaser. Quidditch? Oh, you. You know it's a game. I think his family's really rich or something. The pale one with the brown hair is Remus Lupin. He's kind of nice, but shy. He gets sick a lot. And the fat one with the little eyes is Peter Pettigrew. They've been hanging around together since first year, at least Sirius and James have."

He came away from their talk knowing more about the Four Horsemen than he did about what Lily was doing in her life. She didn't really want to talk about herself. Severus didn't push it, though, since he knew what it was like having people prying into your business when you didn't want them to.

Then Hagrid started seeing him again.

"Open wide, now. I think that one's a baby tooth doesn't want t' come out. Ya let me pull it and there'll be more room for the others. What'd them two do that made ya so angry anyway?"

"Nobody made me angry. I don't get angry. Go ahead and pull it if you think it'll help." It was a baby tooth with hardly any root. The extraction was almost painless.

"Ya got to do exercises for the muscles in the legs. Rickets always affects the muscles. Y're not going t' have much strength if ya don't exercise. Must've been something bad if not one of the three of ye was going to tell Dumbledore."

"Maybe there was nothing to tell. And I've been drinking the milk and eating what you told me. And there's no place to exercise."

"Yer mum should've given ya more proper food when ya was growing up. Then ya wouldn't…"

"You leave my mother out of this!"

"So I'm talking 'bout that little upset with Black and Potter, and I got nothing. Not a rise out o' him. But when I start mentioning his mum… Well, let's just say he was a mite 'irritated.'"

"His mother, do you say? Hagrid, that is very enlightening information. We need a breakthrough with that boy. If it is his mother that brings up the powerful emotions, so be it. I would have wished for something less… fundamental, but one cannot have everything."

"So. Do I start working on him?"

"Hagrid, you already have."

The war went underground. First, Professor Mullein spent a fruitless two days trying to discover why the Venus Flytraps in his Herbology class had developed a sudden fondness for Severus's nose, then Black went around with his left hand hidden up his sleeve for nearly a week until he could figure out how to get rid of a wart that bore an uncanny resemblance to Professor McGonagall's hat. After picking up a quill in Charms class, Severus found he was leaving sticky fingerprints on everything, ruining all his homework and gluing the pages of his books together. But all agreed that the piece de resistance was the hex on Black's voice one evening that gave him an extra ultrasonic squeak perfectly pitched for summoning bats.

Rabastan was beside himself with frustration. Severus was simply no longer interested in developing grander curses. He considered it entirely Rabastan's fault that Sirius and James had attacked him, and he flatly refused to work on hexes that would raise the combat level to the point of appearing on the teachers' radar screen. The Lestranges and their group backed down again and bided their time. At least the conflict with Gryffindor might push Severus a little further in the 'right' direction.

Sirius had checked a book of advanced spells out of the library. It was open on his bed to the page with the Incendio charm. James glanced at the page, looked again, then gazed thoughtfully at Sirius.

"You can't use that one. It might hurt him."

"I want to hurt him."

"No, I mean really hurt him." James closed the book and carried it over to his own bed. "Fun's fun, but you've lost track of why we're doing this." He waited until he knew Sirius was listening. "We want to scare him away from the Black-Lestrange gang, not push him into it. At least that was what we tried last year."

"And it's gotten bigger since then. Now he's one of their lieutenants. No holds barred, I say."

"I think you're wrong. Rabastan doesn't go around looking like he's sucking lemons when he's getting his way. And the curses are still kid stuff. We know he can do more, we know Rabastan wants more, but he isn't doing it. There seems to be discord in Slytherin house."

"You want me to just let him get away with the bat thing?"

"You take things too personally. There's a third year kid in Slytherin who's known more hexes than anyone in school since day one, and every son and daughter of every What's-his-name follower in Britain is being nice to him. They're pulling him in to the dark side. We want to make them fail. Your personal grudge is getting in the way."

"Right. Like warts and bats are going to conquer the world."

"Warts and bats in third year. If you keep pushing him, what's he going to hit you with in seventh year? We have to start looking ahead. I'll wager Rabastan is. Lay off."

And Sirius laid off.

"I can't check for damage t' the hip an' leg joints if I don't look at yer spine."

"There is Nothing. Wrong. With my. Spine."

"Like there's nothing wrong with yer teeth or yer bones or yer muscles. Yer parents ain't been doing right by your feeding…"

"My parents care for me the best they can."

"Best ain't so good then, judging by the result."

"This is over. I am going to class." A goal rendered difficult by Hagrid's bulk blocking the door.

Hagrid's pause reflected his puzzlement. It had been going well, the boy's ire had been rising, and suddenly he was cold as ice. Hagrid was no Legilimens, but even he could sense the mind shutting down and closing off. He stepped aside and let Severus go to class.

"And it was over. Like talking t' a wall."

"You switched the topic, Hagrid. You were on his parents, then you switched to him. It seems that when you criticize him, he can close you out. You have to press his vulnerabilities. Next time you examine him, let me know. I shall join you part way through. We have got to crack that shell."

_Thursday, October 25, 1973 (the new moon)_

The chosen ambassador was Remus Lupin. He spoke to Severus briefly in Potions, and they arranged to meet in the fountain courtyard. Severus was fifteen minutes late. "I had to check for traps," he explained.

"You don't trust me."

"Should I? I seem to recall that you jumped me."

Remus shrugged. "I'm not proud of that. The point is that it's history. They don't… We don't want it to get any bigger."

"I think the term is escalate," interjected Severus, but Remus didn't appear to understand the reference.

"They're willing to forget the whole thing if you will. They'll stop it right now, and let you have the last jinx, just to show good faith." Severus radiated skepticism, and Remus bristled. "It's fair. We're not backing down from you, we don't have to. There's four of us. You've seen what we can do. Now we're trying to be nice because we think it's going too far."

"Four?" responded Severus. "I'd have said three and a half. Or even two and two halves. But how can you be equal partners when you miss one week in four?"

Remus's face flushed. "You think you're smarter than everyone, but you're not. You want this to go on? Then you should get ready to be beaten. You want to stop it now, accept our offer."

"I'll think about it."

"Don't think too long."

"Thanks for the warning."

Depressed by his lack of success, Remus left the courtyard and wended his way down the hill. Partway down he became aware of the smell of a small fire. The fire was properly banked and made with dry wood, so it's likely no one else would have noticed it, but Remus's olfactory senses were rather acute.

He crept nearer to discover that the builder of the fire was a girl he knew, a fellow Gryffindor named Evans. "Oh," he said. "Sorry to bother you."

"You're not a bother… Remus, isn't it? It's just that I can't get this potion to come out right."

"I can't help you there. The best person I know in potions is…"

"Yeah. I know. In Slytherin. And if I can't get this to work, I'm going to ask him."

"Do you know him?"

"Not really. Hey, do you feel all right? I know it isn't the full moon, but you look pale."

Remus could feel his face getting paler. "What do you mean, full moon?"

"Nothing, except… This friend of mine is really interested in the moon, and I started noticing the phases, and then I noticed you tend to get sick when the moon is full. Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine. It's just… It's Thursday and we have Potions, and I think I should get back to the castle. It was nice talking to you."

"You, too." Lily watched him leave. He seemed so lonely sometimes that she wanted to hug him and tell him that people cared. There was something about the hapless loners that brought out the caregiver in her. She knew Remus had James and Sirius, but she also knew he needed more. _Why do I always go for the runt puppies in the litter?_ She went back to her potion, wondering if Severus would help her if she asked.

**Halloween, Wednesday, October 31, 1973 (3 days before the first quarter)**

Nelson was not a particularly big owl, and on Halloween morning he came flapping in slow and heavy, winded by the load he carried. Severus watched the tawny owl with some trepidation, for owl mishaps were always a source of general mirth. Nonetheless, Nelson made it to him without falling into any of the food.

Severus held the owl for a return message, then opened the larger package. It was an algebra book. It was second hand, but it had the answers to the problems in an appendix in the back, and one of the previous owners had worked problems in the margins. It was, thus, a treasure. A smaller package held a book of logic problems and an envelope contained news clippings. Severus hoped that Gra and Nana were getting on well together because he did not want this bounty to stop. He scribbled a hurried 'Thank you' to both grandmothers on scraps of paper and sent them off with Nelson.

Back in his dormitory he poured over the clippings. Someone in Czechoslovakia had discovered a comet that was heading toward earth even as he read. It was the "comet of the century." Skylab III was going up in November to photograph it. Suddenly space was his passion again, and he longed to see the lump of dirt and ice that was going to blaze its way across the heavens and flirt with the sun. He had to tell Lily, but he wouldn't see her again until the Halloween feast that night.

Severus pulled out the old/new algebra book, the book that contained information beyond the ken of Hogwarts, opened to the first page, and began reading.

"Well she clear never kept the right amount of milk at home. Look at the curve of that leg bone. It won't never be straight, and Eileen had somewhat t' do with that."

"I don't see why you keep bringing my mother into this."

"She had the care and feeding of ya, didn't she? If y're gonna take care of a child, ya got to learn what they need an' don't need. And I ain't talking about pencils in their school boxes."

"You are supposed to give me medical attention, not criticize my mother at every opportunity."

"And that medical attention is needed because of what Eileen wasn't able to…"

"STOP talking about my mother!"

Dumbledore entered the hut without knocking, catching the flash of Severus's temper as he did. Close. _Very close. Very near to the surface._

"Are you discussing Eileen Prince's parenting skills, Hagrid? Surely that is not necessary. Eileen, of course, had no real preparation to be a mother, but I am sure she…"

"You're doing the same thing! My mother did all she could for me, and she's worth ten of the two of you put together."

"Severus, your mother is teaching you dueling skills to compensate for her own lack of those skills while she was here at Hogwarts."

This was a new angle, and Severus wasn't sure how to deal with it. His fury was barely under control as it was. "You're wrong. She wants me to take care of myself. We learn from mistakes."

Dumbledore frowned. _Too clinical. We need raw anger here._ "She has left you vulnerable to the very problems she says she is shielding you from. She will sacrifice your protection on the altar of her own ego."

"My mother's… not… like that. She won't… ever… hurt me. She wants me… to be strong."

"There is the possibility she wants to live her life through you like some kind of maternal vampire."

Severus exploded in a blinding crimson rage and sprayed Hagrid with wasp stings. "You don't know!" he screamed. "You don't know her! She loves me!" Cinders burst from the logs in the fireplace, and clay cups leapt from the shelves to shatter on the floor. He spun on the window shutters, and they crashed open, splinters of wood spraying onto the garden outside.

Hagrid was moving, trying to block the spells that lashed at Dumbledore now, boils and blisters, carbuncles, warts, and pustules… and screaming, all the while screaming, "You don't know! You have no right! You don't know her!"

Hagrid finally succeeded in pinning Severus's arms. He held the kicking, twisting boy above the ground while Dumbledore extracted his wand.

"Well," said Dumbledore calmly. "I think that was a success."

Dumbledore seated himself in one of the chairs, carefully laying Severus's wand on the table. Hagrid held the boy until his struggling weakened, then lowered his own bulk to the floor in front of the hearth. Severus was trembling uncontrollably now, his breath coming in gasps. Then, quite suddenly, he began to cry, huge sobs wracking his body. Instinctively, Hagrid began to rock gently back and forth, murmuring soothing nonsense, his hold slowly loosening until Severus lay limp in his arms, crying more softly now.

Dumbledore knelt beside them. "I fear there is one more thing to do, but it is better to do it now than try to force it later." Gently he unbuttoned the top of Severus's gown and drew both gown and robe away from the thin shoulders to examine the lash marks. They were several years old, but the faint color around the edges could still be seen. No muggle belt or whip had caused those marks. Eileen had beaten her son.

Dumbledore replaced gown and robe, and rebuttoned the gown. "I am sorry Severus," he said, "I shall not do that again." He put a hand on the boy's shoulder, but Severus turned from him and buried his face in Hagrid's coat. "I am leaving now, Hagrid. I think things will go more easily without my presence." Dumbledore rose carefully, brushed the dust from his robes, and went to the door. He paused to look at Hagrid, cradling Severus like a mother with a child. Magical creatures, both of them. Dumbledore closed the door quietly behind him.

"I know you think she's awful, but really, it only happened once. And it was my fault."

"Once? All that happened one time? Here, give this t' Herbert." Herbert was the youngest of the Thestrals and Hagrid's favorite. Giving him his feedbag was a little difficult since Severus couldn't see him. Luckily Herbert did most of the work, nudging the boy to show him where to fasten the straps.

"I used magic on m' dad. He fell down the stairs, and Mum had t' use healing spells t' save him. The Ministry was furious because they knew it was two wands and only one adult wizard. They threatened t' keep me out of Hogwarts. Mum was… angry."

"I'll say she was. You got a bit of her temper, too. More 'n a bit seems like. She never beat you again?"

"She stopped using magic. She put up her wand and only takes it out when we go to the moor to practice dueling. She says she can't trust herself."

"How old were you?"

"Nine."

The sessions with Dumbledore were becoming interesting.

Dumbledore at first tried to convince Severus that he didn't need to use Occlumency at all, but soon gave that up as hopeless. There seemed to be more to it than just Eileen's teaching, almost as if the shutting of his mind was an instinct. There were ways around it, though.

"You do not have to shut yourself off to keep people out. In fact, it is safer if you do not. I can tell if you shut me out. It gives you away. Try controlling the thoughts so that the ones you do not want people to see stay down, and the ones you want them to see come up."

It took practice, a lot of hard practice, but Severus was a good pupil, and with Dumbledore's help it gradually became easier to do.

_Thursday, November 15, 1973 (2 days before the last quarter)_

As he was leaving Potions class, Severus saw Lily ahead of him. He didn't call to her, but watched to see if she was going down toward the lake. She was, and he headed in the other direction to meet her there by a roundabout way. He hadn't had a chance to talk with her for a while, and it was lucky that she was going where they could be alone.

She was there ahead of him, but as he approached quietly he heard another voice, a boy's voice. He stopped. _Who else knows about our meetings?_

Lily was sitting on her rock listening. Pacing back and forth on the beach in front of her was the thin, brown-haired boy who'd helped corner him in September. Remus Lupin. Lily had told him Remus's name, but she'd never mentioned she knew him as other than a fellow Gryffindor. Severus sensed an uncomfortable, tight feeling in the center of his chest that made it hard for him to breathe. He backed away, careful to make no noise, and returned to the castle.

_Why him? What does she see in him? Can he tell her about things like comets and space launchings? He's just some pale washed-out nobody who's sick all the time._ Severus stopped pacing. Remus had been sick for three days about a week before…

Severus hadn't been paying much attention to the phases of the moon, as the position of the moon wasn't important to a Skylab launch, but hadn't it been full just a week earlier? _Is Remus always sick when the moon is full?_ It was something to check.

"Ya seem preoccupied, lad. Somewhat bothering ya?" It was Severus's weekly checkup with Hagrid, and it usually lasted about ten minutes now, most of the major things having been covered.

"Why do you feel bad when your friend has another friend?"

Hagrid paused in the middle of checking the reflex in Severus's left elbow. The question was a milestone in his treatment, dealing as it did with actual emotion. And after only two weeks. "Uh, I would say that it was jealousy." He tapped the joint again. "Ya got someone t' be jealous of?"

"I don't know. I have a friend, but… my friend is talking to someone else, and now I don't have anyone to talk to."

"If ya was friends with the other person, then there'd be three of ye."

"I don't think that would work."

"Ya got a problem with this other person?"

"Sort of."

He left a message the next morning at her desk in her Ancient Runes class. All it said was 'Kohoutek. Today. Rock,' but she knew who it came from.

"Who's Kohoutek?"

"He's from Czechoslovakia. He discovered a comet. It's heading for the sun right now, and we should be able to see it pretty soon."

"I've never seen a comet."

"It's supposed to be pretty spectacular. It's supposed to be the comet of the century. They're sending up the Skylab III team today to take pictures. You want to try to see it with me?"

"Okay. Do we need a telescope?"

"I don't know. It'll be brighter after perihelion."

"And that is…?"

"After it goes around the sun. It'll be around for a while, so we just look for clear nights."

There were no clear nights for more than a week, but during the same time Lily found three occasions to talk by the lake with Remus Lupin.

Probably the most unnerving thing was the sudden tendency Lily had developed to giggle and worry about her hair. She was three weeks younger than Severus, almost fourteen, and Severus found himself paying more attention to other girls of their age to see if they behaved in the same silly way. To his great disgust, they did.

As November faded into December and the hills around Hogwarts turned white again, another female fulfilled her promise to become important in Severus's life.

"Snape, wait a bit, I need to talk to you." Bella Black was waving from the corner by the fire in the common room. Severus crossed the room and stood quietly in front of her, waiting. "Remember about my Potions OWL? You were going to tutor me for the exams."

"You were serious about that?"

"Of course I was! I don't joke about exams. We really need to get together so you can find out how much work I need. What about this evening after dinner here in the common room?"

Severus thought quickly. Slytherin house had no windows, but he knew the sky was gray and overcast. No Kohoutek tonight. "All right," he replied. "This evening after dinner."

It turned out that Bella, while a highly proficient spell caster, was a remedial potions maker in almost every way. Severus asked her about ingredients, measurements, heating, stirring, cooling, about moon phases and sidereal time, and Bella did not have a clue. And this was third year stuff. He insisted that she loan him her Fifth Year Potions book so that he could study it overnight. She obeyed without demur.

This was the biggest challenge that Severus had yet faced at Hogwarts, and for the first time his ego was on the line. He was the best Potions student in his year, in the years behind him, and for two years ahead of him. He might be the best Potions student in the whole school, but that was information beyond his ken for Slughorn noticed only three things: 1) Was your family old and famous? 2) Was your family rich and influential? and 3) Was your face pretty? Having none of these things, Severus was unnoticed by Slughorn, without Dumbledore's prodding.

But in the student world, the notice of teachers was of little import. It was the notice of other students that mattered. Who cared what Slughorn thought, or McGonagall, or even Dumbledore, if the other students acknowledged your position? Bringing Bella up to getting her OWL in Potions would mean status. It would mean reputation. It would mean respect.

The next night started Bella's tutoring, and Severus took her to the Potions classroom for the lesson. A whispered 'Alohomora' and they were in. The expression on Bella's face was priceless, for it had apparently never occurred to her that he would commit trespass, and he could see that she was reevaluating his worth then and there.

They began with the basics, first year stuff, but basics that really were fundamental to the rest of the curriculum. And he made her tell him what was important about what she was doing. From time to time he got frustrated because it was so clear to him and she was so obtuse, but they avoided blows.

Then, after a week of lessons, Severus told Bella he could not tutor her that evening. He never said so, but the sky was crystal clear and now, two weeks before perihelion, the sky just after sunset was perfect for viewing the comet. He had already left a note for Lily, and they were going to the Astronomy Tower during dinner to try to see it.

Bella didn't have to be told anything. She sensed a rival, and she moved instinctively. First and foremost, you cannot act without information. Bella cornered Avery, and the two recruited a first year named Regulus, some kind of cousin of Bella's. Their orders were simple and clear.

Find out where Snape is going, and who he's with.

_Wednesday, December 12, 1973 (2 days after the full moon)_

Severus went up to the Astronomy Tower first. There was a light dusting of snow, but since no one else would be out on such a frosty evening, he was not worried about footprints. A few minutes later, Lily joined him. Together they watched as the sun sank below the line of hills.

"As soon as twilight deepens, we should be able to see something, as soon as the sunlight isn't overwhelming everything else," Severus explained.

The sun's disk disappeared, and the orange glow of sunset slowly faded. Their eyes became accustomed to the dark and – there it was. Far fainter than Severus had hoped it would be, Comet Kohoutek was still the brightest star in the sky. What's more, it had a tail. Not a long spectacular tail streaming across the heavens, but a short modest one. A tail, nonetheless.

The two watched the comet until the light of the rising moon dimmed the stars. It was time to go down to supper. Both knew this was probably the last time they'd talk in 1973 because Lily was going home for the Christmas break in less than a week. They would meet again in January.

"It'll be better then," Severus promised. "It'll be closer to earth, and the sun will be pulling the tall out across the sky. Lots of comets are so bright they can be seen in the daytime."

Lily went down first, and Severus followed a few minutes later. He was cold, but happy, and he planned to go down to the lake to watch the moon. He really didn't feel like meeting Bella for Potions after having shared Kohoutek with Lily.

Avery flopped onto one of the sofas, near enough to Bella so that they could talk without being overheard. Bella raised her eyebrow and waited. Avery had the air of a man with news.

"The half-breed has a mudblood girlfriend." The shock on Bella's face gave Avery so much pleasure that he wished he'd planned an even more dramatic announcement.

"That's impossible," she stated flatly. "I'd have known."

"Clearly you don't know everything. He went up to the Astronomy Tower by himself, so Regulus and I waited."

Bella's expression changed to one of greater interest. "That's a cold place for lovers to meet."

"A few minutes later that mudblood Gryffindor comes along and goes up onto the Tower, too, so I left Regulus as a lookout and climbed up myself. Had to go slowly because I thought they might have stopped on the stairs, but they were right out on the Tower watching the sun set."

"Cute. Where did they go after the sun went down?"

"They didn't. They stayed there watching the stars. It looked like they were looking at one in particular. Then I had to move fast because she came down by herself and went to dinner. Then he came down and went to dinner."

"Where are they now?"

"She's in Gryffindor house, and he's down by the lake watching the moon."

Bella dismissed Avery and sat gazing into the fire, pondering the unexpected strangeness of this information. She'd been unaware that Severus had continued his friendship with the Gryffindor girl after being warned in first year. Her initial reaction was to eliminate this mudblood as a factor, but she already had warning of how Severus reacted to force. Which was why Bella was handling this case and not Rabastan. No, a lighter touch was needed. A gentle, friendly touch.

Standing and moving to a desk, Bella pulled out quill and parchment. It took her a while to compose her letter, since it had to be just the right tone, but at last she was satisfied. She looked around. It was late, and everyone had gone to bed. Bella folded the letter carefully, sealed it, and went to her own dormitory. The next day she sent an owl.

By Thursday, there was an answer, the right answer. Bella gave the owl a tidbit from her breakfast plate and looked around for Severus. Alone in a corner, as usual. Bella went over and slid onto the bench beside him.

"You don't go home for the holidays, do you Snape? Rodolphus says you always spend Christmas here."

Severus nodded. "It's okay. It's quieter without all the students."

"But not a lot of fun. Look, I really need to work for this OWL Why waste a fortnight? Why don't you come spend the break with my family? It'd be mostly to tutor me, but we'd have a lot of fun, too. You could meet some people who could help you later after you leave Hogwarts."

Severus wasn't sure, but Bella painted a lovely picture of light and laughter, and being part of a family. The next morning in the common room he told her that he'd decided to accept her invitation and spend Christmas with the Blacks.


	12. Chapter 12 – Highs and Lows

**A Difference in the Family: The Third Year – Highs and Lows**

_Sunday, December 23, 1973 (one day before the new moon)_

Severus regretted his decision almost at once. The world of Bellatrix Black and the world of Severus Snape were so far apart that it was hard to believe they even shared a common humanity. The London town house of the Blacks was a wealth of paneled walls, gilt molding, crystal chandeliers, and a marble staircase designed to make Severus feel small and poor in his Hogwarts robes, the only robes he owned.

Mr. and Mrs. Black were icily polite, and the house-elves (a pair of them) practically sneered. Bella took Severus to a room in the upper part of the house that he recognized at once as servant's quarters, but he didn't mind. He was far more comfortable there than he would have been in a grander room. He had a bed, a table, a chair, a wardrobe for his things, and his dormer window looked out over west end London. He realized that this was the first view he had of London that didn't include Euston Road.

The next couple of days were not so bad because Bella's parents ate out at the homes of friends, so he and Bella could share a simple supper after lessons. Bella wasn't always around either, but she showed him the library on the first floor and he was quite content to sit there and read, or watch upper class London go by the window.

Two days before Christmas, things changed. The Blacks were giving a dinner party to welcome Bella's sister home from France, and some of their well-to-do acquaintances would be there. Bella was given the task of telling 'that little tutor boy' that the gathering was not for people of his 'sort,' and that he would have to have supper in his room.

This seemed only fair to Severus, who spent the whole day in his little dormer room while the house-elves made things ready, the sister arrived, the decorations were put up, and the food prepared. Guests would come at seven, and the evening would be a formal one.

Shortly after six, Severus thought that there was a book in the library that he would like to read during his exile. He could use the servants' stairs and come out close by the door. If he was careful, he could get his book and be back in his room before he was seen. It was well before the arrival of the guests, so it shouldn't bother anyone.

His plan working well, he got the book, and then Severus hurried out of the library into the first floor hall where, to his great horror, he very nearly collided with a member of the family. He froze, his heart thumping, then looked up in the gathering silence, his mouth open in shock.

The Snow Queen herself stood before him, regally tall, gowned in iridescent blue and silver, her golden hair woven into a crown with one thick tress falling onto her shoulder. Ice-blue eyes smiled down in a face whose skin was the finest porcelain and whose mouth the delicate petals of a rose. Severus stood, rapt and dumbfounded, for he had never before seen anyone so beautiful.

"Well, hullo there. You must be Bella's friend from Hogwarts. Severus, isn't it?" and her smile was laughter and her voice the singing of birds. "I hope you're enjoying your stay at our home. I'm Narcissa."

It took a moment for Severus to recover and find his voice. "I'm… sorry. I… didn't mean… to…"

"That's all right. There's no damage done. I'm afraid I can't stay and chat right now as they're expecting me in the parlor, but since you're staying for the holidays, I'm sure we'll get to know each other." Then she smiled again and glided past him in a rustle of satin and the faint hint of jasmine perfume.

Severus watched her go, then started for the servant's stairs. By the time he reached the bottom step he was running, taking them two at a time up to the top floor. The book was thrown forgotten on the bed as he rushed to the window. His room faced the front of the house, and he hoped he could watch the guests arrive.

At precisely seven o'clock the chauffeured cars began to disgorge guests. Men in white tie and tails, women in tiaras and evening gowns. It was a fairytale world of color, richness, and beauty, of silk and lace, emeralds and sapphires, top hats and ebony walking sticks. Severus leaned as far out his dormer window as he dared, trying to catch all the details. Families were arriving together, older parents with sons or daughters the age of Narcissa. It looked as if Bella would be the youngest one there.

After the last guest was inside, Severus left the window. He had to see more. He put on his robe over his gown and took the biretta as well. If he were caught, he would at least be in his school uniform, and therefore respectable. Slowly and quietly he crept down the servants' stairs and along the hallway to the railing where he could look down on both the grand foyer that rose three stories to where he was, and on the doors to the dining room at the top of the marble staircase.

When the guests left the parlor to ascend the stairs for dinner, Severus peered through the rails to catch a glimpse of the Snow Queen. She went to dinner on the arm of a slender young man who matched her in height, but whose blond hair was so fair as to be almost white, a young man whom Severus recognized as the seventh year prefect when he himself was only in first year, Lucius Malfoy. They smiled and talked like old friends. The guests entered the dining room, and the doors were closed.

Severus couldn't move from his vantage point. He was certain that if he left for a moment he would miss something. After two hours, the doors opened again and remained open. The long table had vanished and music was playing – the dining room had become a ballroom. Glittering couples whirled past the open doors to the sound of enchanting music. It was a feast for eyes and ears, and Severus fed on it until the guests began to leave at two in the morning. Mrs. Black stood at the head of the staircase to bid her guests good evening. Narcissa and her partner moved to one side, away from the others, in intimate and mutually pleasant conversation.

The last guest to go was an older man whose bearing and coloring proclaimed him the father of Lucius. The man was talking to Mr. Black, and the argument had become heated, though Severus could only hear part of it.

"…what your brother would say, Black, to abandon the traditions of your family like this… toadying to an upstart of no background…"

"…has the best interests of the old stock in mind… we have to do something to keep our position… even at Hogwarts less than half are now pure…"

"…bring the product of miscegenation into your own house…"

"…only a tool that the Dark Lord may find useful…"

"Dark Lord! Have you sunk so low? How can you think that I would allow my family to be so polluted…" The man turned toward the younger couple. "Lucius! Attend me at once! We're leaving this place."

The blond young man stepped forward, dismay on his face. He turned to say goodbye to Narcissa, but his father's anger preempted him. "Lucius! At once! We no longer associate with such people." Torn between love and duty, Lucius threw one despairing glance back at Narcissa, then hurried after his father down the staircase and out the door. Narcissa followed him, one hand outstretched as if to seize him and draw him back to her, but she was stopped at the head of the stairs by her mother. The front door slammed. Narcissa hid her face against her mother's shoulder and began to weep.

Severus silently crept back up the stairs to his room. The tragedy of the situation overwhelmed him. She was so beautiful, so noble. She loved him, and he loved her, but the quarrels of their parents had torn them apart. It was heartbreaking. Severus hated both Narcissa's parents and Lucius's father. They had no right to stand in the way of true love! He only wished that there was something he could do to help, for his own young heart was firming in resolve.

If Narcissa Black wanted Lucius Malfoy, then Narcissa was going to have him.

"If we could get him over to Uncle's house to see all their things, it might make him more interested in the Dark Arts. He loves puzzles and mysteries and things like that." Bella was sitting on Narcissa's bed while Narcissa went through her clothes and jewelry deciding what to wear that evening.

"You know Auntie will never allow it. You know what she'll say."

Bella mugged. "Filthy blood traitors bringing a half-breed into my house…" Both sisters laughed.

"Besides," continued Narcissa, "it would hurt him to meet someone like Auntie. He really is rather sweet, and so eager to please."

"Sweet?" Bella almost doubled over with laughter. "The one who dreamed up the bird-dung curse? The kid who had Sirius beating bats out of his hair? You have a twisted sense of 'sweet'."

"Bats! You must be joking!"

So Bella had to tell Narcissa all about the September war between Gryffindor and Slytherin. Then she had to tell about Rabastan and the earthquake. At that point Narcissa became very quiet.

"So the Dark Lord really is interested in him." She seemed suddenly sad.

"Why do you think he's here? You don't think I'd invite someone like him to our house just to be nice. Even if I do need the help with Potions."

"Oh, Bella. You can be so mean sometimes." Narcissa brightened suddenly. "I know what we can do. Let's invite Regulus for Boxing Day. He can bring some things from Uncle's house and we can all have fun just playing with them."

"And what good's that going to do?"

"Well first of all, it could be fun. Then for your scheming, it could help him see that the Dark Arts aren't so bad, nothing to be afraid of."

Bella looked at her older sister with renewed respect. "I think you may have a good idea."

_Boxing Day, Wednesday, December 26, 1973 (two days after the new moon)_

The Hand of Glory was the hit of the evening. First of all, it was spooky and gruesome. Then they took turns seeing how it gave light to the holder and darkness to the beholders. Then Narcissa thought of the game.

She made everyone study the drawing room for five minutes. Then she took the Hand of Glory, and darkness descended on the others. A minute later it was light again. "All right," Narcissa asked, "what's changed?"

The other three glanced around the room, uncertain what they were looking for. Bella got it first, of course. "The candlesticks were at opposite sides of the mantle. Now they're in the middle." And it was Bella's turn.

Paintings reversed themselves, facing chairs turned their backs, lampshades switched, and the chandelier lost a third of its crystal baubles. The little group dissolved into laughter at every phase of the game, and yet Severus could detect an aura of melancholy that touched Narcissa from time to time, especially when Bella slipped and mentioned Lucius's name. Severus adored Narcissa's courage, the crystal sadness that she covered with consideration for others, the golden sorrow that tinged every action with romance. By the end of the evening he knew that he would lay down his life for her. For the love that she and Lucius shared.

Christmastide dissolved into the New Year, and it was time to return to Hogwarts. Severus carried back with him three defining concepts. First, that the life of the rich, while a source of pleasant fantasy, was as far above his day-to-day existence as the moon above the earth. Second, that the Dark Arts were nothing to fear, but merely an extension of the commonplace, something that he had already been playing with in his hexes and jinxes, and something that could be a source of amusement as well as power. Third, that there was no one in the world as kind, gentle, considerate, or worthy as Narcissa Black.

_Wednesday, January 9, 1974 (1 day after the full moon)_

Kohoutek was a disaster. The Skylab photos from December were great, but then the comet just seemed to fizzle out. Severus and Lily spent several evenings on the Astronomy Tower without a spectacular sighting in the bunch. Lily was great about it, saying that she had fun just watching the sky, but Severus knew that he'd failed to keep her interest.

Bella, on the other hand, was all attention. Not only was he teaching her potions, he was also fielding answers to other questions. Questions about cursing items and hexing people, and how to jinx the weather. Severus was spending more and more time in the library studying as much as he could about the Dark Arts, and his Defense against the Dark Arts class was quickly becoming his favorite.

More to the point, he was making a little cash. Bella's cousin Regulus started paying him for tutoring in Potions and Dark Arts. It wasn't much, but this time Severus might be able to buy something on the Express back to London. Though frankly he would have preferred muggle money.

Severus was doubly blessed on his fourteenth birthday, for Bella received an owl with a message for him. All it said was, 'Best wishes for a Happy Birthday, Narcissa,' but that was all it had to say. Then that evening Lily met him by the lake in the ice and snow with another little cake for two. He thought as they ate it together that he'd never realized before how pretty she was.

"Ya seem to be doing well this term. Taller. Even putting on a little weight. Somewhat's agreeing with ya."

"I'm eating what you told me to. And drinking the milk. And classes are easy." Severus paused for a moment. "Hagrid?"

"Ask away, lad."

"Are girls really different from boys?"

Hagrid's face puckered in fruitless self-restraint, and then he burst into laughter. Severus blushed fiercely as he realized what he'd said. "I don't mean that. I mean…" then he started laughing, too. It was a small, weak laugh, lacking experience and practice, but it was a laugh.

"What did ya mean, lad?"

"I mean do they think differently from boys. Do they like different things and look at the world differently?"

"The man that could answer that question would make hisself a fortune. 'T is my opinion they're a whole different breed. Ya got a girl you're interested in?"

"Don't know yet. Maybe."

Not everything was pleasant in Severus's garden, though. It manifested itself in the fountain courtyard.

"Hey, you! Snivellus! Turn around when you're spoken to, Snake!"

Severus turned, taking a couple of steps to his left as he did so to put a wall at his back. Sirius Black approached him in a tightly controlled rage, Potter and Pettigrew behind him.

"You're going to stay away from my brother, Snivellus. You start poisoning his mind and I'll crack your skull open."

"Brother? I didn't know Dr. Frankenstein was still in business." _Wasted effort. He hasn't got a clue._

"I'll doctor you right into a hospital bed. You stay away from Regulus."

"Regulus is your brother? Mendel was right. Niceness is recessive."

Sirius advanced, and Severus pointed the wand that he still carried in his sleeve. _"Toichos,"_ he said calmly, and Sirius was blocked by an invisible wall that surrounded the spell caster. Severus backed away from the trio, as they pressed forward just beyond the limit of his wall.

"You okay, Snape?" Rabastan, Rodolphus behind, was standing in the cloistered walk that surrounded the garden.

"Fine, thanks. These gentlemen were just going."

Both sides backed away from the field, leaving the battle a draw.

"I'm warning you," was Sirius's parting shot.

_Friday, June 28 to Saturday, June 29, 1974 (three days past the first quarter moon)_

Spring progressed with little change, and summer began to bloom around Hogwarts. Soon it was exams time again. Again Dumbledore called Severus to his office and gave him an envelope with a train ticket. Again students packed their belongings and said goodbye for the summer.

This time the train ride into King's Cross was much more enjoyable for Severus. He stayed with the other Slytherin students and bought some of the refreshments with his hard-earned coin. It was something of a farewell party for Rabastan, who'd finished his seventh year, sat for his NEWTs, and was now free of Hogwarts for good. Rodolphus was passing around a jug that Severus sniffed at and passed on, but by the time they got into King's Cross it was clear that some of the younger students were tipsy. In general, Slytherin house had a great time.

Exiting from King's Cross, Severus was aware of a change in London. It was hard to put a name to the feeling, but the area was different. There were a lot of bicycles in the traffic. Somewhat fewer cars, and a lot more bicycles. He crossed Euston Road to St. Pancras for the night, wandered Euston Station the next morning, and boarded the train for Colne without problem. The trip to Lancashire was uneventful, and he arrived in Colne in the early evening.

Severus's parents were not there to meet him.

Severus sat on a bench in front of the train station for nearly two hours before he finally admitted to himself that his mum and dad were not coming. Four times the station master offered to phone his home, but they didn't have a telephone so Severus thanked him politely, but declined.

Finally he made up his mind that he'd have to walk. It was nearly ten miles to the village where he lived. The long northern twilight would make most of the trek bearable, and the waxing moon would give some light after the sun was gone. Still, it was more than a three-hour walk under the best of conditions.

At first Severus considered cutting across the moors, but quickly abandoned the idea. The gathering dusk wasn't the best time to be going over uneven land; he would probably make better time on the road. And if his parents were coming, he would have to be on the road to meet them. He hefted his Gladstone bag. Luckily it wasn't heavy.

The sun set, and the moon was near setting, too, before he reached his own town, tired, cold, and hungry. It was past 'last call' at the boozers, and probably close to closing time. In all the hours he'd trudged along the road, though, he'd not seen a single car. It was as if all of eastern Lancashire was deserted, and he was getting nervous.

The sound of his shoes on the cobbles brought Eileen to the door well before Severus reached their gate. Her frightened expression turned to one of relief. "Russ! Thank God you're alright. I was that worried," but she wouldn't let him into the house. "You go over to Mrs. Hanson's in Mule Lane. She's expecting you. Don't come back here 'til tomorrow morning."

"But Mum," Severus began, and Eileen turned on him in fury.

"You get to Mrs. Hanson's and you get now! You're not spending the night in this house. I don't have time to argue with you. You obey! Now get!"

And Severus got. Mrs. Hanson was a plump widow whose husband had worked in the mill. She was still up in her sitting room with the light on, waiting for him. She had a cold supper and a bed made up in the spare room, and she clucked over him as he ate, warming himself by her grate.

"It's those Arabs," she explained. "There was a war in the east and those Jews won. So those Arabs cut off our petrol. Isn't nobody can drive a car now, and the factories have it hard paying the extra for the power to keep them running. Prices are up everywhere. It's got near impossible to make ends meet. Your dad was on strike in February. They won, the miners, but everyone else is worse off, and your father's been drinking worse than ever. Your mum says he was getting to work late most every day. The mine says your dad's redundant, and he got laid off two days ago. Been drunk ever since. You go home tonight, boy, and he's like to kill you."

Severus lay awake all that night in the once familiar bed in the once familiar house, wondering what was happening at his own home. Laid off. No money. Like when he was nine. He didn't have to imagine what his dad would be like. He knew. And he was scared.

The sun was well risen the next morning before Mrs. Hanson would let Severus leave her house. She fed him, too, not knowing what the boy might find at home. "Now you remember," she said as he walked to the gate, "you have any trouble over there, you just come here 'til it cools off."

Severus's own house at the end of the street was quiet. The whole street was quiet, and Severus noticed that two more houses had boarded-up windows. As she had the night before, Eileen heard his footsteps before he reached the house and came out to meet him. She had a cut over the left cheekbone, and a bruise had formed around it.

"Shhh," she hissed, "he's asleep. Do you need breakfast?"

"Mrs. Hanson gave me some. Supper, too."

"Good. Now, first things first. Wand."

"But Mum, I may need it. You never know what…"

"Exactly. You'll go for it. You listen, Russ, and you listen good. Nothing – nothing – is going to keep you from going back to Hogwarts in September. Give me the wand."

Reluctantly he pulled the wand from his sleeve and handed it to her. Only then did she let him enter her house. Together they went back into the kitchen. Toby was snoring upstairs. Eileen opened the door into the area and picked up a glass jar full of a reddish-brown liquid, then took two cups from the cupboard.

"What's that?"

"Tea. Brewed it in the sun. It's lukewarm, and there's no milk or sugar, but at least we still have some tea. Enjoy it while it lasts."

"But what about…" Severus glanced at the stove.

"Gas costs money. I have a job for you. Now drink your tea."

Dressed in his oldest, shabbiest clothes and carrying a large bag, Severus made his way to the local coal yard. It was Sunday, and the yard was shut down and quiet. He nimbly scaled the wall and began looking around for lumps of coal. Eileen's orders were clear. He was not to go into any trucks or open any bins. He could only pick up what had fallen loose and stray around the yard. That turned out to be quite a lot, and after a couple of hours he'd filled his bag. If they were careful, it would last a long time, for Eileen only intended to use the coal for cooking on the grate, a few lumps at a time.

Severus deposited his bag in the area yard and checked with his mother to find that Toby was still asleep. He then set out for the open moors, occasionally stooping to pick up a rock of exactly the right size and shape. He found a little outcropping and sat waiting, for patience was now his most important quality. After twenty minutes he saw a tentative movement of gray in the scrub. Easing himself up into position, he paused, then fired one of his rocks straight and true at the rabbit. He didn't move to collect the animal until he'd managed to kill another. A brace of rabbits would make a fine supper.

The kitchen was empty when Severus got home, but he could hear that his dad was being sick. He kicked off his muddy shoes in the area yard and went upstairs. Toby was in bed with a massive hangover, while Eileen held a bucket for him. The stairs squeaked, and both looked over at Severus.

"You!" Toby roared. "Where've you been? Come home from that fancy school to steal a man's food off his table, and not even here to help when he wakes up! Skulking around! Get over here! I'm going to beat the skin…" He turned suddenly and vomited into the bucket again.

Severus waited quietly. When the spasms passed, and Toby was able to talk again, Severus moved his hand from behind his back and held the rabbits in front of him.

"I'll give you what for, skulking around like…" Then Toby saw the rabbits. "How'd you get them?"

"Accident. They got in the way where I was pitching stones."

Toby grinned. "That's my boy. Ain't every boy can bring down a coney with a rock, is it Leen? Maybe you ain't more trouble 'n you're worth." Then he was sick into the bucket again.

Over her husband's bent head, Eileen and her son's eyes met. She smiled a tight, closed smile and nodded. He winked and went downstairs to leave the rabbits on the kitchen table.

A new routine settled into the Snape family.

Severus was now the primary food provider. On most days he managed to get a rabbit, or at least a couple of birds. It was closed season on moor hens, but pigeons were like rabbits, always fair game. Then, a few miles from home, he discovered a new source of food.

It was a small farm cottage with an extensive kitchen garden, and the woman was trying to repair a hinge on her gate. She was an older woman, in her sixties, and seemed to live alone. The garden was beginning to get overgrown with weeds.

"Could you use some help, ma'am," called Severus, standing in the road watching. "I could use the work."

"I've got the work, and I could use the help, but I can't pay you, so you'd be wasting your time." The woman looked tired and more than a little frustrated.

"I'd be willing to work for some potatoes, and maybe one of the new cabbages."

"Done," she said.

The first thing he did was hold the gate so she could finish the hinge, then she set him to picking things that were ripe and needed canning, while she stewed vegetables in the kitchen and sterilized jars. Severus had no trouble knowing what to do, reckoning that finally all that Herbology he'd studied was proving useful. Then, in the afternoon after a bite to eat, she had him start on the hoeing and weeding. There was more than enough work for the day, so he promised to return on the morrow. The woman sent him home with potatoes, carrots, onions, and a cabbage.

Severus spent a lot of that summer tramping around the district looking for work he could do in exchange for food.

Eileen was traveling farther to find jobs to do as well. Many of her old employers were also short of money, and she couldn't find the work near home that she used to do. She frequently brought tasks home with her to work on as long as she had any light. Most of her money went for things like bread that she couldn't make at home, or for petrol for the car. In addition, she always managed to put a few coins into a jar for the money to buy Severus's train ticket to London for the start of the next semester.

Toby was usually up before dawn, driving to nearby towns looking for day labor. If all went well, he would be home in the evening, ready to go to bed so he could get up and look for work the next day. If all didn't go well, he would come home late, drunk and frequently violent. Severus was helping his mother get his father to bed now, and was getting his own set of bruises as well.

One night at the end of July, Eileen wasn't there when Toby came home roaring drunk. Severus heard the unsteady steps on the walk and froze in the kitchen, listening. The door banged open, and his father yelled, "Eileen! Eileen! Get out here an' get me t' bed." Not knowing what else to do, Severus went into the hall to assist Toby.

"What're you doin' here? Where's your mum?" Toby muttered. "She oughta be here to tend me when I come home. Where's she got off to?"

"She's got a job. She'll be back soon. Just get up to bed, Dad…" Severus tried to support his father to the stairs, but Toby had focused on one word.

"Job? She's not s'posed t' have a job. She's s'posed t' be here. Her place is here!"

"Come on, Dad, just get up the stairs."

"Where's your mother!" Toby rounded on his son with a fist to the jaw that sent Severus sprawling into the wall to then drop dazed to the floor. Staring madly around the room, Toby spied the umbrella stand with its one brolly. Seizing the heavy umbrella, he swung it like a club, the curved handle smashing into Severus's side as the boy tried vainly to ward off the blow with his hands. "I'm th' breadwinner in this house! I'm th' man in this house! No witch's brat's gonna make a fool of me!"

Another blow struck Severus in the leg, then he threw his arms around his head as the umbrella came down on his skull and everything became blurred. Suddenly Eileen was in the room screaming, "Toby! Stop, Toby! You'll kill him!" She flung her arms around the enraged man, but he pushed her back onto the stairs and advanced again on the boy whose presence in his house shamed him so.

Eileen flew up the stairs into the store room and from the upper landing aimed her wand at Toby, screeching _"Stupefacio!"_ with all her strength. Toby buckled and fell to the floor, the umbrella clattering beside him, and lay still.

Without a glance at her husband, Eileen rushed to Severus. He was unconscious, and the hair on the crown of his head was sticky with blood. Cradling her son in her arms and crying uncontrollably, Eileen apparated.

Severus woke up at Nana's house. His grandmother was sitting in a wing-backed chair on the other side of the room. When he tried to move, he realized he had a splitting headache and that every bone in his body seemed to be protesting. "What happened?" he asked.

"You had a concussion. You've been lying unconscious in my guest bedroom for six hours, and I've had to sit here watching you to make sure you didn't die on us."

"I mean…" Severus felt the bandages around his head, then realized others wrapped his chest and his left leg. "I mean what happened?"

"Oh, that. Your lout of a father came home drunk and nearly beat you to death. Your mother, finally using the common sense I've always hoped she was born with, hit him with a stupefying spell and brought you here to me. I've bandaged you and medicined you, and here you are. Awake and asking questions."

"Where's Mum?"

"The idiot girl has gone back to what she is content to call her 'husband.' I offered to dispose of him, but she flew into one of her tempers and left in a huff. I assume you don't intend to do the same."

"But he could…"

"Not if she stays at arm's distance. Which is what you should've done. Actually getting close enough so he could hit you. You ought to be ashamed of yourself."

Severus spent two weeks with his grandmother Prince. Then they shuffled the deck and he spent two weeks with his grandmother Snape. He got an owl from his mother almost every day telling him she was all right and asking about his health. He got nothing from his father.

Eileen came to visit him at grandmother Snape's about a week before the end of August. She brought with her the old robes that she had worn during her time at Hogwarts. "You're as tall as me now," she explained. "I can't buy you new robes, but maybe I can rework my old ones." She undid all the seams and reversed the fabric so that the faded side was now in, and the unfaded side out. She had to make some adjustments for the style changes since the beginning of the '50s, but it was minor, wizarding robes not have altered as much as muggle styles.

Severus returned to spend one last night with his parents before the trip back to London. His father was sober as a judge. There was a new reticence about Toby, who hardly dared look his son in the face. The awkwardness finally dissolved with the appearance of the cribbage board, and Severus won all three games. Severus was pretty sure that his father had miscounted his hands, but it was Toby's way of trying to make up.

The next morning they drove to Colne. There Severus bid his mum and dad goodbye and boarded the train for London. All went according to plan – Euston Station, St. Pancras Church, King's Cross. At eleven o'clock on the morning of Sunday, September 1, 1974, the Hogwarts Express carried him back to school, lit as the day closed by a moon at the peak of its fullness.

Severus never saw his parents again.


	13. Chapter 13 – Independence

**A Difference in the Family: The Fourth Year – Independence**

_Tuesday, October 15, 1974 (the new moon)_

It is highly probable that the Hogwarts academic year of 1974-1975 started out the same as usual. It is highly probable that Gryffindor and Slytherin engaged in mortal combat on and off the Quidditch pitch, and that the familiar names of Black, Potter, Lestrange, Snape, Lupin, Rosier, and Pettigrew were heralded as champions of their respective houses. It is highly probable that curse met curse, hex met hex, jinx met jinx, and practical jokes reached a height of cleverness and cruelty never before experienced by the student body at Hogwarts. Highly probable, but not provable, for in all the years to come, Severus was never able to remember those first six weeks, not after the events of the fifteenth of October.

Kettleburn's Care of Magical Creatures classes ended that Tuesday at midmorning, and the students started to filter back to the castle. Severus had an appointment to see Hagrid, but it was on a routine matter and he hoped to be mostly free until luncheon. When he entered the hut, however, he could tell that Hagrid was upset about something, Hagrid never having been able to hide his emotions in all the time that Severus had known him.

"I hope ya got some free time, 'cause Dumbledore's got somewhat t' say t' ya. I'm supposed t' take ya up there now."

Severus was puzzled, but followed Hagrid into the castle without protest. They climbed the stairs to the entrance to the Headmaster's Tower in silence punctuated only by Hagrid's sniffles. A muttered password, a ride up the moving spiral stair, and they were in Dumbledore's domain. Severus was a little surprised to see Professor Slughorn there as well, but assumed his presence would be explained.

"Ah!" said Dumbledore on seeing him. "Master Snape. Please, would you sit down?"

Severus sat in the proffered chair, aware that no one but Dumbledore seemed to want to look at him. Dumbledore sat in a similar chair facing him. "I am most grieved at having to impart this information to you, but we have received very bad news that concerns you. I am sorry but… your parents have died."

Severus sat quietly looking at Dumbledore for several seconds, wondering why the Headmaster was telling him this. Certainly a student's parents were dead, but he didn't know this student, and there was nothing he could do, so why would Dumbledore inform him? He glanced at Hagrid for assistance, but Hagrid was beginning to cry, and was therefore of no use. He looked back at Dumbledore with a slight smile and started to form his question – and then it hit him. Mum was dead. Dad was dead. He could feel the blood draining from his face, and for a moment he feared he was going to faint. Hagrid stepped behind him and placed a hand on his shoulder. Severus was beginning to tremble. Dumbledore leaned forward, laying a hand on his wrist. His breathing was difficult. His heart was pounding. He looked at Dumbledore with frightened eyes.

"What happened?' he whispered.

"There was, as I understand, an accident with their automobile. They were both killed."

"That's impossible. Dad only used the car to find jobs. Mum never rode with him. There's no reason they would be together."

"And yet, tragically, it seems they were. I am to take you back to your home. Hagrid will accompany us. We shall be met there by your grandmothers."

They apparated to the edge of town near the Snape house, then walked the rest of the way. Severus was suddenly horribly embarrassed that Dumbledore should be seeing where his parents had lived, the poverty and the squalor. He wished that Dumbledore had not come. Then Gra saw them and came trotting out, small and dumpy. Nana was thin and pinched looking, and the house was a working-class hole.

They walked through the door and into the sitting room. It seemed strangely empty, even though everything he remembered was still there. Severus excused himself to go with Gra to brew some tea, but in the narrow hall at the foot of the stairs he stopped, rooted to the spot. There in the threadbare rug was a stain that hadn't been there before. A reddish-brown stain, roughly circular, about a foot in diameter.

Hearing the silence, Dumbledore rose and joined them, Hagrid and Nana behind him. Severus and Gra were staring at the floor, so Dumbledore looked, too. "Dear, dear," he said calmly. "Master Snape, would you come back into the parlor with me? Mrs. Snape, do you think you might go to one of the neighbors? I think we need to find out what happened here."

Mrs. Hanson came, as did several of the men who still lived on the street. They stood nervously before Dumbledore, caps in hand. Ted Murphy did most of the talking.

"He come home late in the afternoon all liquored up. He 'd of been longer at the pub, but he run out of money. Near 's we can tell, she got him into bed, but he was up again a couple of hours later and they was going at it. Seems he hit her at the top of the stairs and she fell all the way and cut her head open.

"Next I know he's banging on my door begging for a can of petrol for the car 'cause he's got t' get her t' the doctor next town. I helped him put her in the front seat, and she was breathing kind of ragged. Toby, he was beside hisself. Kept calling to her, asking her not t' leave him, calling hisself the worst kind of villain, he was that overcome. I never seen him so scared.

"He seemed all right to be on the road. It ain't like there's any cars on the roads now, but he hit a turn too fast and took the car into a ditch. Don't know as he ever hit the brake. They both died right there. Terrible thing."

And it was a terrible thing, but it was done, and life had to go on. The neighbors went home. Mrs. Hanson offered to look after Severus, but Gra said he was coming to stay with her for a few days. Nana concurred and was the first to leave, apparating from the upstairs landing. Dumbledore took charge of locking up the house, putting charms on all the doors and windows to keep the meager possessions safe.

Normally one did not apparate with muggles, but Gra was a special case. Dumbledore escorted her home, then returned for Severus, sending Hagrid back to Hogwarts. Once Severus was settled into a little room next to Gra's kitchen, Dumbledore also left, letting grandmother and grandson share their grief in privacy.

Hours later Gra had gone to sleep and Severus sat in his strange new room on a strange bed with a candle to keep him company, thinking of what had happened. A fat fly buzzed in one corner, and he pointed his wand at it and shot it down. He believed the men's story. It was so like his father to strike out first and regret later. Then when Eileen fell, Toby would be distraught. In all his life Severus had never known his parents to spend a day apart. His dad couldn't live without his mum. Another fly buzzed, and he shot that one down, too.

So Toby would have run, panic-stricken, to the neighbors for help getting Eileen to a doctor, blaming himself for everything. Begging his unconscious wife not to leave him. More terrified of living without her than of dying himself.

That was why Severus knew, more than anyone, what had happened on that road that night. There had been no accident. No drunken, laid-off coal miner had taken a curve too fast on the way to the hospital and wound up in a ditch. No, his dad never had a chance to get to a doctor; his mum had died in the car on the way, and his dad knew it. Unable to face even a minute with the stark knowledge of his guilt and loss, Toby had pointed the car at that ditch, stepped on the accelerator, and joined Eileen.

All that night Severus sat alone in the dark bedroom, pointing his wand at the ceiling, shooting down flies…

_Halloween, Thursday, October 31, 1974 (the full moon)_

Severus returned to Hogwarts on Halloween. He apparated into Hogsmeade early in the evening with Nana, and together they walked up the hill to the castle. Severus was thinner and paler than before, dressed in school gown, robe, biretta, and cloak, but Nana looked like a dowager empress.

Head and shoulders above Severus in height and slender as a greyhound, Nana moved with the natural dignity of one born to the throne. Her gown was as straight and plain in its cut as Severus's except for the fullness of the bishop sleeves, but it was of royal blue moire silk, with collar, cuffs, belt, and hem embroidered in silver, pearls, and tiny beads of lapis lazuli. The satin robe was the same shade of blue, with shortened, wide draping sleeves that revealed the gown underneath, but cut straight in an oriental fashion that did not billow as she walked. A matching tricorne hat swathed in a sapphire ostrich plume sat jauntily on her head, a large brooch of crystal and sapphire holding the feather in place. Blue satin slippers adorned her feet, and over all she had a midnight blue velvet cape. Nana wore no other jewelry, but in her left hand she carried an ebony walking stick nearly as tall as she was, banded in silver and topped by a raven, its wings spread in challenge, carved in jet with garnet eyes.

All had been made for Nana's own great-great-grandmother Rossendale to wear to the coronation of George III, and it lay in a small trunk in her attic until needed to put on a show at Hogwarts, but having only been worn once before, it had the look and feel of something new. "Stand up straight," Nana whispered to Severus as they stepped into the empty entrance hall, "and hold your head up. We may not be rich, but we come from families as old as any here."

The Halloween feast was well under way, and many of the staff and students were dressed in formal robes for the occasion. The heavy doors swung silently open, and Nana advanced a few steps into the Great Hall, Severus at her right side, her arm around his shoulders. There they waited, unmoving, as Dumbledore rose from the high table and came to greet them while quiet spread through the hall.

"Constantina, it is an honor to welcome you here," exclaimed Dumbledore as he bent to kiss her outstretched hand. "My pleasure for the evening is now complete."

"It is good to see you, too, Albus," replied Nana. "It has been far too long." Which, since they had only met two weeks earlier, was a slight exaggeration, but a show is a show.

A house-elf appeared to take the cloak that Nana let fall from her shoulders to the floor. Dumbledore turned to Severus. "Welcome back to Hogwarts, Master Snape. We have missed you. I am sure that you would like to join your comrades in Slytherin, but I am going to be selfish enough to ask your grandmother to grace my own table."

Severus nodded and went to the Slytherin table, where Bella pushed Rodolphus out of the way to make room for him." How does your grandmother know Dumbledore?" whispered Bella.

"I'm not sure. She didn't attend Hogwarts." This led to rampant speculation that Severus's grandmother had been educated in France, a rumor he never bothered to contradict.

When the feast was over, Severus kissed Nana goodbye and went to his dormitory, where he was treated with a new respect as befitted the romantic nature of his sudden departure and dramatic return. Dumbledore accompanied Nana down the hill to a point where she could apparate back to her home in Lancashire. The quiet night was a perfect place to talk.

"We don't know what to do. You saw him – he isn't eating. He barely speaks. He lies in bed half the day sleeping or just staring at the wall. He used to be a fighter. Now he's given up. I couldn't let him slink back into school like a whipped dog, thus this little charade. Thank you so much for playing along."

"It will be a nine-day wonder at the very least. Everything he does or doesn't do will be attributed to romantic moodiness. I am concerned about his depression, though. It is not healthy in one so young. Has he shown no interest at all in any outside things?"

Nana shook her head. "It's as if he's built a wall around himself. No one gets in, and he won't come out."

After Nana disapparated, Dumbledore walked slowly back up the hill pondering what he might do.

_Wednesday, November 6 to Friday, November 8, 1974 (the last quarter)_

Severus stopped going to see Hagrid, so Hagrid was forced to go to Severus. This was not as easy as it sounded, for Hagrid never entered the four houses, and Severus had stopped attending most of his classes. About a week after Severus's return, Hagrid managed to catch him outside his Dark Arts class. Hagrid seized his elbow and marched him down to the hut. Severus made no attempt to resist.

Hagrid was appalled at Severus's condition. Thin and haggard already, the boy was beginning to get slovenly. His hair was unwashed, and his robes wrinkled from sleeping in them. He submitted with a frightening passivity to Hagrid's checkup, not saying a word all the while.

"Ya've got to start taking better care of yerself," said Hagrid. Severus shrugged. "I'm serious. Y're way too thin, and ya look a mess. Ya keep on like this and ya'll end up in hospital."

Bella accosted Severus when he returned to the Slytherin common room. "Hey, Snape. You really have to join us. Rosier's birthday is coming up and we're planning a party." Severus stared at her blankly, then walked without a word into his dormitory. Bella's voice followed him. "You've got to snap out of this. I know you feel bad, but this is going too far."

Severus lay on his side on his bed, staring at the wall. He wanted to sleep. When he was asleep, he didn't feel anything. Nothing else mattered. He closed his eyes.

Lily managed to contact him two days later. 'Lake' the note said, and for the first time Severus felt like he might want to talk to someone. Lily was his friend, his only real friend. Lily would understand.

They stood by the lake in the deepening afternoon, skipping rocks across the water. Severus told Lily some of what had happened, how his mother had fallen on the stairs, and how his father had tried to get her to the doctor, and how the car had gone off the road. He didn't tell her the other part, why it happened. He'd never talked much about his parents to Lily before, and there were things he didn't want her to know.

"That's terrible. No wonder you feel so bad. It's good you still have your grandmother to live with."

Severus had forgotten that Lily would have seen Nana on Halloween. He didn't really want Lily to try to make him feel better. He wanted her to understand his sorrow. "It isn't the same thing. She's nice, both of them are nice, but it isn't the same as Mum and Dad."

"Still, you do have family to go to. Not everyone has that."

"I'll never be able to play cribbage with Dad again, never practice dueling with Mum…"

"You'll have other things. There's still the space program, and your science. You have a lot of things to keep you interested."

"Why don't you care how I feel?"

"I do care. I'm trying to make you feel better."

"No, you're trying to make me feel the way you think I should. I'm the one who just lost his parents!"

"And you need to start getting over it. Look at you! You look awful! And you smell!"

"I offend you. I'm sorry if losing my parents offends you. I thought you were my friend."

"I am your friend. And sometimes friends have to tell the truth!"

Severus felt a terrible emptiness in the center of his being, as if part of him no longer existed. He fought to get that part back. "Friends aren't supposed to act like this. If you were my friend, you'd be nice to me, you'd understand, you'd treat me better," he yelled at her.

She yelled back. "Well maybe that's why you don't have so many friends!"

Then it happened. His right hand was up across his chest and he struck Lily with the back of it on the right side of her jaw. She staggered back, a look of outraged fury on her face. He stared dumbly at her and at his own hand as the horror of it slowly dawned on him. "I'm sorry," he whispered. "Lily, I'm sorry…"

"You hit me! How dare you! You hit me!"

"I didn't mean… I didn't want… Please, Lily, I'm sorry. …I won't ever…" but she backed away from him as if he were some kind of beast, then turned and ran back up the hill to the castle.

Behind her, Severus sank onto the narrow stretch of sand and buried his face in his hands.

Severus knew now the full import of what had happened. He was in every way his father's son. Tobias Snape had carried a demon inside him, a demon that made him lash out at and finally destroy the thing he loved most in the world. That demon lived in Severus, too. He carried it in his blood like a disease. He had one real friend in the world and he'd struck her, struck as his dad had so often struck his mum, for facing him with honesty and truth. And in the moment that his hand hit her jaw, he'd felt a visceral sense of power and completeness that thrilled through his very being. The demon thrived on it. Severus had never felt so ashamed of himself in his life.

The demon had an image. An image that brooded in the pure cleanliness of the laboratory and mocked his dreams – the image of a double helix. The double helix resided in every cell of his body, half from Toby and half from Eileen. Toby's half was the demon that lived in his blood, his bones, his skin. There was no escape. He was genetically doomed to destroy what he loved.

Hours passed as he struggled with the demon, and slowly the solution came to him. As long as he never loved anything, he could not destroy it. Anger could be controlled. Frustration, envy, pride, could all be controlled. Only love woke the sleeping demon and beckoned it from its hiding place. Deep inside, the doors that Hagrid and Dumbledore had worked so hard to open began to close again.

Around suppertime it began to rain, but Severus didn't appear in the Great Hall. Lily looked for him, hoping for the opportunity to snub him, and was disappointed that he didn't come. After twenty minutes, Dumbledore signaled to Hagrid, for they were trying to ensure that the boy at least ate regularly, and Hagrid went out of the hall.

A little later Hagrid returned, shaking his head. Dumbledore rose and passed through the hall next to the Gryffindor table. "Miss Evans," he said when he reached her place on the bench, "I am sorry to interrupt your meal, but may I have a word with you?"

They went into the entrance hall where they could speak undisturbed. "We are trying to find Master Snape. I know that at one time the two of you were friends, and I was hoping you might know where he was."

"No, sir," she replied, yet Dumbledore could feel the uncertainty in her manner, and noticed quite suddenly that there was the tiniest hint of something – swelling? – along her jaw.

"We are very worried about him. You may have noticed a change since his parents died, and we are concerned that he is all right. He is not at supper, and he is not in Slytherin house."

Lily wrestled for a moment with her own demons, but they were weak and puny in comparison with her heart. "We were down by the lake," she said. "We had an argument and… he hit me."

Dumbledore and Hagrid exchanged a glance, then Hagrid said, "I'm on it," and left at once. Dumbledore stayed with Lily.

"I hope you are not hurt. I am most grieved to hear that he struck you, both for your sake and for his. Has he told you what happened to his parents?"

"His mother fell on the stairs, and when his father was taking her to the hospital, they had an accident with the car."

"Ah, yes." Dumbledore concealed his disappointment. The girl could be of so much help if she understood more, but he could not violate the boy's confidence by telling her more than Severus wanted her to know. They were, after all, the boy's parents. "Would you do me a favor? Would you stay here until Hagrid brings Master Snape back? It may do much good."

Hagrid found Severus lying by the lake, soaked and chilled to the bone. The boy protested as he was lifted, but Hagrid could tell that he was already becoming feverish and wasted no time. He lumbered up the hill, through the entrance hall, and up to the first floor hospital wing, Dumbledore and Lily now in his wake, to deposit Severus into the care of the new, young nurse, Miss Pomfrey.

Quickly they stripped the wet robes and wrapped him in warm woolen blankets. Dumbledore heard a small gasp behind him and turned, already knowing that Lily had seen the scars. Carefully he steered her away from the patients' area. "There is much that I wish I could tell you, Miss Evans, but it is, alas, not my story to tell. Do you think you might hold yourself ready in case he decides to tell you himself?"

Lily nodded, and set herself to wait.

It turned out that Severus was in no danger, just wet and cold, and what fever he had was quickly brought under control. Dumbledore decided, however, that it would be better to keep him in the hospital wing for a few days, where he, Hagrid, and Miss Pomfrey could monitor him better, especially his food intake. Hagrid stood off to one side while Dumbledore talked to the boy.

"Now how did you happen to be sitting in the rain by the lake?"

"I was talking to a friend."

"Your friend was no longer there."

"She left."

"She must have realized it was getting near supper time, or that the weather was turning chill."

"No. I did… something bad."

Dumbledore waited patiently. Admitting a wrong was a step toward healing. Concealing it was a whole other problem.

"I… lost my temper. I hit her. In the face."

"With your fist?"

"No. Like that." Severus made a quick gesture with the back of his hand. He was deeply embarrassed that he had to answer these questions, but it was his own fault.

"And why did you decide to hit her?"

"I didn't decide to. I just did it. She made me angry."

"Really."

Severus thought about this for a while, remembering the times his mum had been the target and his dad the attacker. "No, not really. She was trying to help. I was angry. She wasn't doing what I wanted her to do, but that wasn't her fault. I won't ever do it again."

Dumbledore was relieved. No excuses, no attempts to justify his actions. Maybe the situation was not as serious as he'd feared. "Let us hope not, Master Snape," he said, rising to leave. "You get some rest now."

The conversation with Lily was slightly different.

"I am so sorry…"

"You should be. I don't let people hit me."

"I said I was sorry. You're supposed to…"

"Like I was supposed to be nice to you and treat you better? Because that's what friends are supposed to do?"

"Well, yeah, because…" Severus stopped. That was where the demon had appeared. That was where he'd lost control. "Well, no. I mean, you shouldn't have to do things just because I think it's what's supposed to happen. Anyway, it won't happen again."

"It better not."

"It won't. Pax?"

"Pax."

What it boiled down to, Severus decided as he lay awake in the hospital wing, was that there were things that you could have in life, and things that you couldn't. There were things that people like the Blacks took for granted because they were rich that Severus would never dream of wanting. It was just not part of his life. He could watch it, and enjoy it, but having it would make him grotesque, like a fish trying to live on land.

So it was in the world of emotions. There were some people who were born to love. There were others, like Toby, like himself, who had forfeited this right by the circumstances of their birth. The double helix never lied. If you tried to resist the dictates of its destiny, you'd destroy what you most wanted to preserve.

The sooner you realized that and learned to live with it, the better.

There is nothing less romantic in the world than lying in a hospital bed staring at a privacy screen. The soft, enticing melancholy of his dormitory cocoon was impossible in the white world of crisp linen and bedpans. Lily didn't come again, but that was understood, for the hospital wing was too open and exposed to casual observation. Severus couldn't leave until Dumbledore allowed it. After one day Severus was bored.

Bella sent books, two of them. One was _Creatures of the Inner Darkness_, which was infinitely better than the grindylows and red caps of his Defense against the Dark Arts class. Here he found the seven ways to become a vampire, learned that there were weretigers as well as werewolves, discovered incubi and succubi, changelings, harpies, doppelgangers, zombies, ghouls, and lamiae. Around him teemed a vast ocean of nocturnal life, invisible to those who walked in the mundane light of midday.

The other book was _Wands from a Lightning-Blasted Oak_, about all sorts of enchanted items. Severus's old friend, the Hand of Glory, was in it, along with candles made from human tallow, weather changers, cursed rings, and several different kinds of blood writing.

Severus devoured both books within two days. It was as if a part of himself that had always been empty were becoming whole. He understood it now. He, too, was a dark creature, born for the midnight hours under the full moon. He carried that darkness within, a gift and a curse from Toby. Maybe he would never be able to share the world of light and love, but there was another world that he was welcomed into.

Among the enchanted items in _Wands from a Blasted Oak_ was an assassin's knife that could be sent anywhere to attack an enemy. Severus studied the description for several minutes before the idea hit him. Why do you need the knife? Can't you do that with just a spell?

The next morning Dumbledore freed him from prison, and Severus raced to his dormitory to pull out Eileen's old sixth-year potions book.

Severus's dorm mates noticed the change, or at least they noticed some change. "Hey, Snape," Mulciber said as Severus entered the room and headed straight for his footlocker, "Snape, you got a minute?"

Although he didn't really want to talk to Mulciber, Severus went over to the bed where he was lying on his stomach reading a book. "Yeah?" he answered.

"You okay?"

Severus regarded Mulciber calmly. Although he'd never tried to be friendly the way Edison sometimes did, he'd also never teased the way Wilkes did. After the death of Toby and Eileen, Severus had a vague recollection that Mulciber 'd even made sure the others left him alone. "Sure," he replied.

Mulciber turned on his side, head leaning on one hand. "Do you know how to give Ian Scorsone a pimple? A big one, right on the side of his nose?"

Scorsone was a fifth year Slytherin prefect. "Why do you want to do that?" Severus asked, contemplating the possibilities.

"I want Alderton to go to Hogsmeade with me, but she's soft on Scorsone. I figure one big pimple…"

Severus smirked. Wilhelmina Alderton had acquired a reputation for going with anyone who would buy her a butterbeer. If something like a pimple could interfere with her affections… "Papula," said Severus. "Point right at his nose and say, Papula."

"Thanks, mate. I owe you one."

Severus went outside to attend to his own business. Making spells for lice and spiders was easy. The knife spell took until the Christmas break to work out. Severus tried different words in different languages. He tried twirling, tapping, and slashing with his wand. He moderated his voice from loud to whispered, even a nonverbal command.

The first time his Sectumsempra spell worked was against a sapling at the edge of the Forbidden Forest. There, in the ice and snow and gathering darkness, he watched in horror as the slender tree was slashed to pieces in a matter of seconds. _What if I had tried that on a person?_ Severus felt sick.

There was no time to work on it, though. Christmas break was coming and Bella once again invited him to the Black house for the holidays. He wasn't sure why, since she'd passed her OWL in potions, but he decided to accept anyway. He wanted to see London again. Maybe he wanted to see Narcissa again.

Severus examined his feelings for Narcissa very carefully and felt he was safe. He didn't love her. She was beauty, grace, and tender sorrow, but she was not and never would be for him. She couldn't wake his demon any more than the marble, gilt, satin, or velvet could tempt him to leave Nana and Gra.

Christmas break came, and Severus left with Bella. He took with him the two books that had been Bella's hospital gifts, and he took his mother's potions book. He was planning on working over the holidays.

The Black residence hadn't changed. There was the same grandeur, the same frosty politeness, the same upstairs room, and the same almost total privacy. There were far worse ways to live. There was also Narcissa, and two days after Severus arrived she began to make her plans clear.

"How much do you know of London, Severus?" They were in the conservatory where she'd asked him to join her for tea.

"Almost nothing. I have to go through King's Cross Station and Euston Station every year, but that's about it."

"Well then I have to show you London. What kinds of things are you interested in?"

Severus wanted to say 'science,' but he was aware of Narcissa's limitations. So he said 'history' instead.

"Great!" replied Narcissa, and told her family at dinner that she was taking Severus the next day to see the Tower of London.

The Tower presented a challenge, for they couldn't simply apparate into it. Every part of it was so crowded that apparation would unavoidably attract the attention of muggles. Mrs. Black kept a small amount of muggle money with her household accounts in case of emergencies, and Narcissa was able to ask for some of it to take the underground. Her justification was that binding the affections of one whose talent was of interest to the Dark Lord could only benefit the family. Her parents assented and admired her self-sacrifice.

Severus had to navigate the Tube. The underground was new to him too, but he at least comprehended the route charts. Tower Hill was on both the District and the Circle lines, so a change at South Kensington was all that was necessary. The two of them actually stood in line to enter through the Middle and Byward Towers, and then Severus's illusions were trampled into the dust of convenience. Right at the rise where the Coldharbour gate had once been, he and Narcissa 'accidentally' ran into Lucius.

Narcissa made the introductions, and Lucius remembered meeting before, but nothing could soften the sneer of superiority he wore at any encounter with a muggle or a half-blood.

"Right," Severus announced with a fierce decision. "I'll wait for you by Traitors' Gate."

"No. No. Lucius, you have to talk to him. Severus, you have to stay."

There, at the beginning, only Narcissa held them together, for Lucius and Severus would have squared off against each other like alpha gorillas in a hillside pack, posing and spitting in rage. There was a part of Lucius that assumed that every male, regardless of age, wanted and needed Narcissa, and it took until noon before he realized that Severus was not actually a rival.

"This is the first time we've been able to meet and just talk since last Christmas," Narcissa admitted sadly. "We run in the same crowd, we go to the same parties, but we can't talk because there's always someone to overhear. Father won't allow me to go out alone because, well…"

"He doesn't trust her. Or me. He's sure we'd do exactly what we're doing now. Meeting against his wishes."

"Why don't you use a spell so you can talk at the parties?" Severus asked.

"Silencing spells are more noticeable than conversation," Lucius replied. "They'd arouse suspicions at once."

"What if it doesn't create silence? Just a background hum for the listener, like the surrounding conversation?"

"I've never heard of a spell like that."

By the end of the week, Severus presented Narcissa and Lucius with the Muffliato spell as a Christmas gift.

"He creates new spells." Lucius was talking to an older man, the father of Severus's room mate Evan Rosier.

"Evan said he was clever with hexes and jinxes."

Lucius shook his head at the blindness and lack of imagination he was confronted with daily. "Have you ever created a spell?"

"I've never been the clever type."

"Idiot! Do you know anyone who's created their own spells? Have you a clue how rare that is? Do you know how much I'd pay if someone could teach me to do that? It's a gift." Lucius paused. "And he's never learned anything from the Dark Lord. It's all natural talent. I wonder if he can do things the Dark Lord…" Lucius didn't finish the sentence. He didn't trust Rosier that much.


	14. Chapter 14 – Growing Pains

**A Difference in the Family: The Fourth Year – Growing Pains**

_Thursday, January 9, 1975 (one day before the new moon)_

On his fifteenth birthday, Severus received the worst possible present . He woke up with a slight sense of pressure and pain at the right corner of his mouth. He touched it, and there was a bump there. A glance in the mirror confirmed it. He had a pimple.

"Lestrange knows a spell to clear that up," said Wilkes. He'd begun having similar problems around Halloween.

"I need to think about that. Maybe I don't want to get rid of it."

"Maybe you did it on purpose. Maybe you just fancy Wilhelmina," said Mulciber, coming up from behind them to check out the image of Severus's pimple in the mirror. "I heard she has a thing about pimples."

Wilkes laughed. "Maybe she just has good taste. Come on, Snape, go see Lestrange."

"I'm serious. I may keep it."

"You want something like that on your face? You're weird."

It wasn't just the pimple. Severus had noticed that his hair was oilier, and it was getting harder to keep clean. He still wouldn't join the other boys in the communal lavatories, but he was now reaching a point of major decision. Should he do anything to improve his appearance, or should he just let the changes happen?

Severus was aware that he would never be good-looking. He had his mother's thin face, pale skin, and stringy hair. He was clearly now developing his father's hooked nose and bony chin. His sharp black eyes were small and close together, and his teeth were crooked. In the black Hogwarts gown and robe he was a spectral study in light and dark. In the moonlight he could pass for a vampire. Severus rather liked that thought. He found vampires fascinating.

_Why do the others care about their appearance, anyway? Isn't it girls? Aren't they all just interested in getting girls to notice them?_ But Severus carried a demon inside him, and there was no point in wasting time caring about something you couldn't have. He would keep the pimple, and the oily hair. He would waste neither time nor energy on his outward self. Only the inner world, the mind, was important. That was where he would invest his energy.

Lily couldn't make it to the lake that evening, but she left him a note wishing him a happy birthday. Severus went by himself to skip stones and sit on Lily's rock for a while. He was still working on his Sectumsempra spell, and spent nearly an hour and a half trying to refine the slashing effect. It was supposed to be like a surgeon's scalpel, not a butcher knife.

By this time Severus was casting the spell non-verbally. He'd decided that he couldn't risk anyone overhearing the words, especially with something as dangerous as his new cutting spell. In the hands of the wrong person, it could kill with a terrifying ease.

He was working on another non-verbal spell, too, but one that could only work non-verbally. After a long period of reflection, Severus had worked out the basics of a self-protective spell to use if he were ever ambushed again. It was a spell to lift his attacker off the floor and hold him suspended upside down. He reasoned that the shock of suddenly being head down would make anyone let go of him and give him a chance to escape. The spell particularly had to be non-verbal in case he found himself again with a hand clamped over his mouth. The next step was working out the words.

No breeze stirred the crystal air of that dark winter night. Severus was utterly alone on the icy verge of the lake when he heard a faint… sound. He glanced around, saw nothing, and became more nervous. There was something there, in the trees, he was sure.

Slowly, carefully, Severus began to inch his way toward the hill and the castle. As he shifted his position, he saw the eyes. Green eyes in the woods. Wand at the ready, he continued to back away. The eyes followed him until he reached the bottom of the hill, then they were gone. Severus hurried to the castle, breathing hard, for what he'd seen in the starlight frightened him, its unknown quality most of all.

The four students in the shelter of the trees were equally startled. "Who was that?" muttered Sirius listening to the muffled sound of retreating steps in the snow.

James lit his tiny green Lumos spell again and looked at the map the boys had been working on. The name 'Severus Snape' was moving up the hill towards the castle. "I wonder what he was doing out here all alone in the dark?"

Sessions with Hagrid were back to normal.

"Yer weight's up. That's good. Didn't like seeing ya so skinny. Did ya want t' do anything 'bout that acne? No? Suit yourself. Mind, though. Y're getting t' be of an age where ya got t' take better care of yerself. I know ya don't want nobody seeing yer back, but ya got to find a better way t' wash up."

"I'm perfectly fine the way I am."

"Ah, but ya ain't fine for the people around ya. Face facts, lad. Teenage boys smell. Ya don't want t' make it worse 'n it has t' be." Hagrid got a sudden sly look around the eyes. "I mean, ya don't want t' be attracting more attention than what ya deserve."

"You think so?"

"I do so."

Severus thought about this while Hagrid went through the familiar checklist of his inspection. "And if I needed someplace different to wash up, where would I go?"

"Well, I got a pretty big washtub here. Ya could pop in from time t' time. Ya don't got t' be no prima donna, but a wee bit of a cleanup from time t' time 'll keep ya in the background, if ya get my meaning."

Severus got his meaning.

Lily brought news clippings from home. "They've actually been working on this for a couple of years.! I mean, who knew? The Russians and the Americans planning a joint program? Astronauts and cosmonauts together? The future of the space program is just getting bigger and bigger. You're sure to get into space!"

The Apollo-Soyuz launch wasn't scheduled until July, but Severus and Lily were studying the configuration of the docking capsules in February.

There were even a couple of sessions with Dumbledore.

"Now, I want you to think about your parents' deaths. I know it is hard. Please try not to close anything down. Good, but that is very graphic."

"I saw the blood. What do you want?"

"You saw the blood, but you did not see her fall. What you are showing me is your own reconstruction. Reconstructions are dangerous because they never represent the truth, only a personal interpretation."

"I thought Legilimency saw the truth."

"It sees what you think the truth is. If you think that someone is a murderer, then the Legilimens sees the murder. If you think the accused has been 'framed', then the Legilimens sees the 'frame up'. You control what the Legilimens sees."

"Then I can lie."

"No. The Legilimens sees the truth. Your truth. It is just that sometimes you can chose which part of the truth you wish the Legilimens to see. It lies in the selection of memories, not the falsification of them."

"So what was he doing there? Pitch black night. Cold to freeze your… rear end off. And he's completely silent. Did you hear him? Did you?"

Sirius had to admit that he hadn't, as did Peter and Remus., "What if he's doing non-verbal spells," Remus suggested.

"Hello. Earth to Remus. He's fourth year, just like us. They won't us teach non-verbal until sixth year."

"Right. Like that ever stopped you. The man who's trying to become an animagus. Do they teach that at Hogwarts?"

"You think he's inventing non-verbal spells?"

"I'd stake my life on it."

"Then I think we're at war again."

The new war began in the stage of intelligence gathering and spying. For a few weeks, almost everywhere Severus went one of the four Gryffindors was nearby. The least obtrusive was Peter Pettigrew, and so he generally followed Severus into the library where Severus was spending more and more time studying every book that had a reference to the Dark Arts. Peter noted down for the record the titles of everything Severus read, and soon became curious about them himself. After a while he spent his time watching Severus by reading many of the same books.

Sirius took most of the outside watch, but was soon frustrated, for Severus had an uncanny ability to lose the person tailing him. If it weren't for his knowledge that no one could apparate inside Hogwarts, Sirius would have suspected Severus of doing just that.

"Maybe you're following him too closely," James said. "You're letting him see you're there."

"If I don't follow him close I'll lose him. Besides, I want him to know I'm there. I want him to worry."

"You have the subtlety of a bull elephant. What're we going to learn if he knows we're there? We're not just after him, remember. We're trying to stop them from recruiting any more."

"I'm after Bella's puppy dog. Regulus told me he was getting friendly with the Malfoys last Christmas."

"Regulus is delusional. The Malfoys get chummy with a half-blood upstart? Never."

Remus lounged against the pillows on his bed in the dormitory. "Would it interest you to know that he's tutoring half of Slytherin house?"

"Really?"

"Potions and Charms. Seems everyone's gotten real interested in their exams."

James thought for a minute. "Sirius, you take over the inside watch. I'm going to see if I can follow him outside."

Avery accosted Severus in the common room. "I need to get this work done tonight."

"You should have planned ahead. I'm busy tonight."

"I'm paying you to do this. You work for me. I need it tonight."

Severus's eyebrows shot up in mock surprise. "I work for you? For what you pay, I'm making a charity donation. You may not have noticed, but you're at the bottom of my 'to do' list."

"You think you're so smart, but you're not so smart."

"I know. I have the 50p a pound brains and you have the 100 pound per ounce brains. That's why I'm tutoring you and not the other way around."

"So you're saying I have more expensive brains?"

"Of course. Supply and demand. Do you know how many purebloods you have to kill to get an ounce of brains?"

This was not the most diplomatic thing to say in the middle of the Slytherin common room, so it was a good thing that Severus had somewhere else to be that evening.

Severus was meeting Lily that evening because he was tutoring her, too. The difference was that he was teaching her his own spells. The first was the Muffliato spell that he'd made for Narcissa and Lucius. If they could use that in classes, they could talk without being overheard. It would be best if she knew how to cast the spell non-verbally, but that was harder to teach.

As he left the castle after supper, Severus kept a watch to the rear. For the last few weeks he'd been followed from the moment he went down the steps at the castle entrance. In response he'd devised a mental fog spell that cut off pursuit, but he preferred to use it only when necessary, not wanting to confuse the innocent by accident. Today it seemed that no one was behind him.

On the first floor, near the history classroom, James Potter was watching from one of the narrow windows. From the direction that Severus was going, James suspected he was going to the lake again. And right now, just before supper, was a time when he would be less likely to be disturbed. James left his vantage point and headed downstairs and out the entrance, then made his way stealthily toward the lake shore.

What James found there was the last thing he expected. Severus was with a girl. A girl whose robes were embroidered in Gryffindor red and gold. She was sitting on a rock, and Severus was on the grass at her feet. Severus stood and pointed at a dead branch nearby. Slowly it rose from the ground, though Severus had said nothing. James crept closer.

Then the girl stood, and James recognized her instantly. She was a fourth year, like him, and muggle-born. Her name was Lily Evans. She gazed fixedly at the branch, but nothing happened. Now snippets of conversation reached James.

"You have to focus the non-verbal part of your brain."

"I don't know where the non-verbal part of my brain is."

"I don't know where yours is either, but mine seems to be on the right side just above my ear."

"You're joking! Nobody can feel the part of their brain they're thinking with."

"I swear, it's over here on the right. Just focus on the branch, okay?"

James crept away again, not wanting to risk being seen.

The four friends met in the Great Hall and took seats separated from the rest of their house, shooing away anyone who tried to join them.

"He's meeting the Evans girl. He's teaching her dark magic."

Remus interrupted. "That's impossible. Lily's not interested in dark magic. She's one of the nicest people in our year."

"And you would know that because…?" James was beginning to feel that there were too many revelations for one evening.

"We talk. We've been talking since last year. She knows I have a 'problem,' and she wants to help."

Sirius sneered. "Does she know what the problem is?"

"No. But it wouldn't matter. She's just nice. She likes to help people."

"If she likes both Moony and the Cursemaster, maybe she really is into the Dark Arts." Sirius seemed to think the whole situation amusing.

"Oh, shut up," replied James. "She probably doesn't know what she's getting into, how dangerous it could be. I should talk to her. Remus, could you get the two of us together for a private chat?"

"Of course I know you. Everyone knows you. You're a Quidditch chaser."

James preened a little, but got down to business quickly. "We need to talk to you about the company you keep. " Then he explained how he knew about her and Severus.

"You've been spying on me?"

"No. Not on you. I was spying on him."

"So that makes you what? A better kind of spy?"

"Look, I'm sorry about the spying, But there's this whole group in Slytherin that's into the Dark Arts, and their families are associated with this dark wizard who's been recruiting followers for the last four years. Your 'friend' is one of the leaders of this group. He's dangerous."

"Severus? Dangerous? Now you're not even a good spy. And if you think you're going to dictate to me who my friends are, you… better think again. And you!" She wheeled on Remus. "I'm ashamed of you!"

"You know," said James menacingly, "this means we're going to have to watch you, too."

"Well maybe I'm just going to have to study this dark magic to get rid of you."

"Well maybe you are."

The war entered its sniping phase.

Leaving 'History of Magic' class, Severus was hit with a fur-growing spell that duplicated the coloration of a tortoiseshell cat. The worst part about it was that it itched, and took Miss Pomfrey two and a half hours to remove. Severus in turn placed a jinx on a third floor mirror where James liked to check the precisely tousled condition of his hair. Waiting to be sure he hit the right target, Severus then sealed the hex, leaving James with hideously crossed eyes.

A Rictusempra in Herbology sent Severus reeling backwards into a freshly transplanted stand of carnivorous plants which nibbled at his ears, nose, and fingers while he rolled on the floor giggling uncontrollably, and Wilkes and Rosier frantically helped Professor Mullein pry the fly-traps off him. Severus's retaliatory Arpague spell caused Sirius's hand to spasm at the very moment he was helping adjust Ariadne Musgrave's cloak, causing him to grab her in a way that led to a slapped face and the end of their budding relationship.

James and Sirius's next jinx backfired when Severus saw them coming and sidestepped the curse, which continued down the hall and struck the innocent Bertram Aubrey, inflating his head to twice normal size, for which both spell casters got detention. Severus decided not to respond to that one, except for the comment, "I thought you didn't use dark magic," as they were led past him to their punishment.

Things were quiet for a few days, but only because James and Sirius were trying to perfect their use of a babbling curse. This one was cast as Severus entered his Astronomy class, causing him to spew out the name of every constellation, star cluster, red giant, nebula, galaxy, and white dwarf on their charts, all 365,729 of them, until an exasperated Professor Sinistra hustled him out of the room and down into Slughorn's first year Potions class with the icy remark, "This, I think, is yours."

Stern times require stern measures. After letting things cool down for two days, Severus hit James and Sirius with matching Eros spells, carefully calibrated to go through a romantic phase, a courtship phase, a jealous phase, and a tender phase before reaching the full-blown love spell. Interestingly enough, it took twelve hours for any of their friends to notice a difference in their behavior, by which time the spells had become nearly impossible to remove.

Lily never told Severus that James had threatened her. Instead, she reacted by seeking out his company even more. They went for walks around the lake, and picnicked on weekends, and reminisced about muggle life. Severus finally confided to Lily the truth about his parents, and she in turn talked about her insecurity at Hogwarts, being muggle born. And they prepared for the Apollo-Soyuz launch.

They wouldn't be able to watch together on the day of the launch because it was scheduled for July, but they promised each other to keep separate vigils. Meanwhile they memorized every facet of the mission and even began learning a little Russian in honor of the historic cooperation. When they met they wished each other 'Dobree dyen' and called each other 'moy droog'. They said 'spasibo' instead of 'thank you'. Severus found out that in Russian his name looked like CEBEPYC, and he began writing that in his notebook.

It pleased both of them that none of the other students knew what was happening in the outside world, for it tinged their muggle heritage with romance and gave them a secret no one else could share.

And then it was final exams and the end of the term. Severus wondered if Dumbledore would call him to his office to give him a ticket, but he wasn't sure where any train ticket could take him. His whole summer was an unknown quantity. Then he got Dumbledore's summons and learned that he would have to leave almost everything at Hogwarts until he returned in September. Nana was apparating directly into Hogsmeade for him, but she wouldn't be able to carry much luggage out. Severus packed all his belongings in boxes for Slughorn to store over the summer.

The last test, the last packing, the last goodbye, and on Friday, June 27, 1975, Severus walked down the hill from the castle carrying his Gladstone bag. Nana was waiting for him, and they apparated together back to Lancashire.

It was a summer of real potions. As long as Severus was going to be living at Nana's expense for all of July, she was going to get work out of him. It started in the garden with foxglove, monkshood, and belladonna, comfrey, feverfew, and betony, and the symbiosis of bird, bee, and worm.

"You've left that too long, Russ. It should've been gathered last night."

"I'm hopeless at this. Why are living things so difficult to work with?"

"A talent for potions doesn't always go with a talent for herbs. A great potions master needs a great herbologist."

Potions. That was another matter. That was where Severus earned his keep. Infusions and decoctions, poultices, syrups, and lozenges, Nana's supply of medicines was kept stocked all during the summer. It was needed, too, for people in the surrounding villages seemed to be sick constantly. Some of them paid in kind, but others had coin, and for the first time Severus began to save a little of his own money.

_Tuesday, July 15, 1975 (the first quarter moon)_

Nana and Severus were in the garden the morning that Apollo-Soyuz was scheduled to go. The Russian rocket was set to launch twenty minutes after noon. Severus was trying to hurry with his work among the herbs so that he would be free to join Lily (in spirit at least) at the promised time. Suddenly his and Nana's heads swung to the sound of a car screeching to a halt by her gate. A women sprang from the passenger seat.

"Mrs. Prince! Mrs. Prince! My Bill! He's had a fall. You've got to come…"

"Russ! The bag by the door! Run!"

Severus ran for the house to get the emergency bag that Nana kept filled with medicines by the front door while Nana hurried down the garden to the waiting car. Severus joined them and the car sped away. Severus closed his eyes. He hadn't been in a car since two summers before, and all he could think of was his father driving into that ditch…

They reached the house in less than ten minutes. A little group of neighbors was gathered around the fallen Bill, who from the look of things had been repairing shingles on the roof. He lay now on his left side, his body at a strange angle. Someone had thrown a blanket over him. The people all moved respectfully aside at Nana's approach.

"Have you moved him at all?"

"Don't dare, ma'am. Looks like his back's messed up. We move him, who knows what we'll do."

"Probably for the best." Nana eased herself down next to Bill and felt the clamminess of his skin and the weakness of the pulse in throat and wrist. Her expression became grave. "He may be bleeding inside. Bleeding badly. He's dying. I don't have medicines for this." The woman choked on a sob, and Nana turned to speak to her. Behind her, holding the emergency bag, stood Severus. "Russ. Come over here. Now."

Severus knelt beside Nana. She spoke quickly and softly. "You have the gift of reading. Eileen told me. Read him. Find where the bleeding is."

"I don't… I can't…"

"Don't tell me you can't when a life is at stake. You try."

Severus looked into Bill's face; he was sixteen, maybe seventeen years old. _Eye contact. I need eye contact._ Carefully Severus lifted Bill's eyelids so he could stare into the blank blue eyes. Nothing. A swirling fog. The rapid beat of heart and shallow breath. Then… Severus doubled up in pain. Nana gripped his shoulders as he clutched the upper left side of his abdomen. "Here. It's here."

"Ruptured spleen. Get him away." The men pulled Severus back as Nana drew out her wand and took Bill's hand. She began a low, ancient spell like a chant, like a song, and the air around her grew chill. Time receded while Nana crooned to the injury, her body gently rocking back and forth. Then it was over. She beckoned to Severus again.

"Check his head for injuries, and find if there's a place in his back where the nerves are damaged." Again Severus looked into the blue eyes, and again Nana rocked and sang until finally she was able to tell the men to carry Bill into the house. He was breathing easily and color had returned to his skin.

Nana was too exhausted to stand. One of the men lifted her and carried her into the sitting room where they laid her on the sofa and brought her tea and biscuits. No one spoke of payment, knowing that for months to come Nana's wood would be chopped, her garden hoed, her screens patched, and that she wouldn't want for eggs or bread.

"How could you do that?" Severus asked after they got back home. "We aren't supposed to do magic in front of muggles."

"Muggles? What an ugly word. They're people. And for time out of mind there have been witches here in Pendle. What are we supposed to do? Just disappear because some newfangled Ministry decides to write a law?"

"Nana, will you teach me to be a healer, too?"

_Monday, July 21, 1975 (the full moon)_

Less than a week later, Severus finally got up the courage to visit his home. Nana packed up a lunch for him, as he'd be gone all day, and he set off across the moor country. He wasn't interested in having anyone see him, so he walked around the town to the side where the house was. More of the windows in the street were boarded up as neighbors left looking for work in larger towns. The coal mine in the neighboring town appeared to still be operating.

The yard was overgrown with weeds. Severus stood outside the house for a quarter of an hour before steeling himself to go inside. There everything was as it had been left, a cup whose tea evaporated long ago still on the kitchen table, the bed upstairs unmade, the stain at the foot of the staircase…

Severus began to straighten up, suddenly wanting it to look as if his mother were still keeping house. He washed dishes, dusted, swept the floor, made the bed… then shut himself into the back storeroom to go through boxes of things that he might need for Hogwarts. One small box contained photographs of his parents' wedding. He closed it immediately and shoved it into a corner. Another held baby clothes and toys he vaguely remembered from his childhood, and he stared at the ceiling for a while until he was certain he wasn't going to cry.

Then, under the suitcases and the boxes of chipped dishes and worn linens, he found the books. Six boxes of books. At the top of one box was a seaman's navigation manual, more than a hundred years old. Severus dragged all six boxes downstairs into the sitting room and unloaded them onto the sofa and chairs.

One group of them were school books bearing the names Tobias Snape, Edward Snape, and Leonora Smith. Books to teach arithmetic, English history, reading, penmanship, and French. It occurred to Severus that Leonora must be Gra, but he never knew she spoke or understood any French.

His mother's old schoolbooks were here, too, and he carefully separated them from the others, for he would need them at Hogwarts.

Another group were the professional books of a nineteenth century seaman, and Severus was particularly fascinated by the communication handbooks: the colored flags, semaphores, and Morse code.

One box contained just magazines, primarily a complete set of the Strand from 1890 to 1893. _Why keep these?_ Then he flipped through them and saw the Sherlock Holmes stories. One of Gra's parents had held onto an old friend.

Agatha Christie was a favorite, too, and Daphne du Maurier, and a host of lesser-known writers of the thirties and forties. Probably all Gra's.

The last box was different. The books inside had been carefully wrapped first in linen and then in oilcloth. The oilcloth was old, cracked, and very brittle. Severus unwrapped only two of the books. They were eighteenth century grimoires, the first on astrological correspondences, and the second on talismans. He wrapped them back in their linen and oilcloth and carried that box back upstairs, burying it under suitcases and old bedding. Dumbledore's spell should keep the house safe, but it was still not a good idea to leave things lying around.

Severus repacked the rest of the books, but left them downstairs in the boxes. He had an idea that he should bring in bookcases so that the books could be seen and read instead of hidden away. It was something to consider for the future. Taking with him those books he knew he would need for fifth year, Severus locked the house up and set off back to Nana's.

Halfway there, the irony of it hit him. During that whole last year when money got tight and his father was laid off, the solution had been in the storeroom all along. Those books would have fetched a great deal of money. Even the Strand magazines were probably worth something. His father had been sitting on a pile of cash, and had not known it.

"Mum had a box of old witchcraft books, really old books. Whose were they?" Severus asked Nana later that evening after supper.

"Old books? I don't remember any. What kind of books?"

"Astrology. Talismans. Stuff like that."

"That sounds more like your grandfather's family than mine. A couple of them were deeply interested in the hidden mysteries. I wonder how Eileen might have gotten their books."

There were thus no answers. Just more questions. Still it was something to have the beginnings of one's own private library.

At the beginning of August, Severus went to stay with Gra for three and a half weeks. By this time he had a supply of chants to practice, together with an old book on anatomy so that he could learn about things like spleens and kidneys.

At Gra's there was time to study and relax. She, too, had a garden, but it was for flowers and butterflies. Severus told her about his visit to his old home.

"Some of your schoolbooks are there. I didn't know you studied French."

Gra laughed. "Je m'appelle Leonora. Comment-allez vous? That's about all I remember. Was there anything else?" She was cutting up a stewing hen for supper.

"Seaman's stuff, navigation and all. Old Sherlock Holmes magazines. Lots of murder mysteries."

"That sounds like the books I gave Toby for you to read when you grew up. Except for your great-grandfather's seaman books. Those were for Toby."

"Some of grandfather Prince's books were there, too. Old books on magic and talismans."

Gra paused to face Severus instead of the chicken. "Child, I never knew the Princes to keep books. Those were your great-grandfather Snape's collection."

A tightness, an excitement, began to develop in the pit of Severus's stomach. "I remember his books on dark creatures and strange cultures. But why would he have such advanced books on magic?"

"From his travels. Did Wensley or Toby never tell you anything about the family?"

Severus shook his head. "I knew he was a sea captain, and that's where he got the shrunken heads and voodoo dolls. That was all."

Gra went back to cooking as she talked. "Constantina and I are from old Lancashire families, but the Princes and the Snapes came from Yorkshire, the Princes from Kippax just outside Leeds. I think they picked the wrong side in a civil war about five hundred years ago and had to remove to someplace safer. The wizard community here was a good place to hide. They got a bit of land and settled in.

"Snape's a village in the North Riding. I think that side worked their way south through Ripon, then came through here with the building of the Leeds and Liverpool Canal. Wensley Snape, your great-grandfather, shipped out of Liverpool.

"He went all over, and he learned things. Didn't have much schooling, but he knew more than any man I've met. And he got interested in all that magic stuff from his travels. I know you've got the voodoo dolls from the Caribbean, and the shrunken heads from New Guinea, and I'll bet you've got the poison darts from the Amazon… That man had the scariest collection of things – used to give me nightmares every time I visited him. He managed to pick up books, too. Things in black leather bindings with pictures of witches on brooms that you saw when you were small, but also older things. Scarier things. That must be what you found.

"He was thrilled when he found out that Toby'd been seeing the daughter of Constantina Rossendale, she that married Richard Prince. Ned and I, that's your grandfather who died when you were young, we weren't that happy about it, but old Wensley wanted witch blood in the family. He kind of pushed Toby along, though Toby didn't need much pushing. And Eileen, she was willing, too.

"So Toby must've got those books along with the ones you inherited when Wensley Snape died." Gra put the stew pot on the stove, and her story was done.

Severus went back home the next day to search the house. He started in the storeroom, opening and rummaging through every case, box, and piece of furniture there. Then he went through his old room.

One box was in the bottom of the wardrobe in his parents' bedroom, another in a cabinet in the kitchen. The shrunken heads and dart blowers were there, just as he recalled them. There were the little statues of multi-armed gods and goddesses, and strange wand-like sticks with Chinese characters. It was a wealth of small artifacts from every continent, all of it very dark. Some of them were old, well-remembered friends. Others he'd never seen before.

This time Severus unwrapped all the books in the box upstairs. He was acquainted with only a few. Most of the rest were printed books from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, more than half of them in French. He could guess what they were about from the illustrations, but he couldn't read them.

Two of the books were smaller, older, handwritten on parchment that was still soft and supple, the ink as fresh as the day it was made. They appeared to be spell books, but like the others they were unreadable because they were in Latin. Something else to study.

Severus carefully packed everything back into its boxes and left it where it had lain for nearly fifteen years. He did pick one shrunken head, one voodoo doll, and the cribbage board to take with him to Hogwarts as a reminder of great-grandfather Wensley Snape.

He also took Gra's French schoolbook. At some point he wanted to be able to read the books that he'd inherited when Wenny died.


	15. Chapter 15 – The Last Peace

**A Difference in the Family: The Fifth Year – The Last Peace**

_Sunday, August 31, 1975 (2 days after the last quarter)_

Severus returned to Nana's house for the last few days of summer, packing and showing her how well he'd studied his lessons. On the last day of August he was taken to the train station at Colne by the parents of Bill, the young man who'd fallen from the roof. Nana and Gra teamed together to buy his ticket. Severus would have preferred to apparate to Hogwarts with Nana, but everyone else agreed the Express was the best way to arrive.

Truth be told, Severus didn't want to spend the night at St. Pancras. The last time he'd been there was before his parents died and that, coupled with his physical growth, made the idea of hiding in church pews, well… distasteful. On his arrival at Euston Station, he carried his things to King's Cross and left them to call for the next day. Then he checked a directory for youth hostels. There were several within walking distance.

Not being able to take economics at Hogwarts, Severus was unfamiliar with the term 'opportunity cost,' but that day made him aware of the concept. Even the modest charge for a bed at a hostel would seriously deplete the small amount of money he'd managed to save over the summer and limit his choices for the future. Poverty in the countryside of eastern Lancashire was a gentle nudge. Here in London it was a sledge hammer. Severus spent the night at St. Pancras.

The Express to Hogwarts was a different story. Here he could use the knuts and sickles he'd made tutoring other students the year before. In the Slytherin club car where Bella Black greeted him warmly, he was able to contribute to the refreshments. It was nice to be back with his classmates.

Bella was preening for everyone. She was now a seventh year, and whatever else happened, this would be her last trip on the Express to Hogwarts. She and Rodolphus Lestrange were not officially engaged, but they were so clearly an item that it was occasionally embarrassing. Those in Severus's class were already talking about their OWLs, and clearly many of them were already nervous. Severus found several classmates being conspicuously nice to him.

There was another topic of conversation, one discussed in muted tones at corner tables. For the first time in a couple of years, Severus again heard rumors of attacks on wizards and their families by a dark lord and his servants, a rising figure of power whose very name the students were afraid to say. He thought of all the whispered 'you know' in his dormitory in previous years and made mental connections. It appeared that no Slytherin families had been directly harmed, but he got the impression the same could not be said about students in Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff, or especially Gryffindor. It was on this train ride north that Severus first heard the phrase 'death eater,' without understanding what it meant.

_Thursday, September 4, 1975 (the day before the new moon)_

Severus and Lily exchanged glances in Potions class with the understanding that they would meet at the lake, but it was not to be. On his way to his Care of Magical Creatures class outside, Severus passed by a group of Gryffindors.

"Hey, Snivellus!"

Severus affected not to hear.

"Snivellus!" Sirius Black was suddenly in front of Severus, blocking his path. "You should stop and listen respectfully when your betters address you."

"If any did, I would." Severus knew the other three were moving behind him, but he doubted they would do anything here, in full view of the castle windows.

Sirius's eyes narrowed dangerously. "If I had a beak like yours I wouldn't show myself in public. It's so big it'd give my neck a permanent twist."

"That's only because your brain isn't big enough to balance the weight."

Sirius's fists came up, but James moved between the two to block the punch. "Did you hear how the Slytherin insulted a Gryffindor?" he said. "I think you should take five points from Slytherin, Remus."

Severus turned to look at Remus and saw the Prefect's badge. "So you and who else together make a whole prefect?" he asked. Remus blushed.

James thrust his face within inches of Severus's. "You're making it hard to give you friendly advice, Cursemaster, but I'll try. Stay away from Gryffindors. You think we're scared because a few of your coward friends ambushed people over the summer, but if you try to bring it into Hogwarts, I'll take you down myself."

Before Severus could think of a reply, Professor McGonagall was in their midst, and all five of them found themselves unceremoniously herded into Dumbledore's office.

"This is not," said Dumbledore, looking over his glasses at the five boys, "the first time that three of you have been brought here for disturbing the peace at Hogwarts. I understand that it is even further from the first time that you have all behaved in an unruly and potential dangerous manner towards one another, though on many of those occasions you were not apprehended. What have you to say for yourselves?"

"We were just talking," said James. "Having a discussion."

"And what might that discussion have been about? Master Snape?"

Severus looked Dumbledore straight in the eyes. "We were talking about the summer, and how we wanted this year to be a good one."

Sirius and James glanced at Severus, then at each other. Remus and Peter stared at the floor. Dumbledore's expression became even more grave.

"I know that you are all aware of incidents over the summer that have raised tensions in both the wizarding and muggle worlds. It is of vital importance that these incidents not spill over into Hogwarts. All of the staff have been advised to regard any incident of practical joking, hexing, or hazing as grounds for detention or more severe punishment. Do I make myself clear?"

All five boys nodded.

"Good. Now I should like to ask you to set an example of restraint. Although none of you is on detention, I should like you to voluntarily restrict yourselves to your own dormitories this evening as a sign of desiring peace between your houses. Is that agreeable to you?"

"Yes, sir," said James immediately, and one by one the other four consented as well.

James stopped Lily as she was leaving the Gryffindor common room to go to supper. "Your friend won't be meeting you tonight."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"The funny looking one with the big nose and the greasy hair. He won't be meeting you tonight."

Lily turned and confronted him. Part of her was worried, but most of her was furious. "You nasty, arrogant, supercilious, obnoxious, arrogant pig! Why can't you just treat people normally?"

"Because I'm nasty, supercilious, and arrogant. But he still can't meet you. Dumbledore's restricted us to our dormitories. Him too."

Lily didn't know what to say. She knew James was telling the truth, so it was nice of him to warn her. At the same time he was so unpleasant about it that she wanted to shake him. "Thank you," was what she finally did say, and went to supper.

Dumbledore's evening walk managed to take him past Hagrid's hut. There he knocked and was welcomed in for tea.

"Hagrid, we have a problem. It is the Snape boy."

"I'm sorry t' hear that. I thought he were doing better."

"As did I, but there has been an unforeseen change. He and the Gryffindor four were brought up to my office today because Professor McGonagall thought they might come to blows."

"Well that's happened before, hasn't it? Did come t' blows once or twice as I recall. Creative blows, too."

"Ah, but this time I asked him what happened and he told me they were just talking about summer vacation."

"Well a boy's not s'pposed t' peach on his mates, even if they are enemies."

"That was not the problem. The problem was that I could not see it. They were confronting each other outside, but when he came into my office, he concealed it. And I could not see it. If Professor McGonagall had not told me the whole incident, I would not have known he was hiding something. I saw what he wanted me to see."

"Ain't that what you been training him t' do?"

"You are right, Hagrid. It is my fault. I just did not realize he would be so good at it."

_Tuesday, September 9, 1975 (3 days before the first quarter)_

Severus and Lily got together again as the moon waxed. Severus had to admit that he'd missed the Soyuz launch, but then he explained why. Lily was fascinated with Nana's healing powers, and wanted to learn some of them, too. She also seemed interested in Severus's family history, though she most emphatically did not want to touch the shrunken head.

Their new projects were Viking and Venera. The recent international cooperation had led to an indirect and potentially far more profitable development. The Americans were going to investigate Mars, while the Russians checked out Venus. Both programs consisted of two spacecraft working together, and Viking 1 had launched on August twentieth. Viking 2 was going up at 18:39 on Tuesday. They had completely missed the Venera launchings the previous June, but the two spacecraft would arrive at Venus in October. Viking would take nearly a year to reach Mars.

Severus planned to borrow a telescope from the Astronomy classroom so they could see Mars, and the two had a date for Tuesday.

Remus put the final touches of ink on the parchment and sat back. "There. Finished. Who'd have thought the school was so big. And with hidden passages."

James admired his handiwork. They'd been working on sections of the map for more than a year, but now it was complete in the sense that it was comprehensive. There were still details to be added. "A masterpiece. We need to commemorate the occasion by using it tonight. Where shall we go?"

"Hogsmeade," replied Sirius at once. He was idly spinning web traps between the posts of his bed.

"You bore more easily than any other human being I know. Let's take the map with us, get some supper, and go marauding."

Shortly before seven o'clock, the four friends left the Great Hall. Slipping into the waiting room, they took out the seemingly blank map, and James ceremoniously pronounced, "I solemnly swear that I am up to no good." All of Hogwarts and its grounds resolved itself before them, with little moving dots, each labeled with a name.

They studied the map for a while, arguing over where to go. Remus glance at a corner, then quietly folded that section under, but not quietly enough to escape Sirius's notice.

"Anything interesting over there?" Sirius asked.

"No," replied Remus, but Sirius unfolded the map anyway.

"Hey, Prongs. Look at this. Evans and Snivellus are down by the lake together. That girl has a peculiar taste when it comes to boyfriends. Thought you told her to stay away from him."

James looked at the two dots. "I think we should pay a visit to the lake."

All the way down the hill, Remus tried to talk the others back into the castle. "They're not hurting anyone," he insisted.

"He's probably teaching her dark magic and recruiting her into the Death Eaters. Whatever they're doing, we're going to stop it."

"Either that or kissing," laughed Sirius, "and we'll stop that, too. Can you imagine any girl wanting to kiss him?" For some reason, James didn't laugh at the joke.

What they saw was neither Dark Arts nor romance, but something so totally unexpected that none of the four made a sound. A telescope on a tall tripod was set by the lakeshore, and Lily was peering into it. Severus stood to her right and a little forward. "Can you see the moons?" he was saying.

"One of them. It's pretty bright. Could it be reflecting sunlight that far out?"

"Probably. Even the tiniest light makes a difference in all that darkness."

"I think I see the other one now. It's a lot fainter."

For some reason that he couldn't explain, James was more disturbed by this scene than he would have been by any black magic or making out. He rose slowly from the bushes and stepped onto the narrow beach.

"Well, well," he said quietly as Lily and Severus turned at the sound, "two lovebirds stargazing. What'll we have to do about that?"

Severus could feel himself shutting down in preparation for battle. A part of his mind registered how automatic the reaction was, the rest of his mind was assessing the situation. It was like that winter day three years earlier against Rabastan and Rodolphus, except that today it was four to one, and he had Lily to take care of.

Lily didn't seem to think she needed taking care of. "What're you doing here bothering people?" she snapped. "I never met anybody who stuck his nose into other people's business as much as you."

Sirius stood now and joined James, Remus and Peter a pace behind in the darkness. "You have a peculiar taste in boyfriends," Sirius said.

"Boyfriend!" Lily paused, a sly look coming over her face. "And what if he is? What's it to you?" She moved closer to Severus.

"Don't get in the line of fire," Severus said quietly. "I need a clear shot."

"You can't fight all of them. It's four to one."

"Two and two halves to one. Maybe only a half and a quarter."

Sirius, wand in hand, was edging away from James, moving more to Severus's left side. "You've got a smart mouth, Snivellus. Did you hear that, Remus? Peter? Snivellus thinks you're not good enough to fight him."

"Remus!" Lily called. "You're not part of this. You're better than this."

Remus shuffled uncomfortably. "You don't know what he's mixed up in, Lily. He's dangerous. He's training people in the Dark Arts."

"That doesn't give you the right to gang up on someone four to one."

"Lily, move out of the way." Severus was icily calm.

"You can't fight all of them!"

"They're not giving me a choice."

Remus stepped past James, turning to face him, his back to Severus and Lily. "She's right," he said. "This is wrong. I'm not with you in this. You keep it up and it's three to three."

"I don't need your help," said Severus.

"I'm not helping you, Slytherin. I'm a prefect. This is my job." Remus turned back to James. "I'll turn you in, I swear. And I'll get ten points each off Gryffindor, including myself. Now back off."

James and Sirius both lowered their wands and backed away.

Remus spoke without looking back. "Get the telescope and go back to the castle, Lily. We'll follow."

Severus didn't argue. There was a fine line between courage and stupidity, and he was not about to cross it tonight. He stayed slightly behind Remus as Lily folded up the tripod, then let her go first up the hill. He followed, and Remus brought up the rear. The other three remained by the lake.

When they reached the castle, Lily threw her arms around Remus and hugged him. "I knew you were better than them," she said. Then she turned to Severus. "You could say something, you know."

Severus thought for a moment. "Thank you for changing your mind about beating me up," he said coldly.

"My pleasure," replied Remus, but there was no love lost there either.

Remus had to face an infuriated James and Sirius when he returned to the dormitory later that evening. He'd spent a lot of time thinking of what to say.

"You traitor! You back-stabber! Switching sides in the middle of a fight! We had him!"

"Calm down, Sirius. There'll be other times. We know where he is all the time now. We have the map. Next time she won't be there."

James was thoughtful. "So you think we should've waited 'til Evans wasn't there?"

"She won't let you push her around. The more you try to put her off him, the more she'll back him up."

"This requires a rethinking of strategy."

"Let us know when you've come up with something," said Sirius.

After that, it seemed as if Severus and Lily could never be alone. They tried meeting at the lake at different times of the day, but one of the four, usually James or Sirius, always managed to meet either Severus or Lily on the way and break up the rendezvous. Then they switched in succession to the edge of the Forbidden Forest, down the path near the gates that led to Hogsmeade, various rooms inside the castle… It was always as if the four Gryffindors knew exactly where they were at any moment of the day. The only vigils they could keep for the Venera landings on Venus were behind Muffliato spells in classes they happened to share.

The last weekend in October was the first excursion into Hogsmeade for the year. Lily suggested they try meeting there, so Severus went to Professor Slughorn for permission.

"You never wanted to before," was Slughorn's first reaction.

I never had any money before. "My father wouldn't sign the paper. But my grandmother will if I send her a copy."

He sent the permission form with a school owl and got the signed paper back the next morning. Lily'd been to Hogsmeade in previous years and explained how to get to the edge of town.

Every student at Hogwarts who visited Hogsmeade had to see the Shrieking Shack, which was fast gaining the reputation of being the most haunted house in Britain. Having seen it, however, they seldom returned. The house shrieked every few weeks rather than daily, and then only at night. As a result, it was rather boring compared to Hogsmeade's other attractions. After the first hour of the first weekend visit, the area tended to be deserted.

Neither Severus nor Lily was followed to the Shack, and they spent a very pleasant afternoon on the edge of the nearby woods. Lily was still having trouble with nonverbal spells.

"Accio wand. Just think 'Accio wand' and concentrate on the wand. Upper right side of the brain." The wand twitched, but otherwise refused to budge.

"I'm useless. Is there anything else I could try?"

"Let's go back to the Levicorpus spell. That has to be nonverbal. Maybe that'll be easier"

After a few minutes without success, Lily said, "Why don't you use it on me. Maybe if I know what the spell feels like, I can cast it better."

"I couldn't do that."

"Why not?"

Severus blushed. "You're wearing robes. The spell flips you over."

Lily laughed. "Not every boy would see that as a reason not to use the spell."

"I'm not every boy."

"That's true."

Lily went into town for some twine to tie her robes around her ankles while Severus chose a properly soft and mossy spot, the release spell tending not to let one down easily. Then, amid much giggling, Lily was suspended head down. It was a breakthrough moment, as Lily's thoughts coalesced on what she was trying to achieve. For a while they hung each other upside down, then turned to equally useful nonverbal spells. By the time they had to return to Hogwarts, Lily'd advanced considerably in her nonverbal skills.

"We lost them! How could we lose them?"

"Aren't you taking this a little harder than you have to?" Sirius didn't always appreciate James's dramatic streak, since it conflicted with his own.

"The fate of a Gryffindor girl hangs in the balance."

"Right. Like you cared for this girl before you found out she liked the Slytherin you love to hate."

"We're talking about a Dark Arts expert who's been tight with Bella and the Lestranges since second year. We're talking about a Death Eater in training. And she doesn't see it. She doesn't know how bad he is."

"The more you try to talk her out of it, the more she's going to fight you. You've got your work cut out for you, Prongs."

James could not find fault with Sirius's evaluation.

_Monday, November 17, 1975 (the day before the full moon)_

"You've never watched a Quidditch game? Where have you been for four and a half years?"

"Don't act so surprised. You've known me for ten years and we've hardly mentioned Quidditch once."

"Well you can't go to Hogwarts and not see at least one game. Come with me tomorrow."

"Who's playing? It'd be awkward if it was Slytherin and Gryffindor."

"It's Gryffindor and Ravenclaw. We're favored."

"I am not sitting in the Gryffindor stands."

"Then we'll both sneak into Hufflepuff. It'll be fun."

Severus agreed to go, and Lily borrowed the cloaks and the yellow and black scarves from a couple of her friends. They met near the fountain courtyard and changed, pulling the hoods over their heads as if for protection from the cold. Disguised as Hufflepuffs they set out to watch Severus's first Quidditch match. The Hufflepuffs who admitted them to the stands were the same boys who'd shared a train compartment with them three years earlier.

To his immense surprise, Severus enjoyed the game. This was partly because he was cheering for the Bludgers, a highly entertaining part of the action, especially when attacking Chasers. It took him half the game to understand the physical action, but he comprehended the scoring part at once.

"If either team had really good Seekers, this would be a boring game, wouldn't it?"

"What? What are you talking about?"

"It would be over too soon. No suspense. But as long as the two teams are within a hundred fifty points of each other, it's anyone's game. Bad Seekers, longer game, more action. Good one!" Severus's yell was for a Bludger that nearly knocked the Gryffindor Seeker off his broom.

Severus had no visions of himself playing Quidditch. Broom riding was the one course he'd failed dismally at Hogwarts. Brooms instinctively knew that he couldn't handle them and enjoyed trying to throw him. If he'd ever gotten more than six feet off the ground he'd have been killed, despite Lily's help.

Gryffindor won the Quidditch game, and for Lily's sake Severus hid his disgust at the abysmal Ravenclaw performance. Then he focused on the postgame activity and had a revelation.

Girls from all the houses were flocking to fawn over the Quidditch players. Even the losing players were surrounded by adoring fans attracted to them like flies to rancid meat. Severus's eyes swept the scene and located one of the Gryffindor Chasers, James Potter. _If they push any more, they'll squish him. Trampled to death by girls. Pleasant thought._ Severus saw the broomstick, too. New, expensive, the best one there. James Potter was as rich as the Blacks.

_A spoiled, arrogant rich kid who can have anything he wants and is popular to boot. Why does he care about me?_

"Look at him. Oozing money. No wonder he thinks he can boss everyone else around. People like that think they can buy anything." Severus and Lily were by the lake. For some reason they had not been stopped nor, apparently, followed.

"You don't know that he's like that. He can be quite nice."

"Both of them. Potter and Black. Rich and arrogant. Anyone not in their social class is scum."

"Haven't you met any nice rich people."

"Plenty if you have something they want. Otherwise, no. Well, maybe one."

"You still don't know them. Not well enough to judge."

"No? They've been pushing me around since second year. I think I've had a chance to see their dark side."

"You have a dark side, too, you know."

Severus wheeled in his pacing, anger seething, making it hard to breathe. She was belittling his opinions, trying to prove him wrong. She wasn't supposed to do that. She was supposed to support…

Severus stopped. He knew from the expression on Lily's face that his own was cold and hard. Cold and dangerous. The demon was awake again and had almost taken control. Almost.

He closed his eyes and forced himself to breathe deeply. Forced himself to shut down, close off, seal the demon away where it couldn't hurt anybody.

"You're right," he said. "I do."

Hagrid took his time with the examination, but at the end was forced to admit that Severus was in reasonably good health and condition. "Eating good, seem t' get enough exercise. Been sleeping well? That's good. Any problems?"

"Problems? No. None to speak of. Why?"

"There's been a few times in the past. With other students. You know, problems."

"I've no idea what you're talking about."

"You got one of the worst cases of excessive pride I seen in all my years at Hogwarts."

"Pride? I'm not proud."

"Not proud? Goes up to hospital looking like Puss-in-Boots and says his wand slipped. Outnumbered and 'bout t' get his tailed whupped and tells Dumbledore bold as brass that they was discussing summer vacation. Won't ask for help nohow, and says he ain't proud."

"You've been talking about me behind my back."

"Hullo. This is a school. Happens t' be part of the job, taking care of students. Now, are you having problems."

"Nothing I can't handle."

"Ya see. Proud."

Everyone in fifth year was in the incipient stages of nervous breakdown because of their OWL exams in the spring. Severus found himself inundated just before Christmas with requests for tutoring. Enough Slytherin students approached him with the news that they were staying at Hogwarts over Christmas and begging for help with potions and charms that he floated the idea of having actual classes during the break. The response was overwhelming.

As the term wound down and the break neared, Severus tried to organize what he was going to do. He'd already tutored most of the students individually at one time or another, so he knew their relative strengths and weaknesses, easy to work with one on one, but harder to coordinate in a group. He was concerned to do it right, though, since he was going to get a considerable amount of money from the combined tutoring fees.

_Is this what the teachers in our classes have to do all the time? I hope they get paid a lot._

"Hi, Snape. How's the term been going?"

It'd been a while since Bella had talked to Severus, and he was surprised to have her sit next to him in the common room on the last day before Christmas break.

"Fine, I guess. Nothing to complain about."

"Any trouble with those thugs in Gryffindor?"

_Do I have a black eye or something? Why is everyone asking me about problems with the Potter gang?_ "Nothing serious. Actually milder than some years. Why?"

"I'm sure you've heard that there've been problems 'outside' with wizards being attacked…"

Severus nodded.

"What the Ministry isn't telling people is that we're in danger. And it's coming from the muggles. There's a witch hunt brewing, and some of our own are fueling it because they want more power."

"I heard it was the other way around, that it was more of a muggle hunt."

"That's what they want you to think. But muggles have always hated us and tried to get rid of us. Wasn't anyone in your family killed by muggles?"

Katherine Hewitt and the other Lancashire witches. Right in Pendle near where Nana lives. "Yes, a few. But that was a long time ago. Three hundred years."

"It's going to happen again. I don't want to scare you, but we have to be prepared. There's a new leader who's not afraid to speak up about the danger. He's looking for support so we can protect ourselves."

"It seems pretty improbable to me."

"Well, just think about it."

Christmas break passed quickly, probably because there was so much to do. Severus had classes for about half a dozen students at a time, trying to keep those with similar strengths and weaknesses together. One of the bonuses about being 'the teacher,' was that sometimes the other students forgot that he was there as they worked on a potion. Severus got to overhear some interesting gossip.

He wasn't particularly fascinated by what Serendipida Corman was doing with Hengist Camberwell, but the knowledge that she was doing it with at least four other students added spice to an otherwise dull afternoon. Or the 'true' source of the Paternoster's wealth, that was good for a smile or two. His ears did perk up a bit more at hearing the name 'Black,' though. Which is how he was reminded that Bella and Narcissa had a sister. A sister who'd disgraced herself by marrying a muggle. _Would you call her a 'Black black sheep?' Maybe if Bella ever slips about my background, I can ask about Andromeda._

Severus heard other things, too, ugly comments about mudbloods and mongrels. He should have been better prepared for the levels of blood snobbery he encountered, but somehow it still surprised him. One conversation in particular left him seething in silent impotence.

"…didn't need him so much for OWLs, I'd teach him to remember his place."

"You're oversensitive. He's nothing more than a servant. Didn't your parents ever hire a tutor?"

"Yeah. It's not like he was trying to push his way into social things, except on the train. That would be stepping over the line."

"Well I suppose if you look at it like that…"

What it boiled down to was money. You had to have money, or you were easy prey to every whim of fate, every twist and turn of economics. Severus swallowed the pride Hagrid said he had too much of and continued with his classes. He taught the rich kids, they paid him, but he no longer felt he had to be polite to them. Instead he began to vent his frustration with comments about their ineptitude and incompetence. It made him feel a little better.

Sirius Black spent Christmas at the Potters' home. It was in every way more pleasant than Christmas at home would've been, even with James rambling on and on about the girls in Gryffindor and what did Sirius think, anyway.

Christmas Day was especially fun.

"What in the world is this?" James asked, holding up a heavy, shimmering, multi-hued piece of cloth that looked like a cloak.

"A family heirloom you've grown into," replied Mrs. Potter. "Put it on, dear. I think you'll look nice in it."

James wrinkled his nose at Sirius. He thought the cloak hideously ugly, but was not about to say so in his mother's hearing.

"Go on." Sirius was trying to contain his laughter. "Put it on. You'll look nice in it."

James put it on, and Sirius's laughter melted into awe. "It does make you look better! You've never looked so good in your life. It's an invisibility cloak."

The two boys took turns wearing James's cloak, and planning a wide series of escapades for their return to Hogwarts.

"You seem different," Lily said when she and Severus met after the Christmas break was over. "Did something happen?"

"No. I've just spent the last two weeks researching the inverse relationship between money and brains."

Lily laughed. "Rich kids are stupid, aren't they?"

"More than most. Maybe there's something about money that contaminates the gene pool. Wait… If you can put chlorine into a swimming pool to disinfect it from germs, is there anything you can put into the gene pool to disinfect it from money?"

"Or could you say that someone comes from the shallow end of the gene pool?"

"Good one! I like that."

For a while they referred to the dumbest rich students as 'shallow-enders.'

"Hey, Evans!"

Lily turned, her face blank, as James hurried over to her. "Going to Transfiguration?" he asked.

"You know where I'm going."

They walked together, since they were headed for the same class. "I've been wanting to talk to you…"

"If it's about who I can and can't talk to, I don't want to hear it."

"I'm sorry about that. No, that's not true. I'm not sorry because he's not the kind of person you want for a friend, but I'm sorry I tried to pressure you."

"You don't know what kind of person he is."

"Look, Evans, we're living in really dangerous times. People are being attacked. Some of them are being killed. Not just wizards and witches, but muggles, too. One of the families that's deepest into this 'Dark Lord' business is Sirius's family. They disown anyone who even associates with muggles, and they're part of the group that's heading the attacks. That's how I know so much. Do you think I'd care about some oddball Slytherin if he wasn't tight with the Blacks since second year? Do you know anyone at Hogwarts who knows more about the Dark Arts than he does? He walked into this school knowing more than anyone. His family has to be as dark as they come."

"That shows how much you know. He's a half-blood."

James stopped in his tracks, then hurried to catch up to her. "Really? That surprises me. He's been to Bella's house for Christmas break. Twice. I never thought they'd allow a half-blood under the roof for anything. That makes it worse."

"How?"

"Don't you see? If a family like the Blacks will tolerate a half-blood, even encourage him, then he must be…"

"What?"

"Special. Valuable. More powerful than I thought."

Lily looked worried.

"Why do you associate with them?"

Severus paused, a rock that he'd been about to skip across the water still in his hand. "With who?"

"People like Bella Black. Like Evan Rosier. Like Aloysius Mulciber. Those people."

"I don't associate with them. They condescend to associate with me. I take their money. Besides, have you ever tried not associating with your dorm mates? It's kind of hard to do."

"You visit them during the breaks."

"So?"

"The Blacks don't like muggles and half-bloods. Why are you different?"

"You've been talking about me behind my back. Who with? Stuck-up Potter?"

"This is serious. People are getting hurt."

"Yes, witches and wizards."

"Muggles, too. And why didn't you answer my question?"

"What question?"

"Why are you different?"

"I'll answer your question if you'll answer mine."

"Okay. Potter wanted to talk to me. I told him he didn't know anything about you."

"I hope he still doesn't. Now your question. I'm useful. I was tutoring Bella in Potions so she could pass her OWLs. They put me in a servant's room on the top floor, and I got to eat all my meals by myself. Happy?"

"Yes, very. I'm so glad you're not one of them."

_Friday, January 9, 1976 (the first quarter)_

Severus was heading to a special Astronomy workshop just after lunch. He prided himself on his ability in astronomy and was thus in a state of perpetual frustration because of the course emphasis on the Zodiac and on astrology. There was nonetheless a certain amount of geometry involved, so it was not a total loss.

On a second floor staircase he happened to glance down and froze. Lily was leaving the Great Hall, James Potter was entering it, and the two paused to talk. Severus had a fairly good view of Lily's face, though not of James's, and was at first pleased to see that she wore a scornful expression. Pleasure turned to concern, however, as he began to note her mannerisms.

There was the little toss of her head, and the way she tucked a lock of hair behind her ear, the defiant way she tilted her chin, and the sidelong glance. Right hand on hip, a stamp with the left foot, then Lily walked proudly to the entrance doors while James, laughing, entered the Great Hall.

Severus sat back on the steps, stunned. Lily's face, and presumably her voice, radiated scorn, but every other part of her was flirting. Flirting with James Potter. Unconsciously, subconsciously flirting outrageously. _Control yourself, idiot. Since when are you able to read girls' body language? Maybe she was restraining herself from attacking him and tearing his eyes out._ But of course that was wishful thinking.

Lily was attracted to Stuck-up Potter.

James was bored. Sirius had started an all-out campaign to regain the affections of Ariadne Musgrave, for which the presence of his good friend Potter was a hindrance. Remus was madly working on an Ancient Runes assignment, while Peter had disappeared. There was an unconfirmed suspicion that Pettigrew was taking advantage of his newfound small size to infiltrate the girls' dormitory, but there was as yet no proof. _That's what you get when you have a rat for a friend._

Getting out the Marauder's Map, James idly tapped it and said, "I solemnly swear that I am up to no good," but the effort was halfhearted. What good was it going out alone? He flipped through the different folds. Lily Evans was leaving Gryffindor Tower.

James looked quickly through the rest of the map. Sure enough, Severus Snape had just exited Slytherin house. As James watched, Lily headed for the lake, while Snivellus went down the path toward the gate to Hogsmeade. Then Lily turned left, while Snivellus turned right, and now both were going in the direction of the Forbidden Forest. At night. In the snow.

_This evening isn't going to be so boring after all._ James hid his invisibility cloak under his school cloak and slipped out into the dark after his prey.

"Happy sixteenth birthday," Lily said as she gave Severus the traditional little cake. "I can't believe that next year we'll be of age. Are you looking forward to apparating?"

"Yes and no. Horribly uncomfortable experience, but much better than the train from Euston Station."

"When have you ever apparated?"

"With my grandmother, after my parents died. It wasn't the best of times."

"I am just dying to be able to do it. Think of the freedom!"

"Were you interested in learning other spells? Apparation isn't the only one with great advantages."

Lily giggled. "During vacation I tried some of the ones you taught me. I failed dismally. I don't know what I did wrong."

"Lucky it was wrong. The Ministry of Magic would've been on you for underage magic. In a muggle household, too. What do you think you did wrong?"

"I don't know. I tried the Leevicorpus…"

"There's your problem right there. It may be nonverbal, but you still have to think the right sound. The first syllable's a shorter sound, more like 'ay'. Levicorpus. Try it like that."

Lily tried it on a rock, and it worked. Then they went over the Liberacorpus spell as well, just to be sure it worked, too. By then it had gotten very cold, and they were both ready to return to the castle.

In the dark, they didn't notice the other set of footprints that came from the lake shore. The set of footprints that just ended there in the middle of the snow. Under his invisibility cloak, James Potter was thinking of a plan.


	16. Chapter 16 – Conflicting Evidence

**A Difference in the Family: The Fifth Year – Conflicting Evidence**

The next day, three Slytherins were hung upside down in the fourth floor boys lavatory, their robes and gowns falling around their waists, and Rosier, on finding them, ran to pull Severus out of the Library.

_It can't be. It can't be my spell. Only Lily and I know my spell._ Severus closed his eyes in foreboding, then instructed Rosier and the other boys who'd since gathered to be ready to catch the first victim as he fell. He took a deep breath and thought Liberacorpus, and the suspension spell was released, dropping the boy to the floor. The other two quickly followed.

"Whoa! Cursemaster!" whooped Rosier. "How'd you know that?"

"First year stuff," muttered Severus as he stomped out of the lavatory. He needed to think.

It turned out he didn't have much time. Slytherin students were being attacked and hung up in every corner of the school where teachers were unlikely to go. So far it was just the boys, but the chance that it would soon extend to the girls could not be ignored. A war council was called in the common room.

Bella and Rodolphus led the meeting. It centered on Severus.

"How did you know what the spell was?" Bella demanded.

"I didn't. I'd just… come across something similar before and thought I'd try the release spell to see if it worked. Turned out I was right."

"Lucky for us. Is this a spell we can all learn? It'd be best if we could turn the tables on them, so to speak. Make the field level." Rodolphus was clearly eager to get his revenge, even though he was not one of the victims.

"It'll be hard for most of you. It's a nonverbal spell. Knowing it doesn't mean you can cast it."

"So you teach us."

It was decided. The sixth and seventh year students already knew nonverbal skills, and Severus taught them the Levicorpus and Liberacorpus spells that evening. He began showing the lower level students how to do nonverbal spells the next day. While not everyone was good at it, enough were so that soon Gryffindors were hanging up in the most unlikely places.

Levicorpus was the fad spell of the year.

"How did they learn it if you didn't tell them?" Severus was trembling, he was so upset. "I certainly never told them. They're my enemies!"

"So you automatically assume it must be me. Wonderful. You don't trust me." Lily pursed her lips in anger.

"Who else is there? Do you think I went around showing my spells to the whole school? Do you think I have a whole crew of 'friends' to choose from?"

"I'm surprised you have any friends at all!"

Severus went white. It was as if the breath had been slammed from his lungs. When he spoke it was in a cold, controlled voice. "You really don't understand, do you? You're the only one I ever taught those spells to. The only one. I guess I don't have any friends at all. But I know who your friends are."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"You don't exactly hide it. Every time you talk to him you're batting your eyelashes. It's quite an exhibition."

"What are you talking about?"

"Stuck-up Potter. You fancy him. You want him to notice you. Is that why you taught him my spell?"

"I never taught him your spell. But maybe I should have. He seems nice. Not like some people."

"It's hard to be nice when you've been betrayed."

"Maybe I'll try Potter. It'll be a pleasant change."

"Along with all the other girls. Learn what it's like to be part of a harem."

"At least he never hit me!"

In icy silence and deadly calm, Severus turned and walked away.

Without Lily to talk to, there were now three areas of life left for Severus to concentrate on, his classes and preparation for OWLs, his tutoring and the growth of his small savings into a rather respectable sum, and the Dark Arts, which he continued to study passionately.

One of Severus's new spells was Phusalida. It created a protective bubble shield around him to help ward off his own Levicorpus. What good was it that the Hogwarts robes disguised his poverty if he was vulnerable to a very revealing attack? For days he'd kept to areas frequented by the school staff, since it was only in hidden spots that the students dared use the suspension spell.

Fortunately, knowing exactly how Levicorpus worked, Severus was able to make his Phusalida spell curse-specific. It kept him from being suspended upside down, but was otherwise undetectable. The problem with curses, though, was that it was possible to invent new ones. Who knew what spell masters were out there creating hexes and jinxes just as he did in Hogwarts? The Dark Arts were a constantly shifting, dangerous morass requiring eternal vigilance and adaptability.

That was why he loved them so.

_Thursday, February 12, 1976 (three days before the full moon)_

Although busy, Severus was also increasingly lonely. Then, just before Valentine's Day, that began to change.

He was heading downstairs from the Library to Potions in the dungeons when the sound of running feet behind him made Severus spin to face a potential attack. It was Wilkes and Mulciber, and they were running in what appeared to be panic, except they were laughing. They would have turned to race down the stairs, but Mulciber saw Severus.

"Snape!" Mulciber hissed, pausing there at the head of the stairs. "Come with us! Quick!" Wilkes was pulling at his robes, trying to get him to move.

"Why?" Severus asked, suspicious.

"Never mind. Just do…" A sound behind him alerted Mulciber to the presence of his pursuers, and he glanced around, then appeared to make a quick decision. Leaving the safe escape route of the stairs, he ran and seized Severus's robes. "Run, quick. You don't want them to see you."

"But…"

"You're in Slytherin robes. They won't care that it wasn't you." Even as he spoke, Mulciber pushed Severus down the corridor and into an empty classroom, Wilkes right behind them. "We have to hide," Mulciber gasped, breathing hard. "If they catch us in here…"

"In the corner, quick," said Severus, and as the three boys huddled by the windows, Severus twirled his wand and said, _"Contego!"_ Although nothing seemed to have changed, the other boys trusted him and remained crouched down. They could hear voices in the corridor.

"They didn't take the stairs or we'd 've seen them. They must be here somewhere. You look in there. I'll check this one." It was Sirius Black's voice.

"Right you are, Padfoot. Yell if you need me."

The door to the classroom burst open, and Black entered. At least Severus assumed from the voice that it was Black. He wouldn't have known otherwise, since Black's face was covered by a long, thick beard the same color as his name. Hair was sprouting out of his ears and nostrils, and his eyebrows were about six inches long. Severus clamped his hands over his own mouth to keep from laughing out loud.

Black scanned the classroom, saw nothing, and continued down the corridor opening doors and searching. After a couple of minutes, the three could tell from the sounds that Potter and Black had moved on.

Mulciber stood, and held out a hand to help Severus to his feet. "Contego," he said. "I'll have to remember that. Thanks." He laid a hand on Severus's shoulder. "We'd better get down to Potions. We're almost late."

Wilkes laughed. "I'm looking forward to seeing how Black can stir his cauldron with all that hair in the way."

"You could have been there already," Severus pointed out. "You didn't have to stop for me."

"And let them catch you!" exclaimed Mulciber. "Not on your life. No Gryffindor messes with a Slytherin while another Slytherin stands by and watches."

"I thought it was different with 'half-breeds' and 'mudbloods.'"

Mulciber tilted his head, cocky and arrogant. "You may be a half-breed, but you're a Slytherin half-breed, and that makes you one of us. Come on, let's get to Potions."

The three entered the Potions classroom together. Potter and Black weren't there yet, but Lily was, and she watched them with worried eyes.

_Saturday, February 14, 1976 (1 day before the full moon)_

At breakfast on Saturday morning everyone was talking about Hogsmeade. They tended to talk about Hogsmeade at least once per term, and Severus normally paid no attention. This time Mulciber asked him a direct question, though, so he had little choice.

"What's your favorite place in Hogsmeade?" was the question.

"I don't have one," Severus replied. "I don't generally go into Hogsmeade."

"You mean you've never been there?"

"Once in third year. I didn't think it was that interesting." He didn't think Mulciber needed to know about the last time with Lily.

Mulciber grinned. "I bet you'd find it more interesting now."

Severus shrugged and shook his head. "On Valentine's Day? I doubt it. Are you going with Wilhelmina?" It was a measure of the degree that hiding from Sirius Black and James Potter had altered their relationship that Severus was suddenly able to talk to Mulciber this way.

"No, that's over. I'm taking Doris to Madam Puddifoot's. You should come along."

"You never heard about the number three and its comparison to a crowd?"

That made Mulciber laugh. "One of the things I like about you, Half-Breed, is that you have a way of saying things that's different from everyone else." There was something about the way he said 'half-breed' that made it sound more like a friendly nickname than like the insult it had been before. Severus had heard his dad and his dad's friends call each other names like that, and all it meant was that they were mates. It didn't bother him.

"So," Mulciber continued, "are you going to Hogsmeade?"

"What would I do there that's remotely interesting?"

"Maybe the Shack will shriek."

"What shack?" There was nothing wrong with pretending to be dumb if you were intentionally hiding knowledge.

"You never heard of the Shrieking Shack? They started talking about it when we were in first year. There's this old tumble-down house just outside Hogsmeade, and it got haunted by some ghoul or something about four years ago. Lots of nights you can hear it scream and wail, or so they say. I hope to hear it at least once before I leave Hogwarts."

That sounded more interesting, for previously unremarked time sequences began to click together. "When does it shriek?" Severus asked, feigning only mild interest.

"At night. That's what makes February such a great time to go. The sun sets around five o'clock, so we can still be in Hogsmeade after dark. We have a chance to hear it."

That was even more intriguing. Severus declined to spend the entire afternoon in Hogsmeade, but he promised Mulciber he'd try to make it to the village around sunset to see if he could hear the shrieking in the Shack.

That afternoon, as the sun sank below the ridge of hills that rimmed Hogwarts and the moon, at the beginning of its fullness, edged over the same ridge, Severus made his way down the hill to the main gate with its flanking boars. No students were climbing the hill in the other direction, and Severus expected this was because they were all doing the same as he was – taking advantage of the early sunset to listen for the shrieking.

Indeed, finding the shack was simply a matter of following the students. Everyone, it seemed, was moving toward a little hill just outside of the village, and there was already a substantial number of students there. Severus saw Mulciber and Doris Gamp, and moved toward them. Mulciber looked over and waved. With so many students around, it was impossible to get close even to the fence that kept people away from the Shack itself.

Sudden stillness descended as a low, penetrating moan cut through the icy air. Severus felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up, and the crowd of students swayed and sighed in anticipation. Then the Shack began to shriek.

Severus had never heard – no one had ever heard – anything like it. It rose from a low murmur to a shrill scream. It throbbed with a wild ululation, then broke into barking yells and spectral howls. It screech and roared, moaned and sobbed, and cackled with demonic laughter. After only a few moments, most of the students had their hands over their ears to block the worst of the wailing, and when the professors came to herd everyone back to the castle for the night, no one resisted.

Severus went back with the rest, pondering the demonic noises as he watched the brilliant orb of the moon mount the western sky.

The little group into which Severus was now admitted expanded to once again include Bella Black, who brought with her Rodolphus Lestrange, Kenneth Avery, and the third year student Regulus Black whom Severus had met at the Hand of Glory party, and whom he now knew was Sirius Black's brother. He didn't hold that against Regulus, who all in all was a decent chap.

Within his own dormitory, Severus would never wholly trust either Wilkes or Rosier, but Edison and Mulciber, who'd never been quite as mean to him, were fast becoming the closest thing to male friends that Severus had ever had in his life. For the first time he was admitted to a level of confidence and banter previously unknown.

"Yo!" cried Mulciber on their way to lunch one Monday in early March. "Muggle ship off the starboard bow! Now that one could make me change my opinion of mudbloods."

The 'muggle ship' in question was Patience Ferguson of Ravenclaw, whose budding womanhood evoked the image of a figurehead from an old sailing ship, and who generally tended to leave young men in her wake with their hearts pounding and their tongues hanging out. Severus was able to watch her with a newfound aesthetic appreciation and with the opportunity to nudge another young man in the ribs in expression of that appreciation, even though he knew he would never be able to do anything about it. Not if he wanted to be free of the Demon.

Mulciber also turned out to be funny, in a crazy sort of way. He was taking Muggle Studies on the principle of 'Know Thine Enemy,' and now frequently asked Severus to explain some arcane point. On having electricity and the electric light explained, he began hitting Severus with a series of jokes.

"How many purebloods does it take to change a light bulb? – None. It never occurred to them that the possibility existed."

"How many half-breeds does it take to change a light bulb? – Two. One to change the bulb and the other to keep the purebloods from getting in the way."

"How many mudbloods does it take to change a light bulb? – One if he's by himself, but if another joins him they need to canvass the neighborhood, hold a meeting, and vote."

"How can you tell the difference between a pureblood, a half-breed, and a mudblood? – Test them when they're eleven. The one who can't tie his shoes is the pureblood. The one who can't make change for a galleon is the mudblood. The one who dies laughing at the other two incompetents is the half-breed. Bury the half-breed. Never try that test again."

Severus rather liked Mulciber's jokes because they never made half-bloods seem dumber than purebloods or mudbloods. He completely forgot that he used to resent being called a half-breed, at least not when the word came from Mulciber. From Wilkes, it was a different matter.

When Wilkes used certain words, the very tone of his voice made them insults. When Mulciber used them, they were humorous and friendly. Severus wasn't sure exactly how it worked, but he knew that to Mulciber words were words, but to Wilkes they were weapons. Severus was careful how he used the same words, since he wasn't sure he could say them the way Mulciber did.

"Hey, Macdonald!" Mulciber called across the lawn one morning in mid March as the Slytherin fifth year students went out to the greenhouses while the Gryffindors returned to the castle from their earlier class. "Is it true mudblood girls…?" and made reference in scientific terms to certain points of anatomy. Macdonald blushed furiously and ran over to her dorm mates, already in tears.

The group of Slytherin boys for whom Mulciber had been showing off included all four of his dorm mates as well as Avery and Regulus Black. Severus found the comment amusing, and was disappointed that Macdonald hadn't come back at Mulciber with something equally scathing.

"Isn't that your girlfriend, Sev?" said Rosier, pointing to the cluster of Gryffindor girls with Lily in the midst of them.

"What do you mean?" Severus was on guard at once, unsure of where this was leading.

"You know. The one you were meeting in the third floor corridor in first year. The one you kept on meeting…"

"Yeah," chimed in Black. "On the Astronomy Tower, too!"

"You knew about that?" Severus said, wondering why, if it was true, no one had said anything.

"Sure," said Avery. "It wasn't hard, not when we really wanted to find out. But Bella said to leave you alone. She figured you'd eventually find out for yourself that the girl was bad news. I mean, why does she have to have her claws in you when she's got a whole stable of Gryffindors?"

Severus watched calmly, his mind closed and sealed, as Lily turned to regard his whole group with searing scorn. He thought of her meetings with Lupin, and her flirting with Potter, and wondered if Avery was right. After all, the times he'd seen her were scattered and short. He had no idea what she did the rest of the time, though apparently the rest of Slytherin house knew. And she had given the Gryffindor boys his spell…

Yet even at that moment, Severus would have given anything to be able to go back to the way it had been before, to have at least one person he could trust completely, one person he could open up to. Part of him wanted to believe that Lily was honest and true, even though every piece of evidence he had said that Avery was right.

Lily accosted Severus in the fountain courtyard two days later, seized his arm, and marched him into the empty corridor on the other side of the cloistered walkway.

"What were you doing being so mean to Mary?" she demanded.

"I didn't say anything to Macdonald," replied Severus. "If you want to get upset with someone, get upset with Mulciber. Better yet, get upset with Less-than-Serious Black. He said just about the same thing to Alderton. I don't see you getting all righteous about that."

"I don't care about Sirius Black or about what he says and does. I do care about what you say and do. All of Gryffindor knows we've been seeing each other for years and…"

"Aha! Worried about your reputation, are you?"

"You know perfectly well this isn't about my reputation!"

"And why would I know that? You've been sneaking around hiding our friendship for years, and now you tell…"

"Me? Me hiding our friendship? I seem to recall it was you who were afraid of your 'friends' from Slytherin finding out…"

"They've known all along and never bothered me after first year. The ones who've harassed me are from Gryffindor. Now I find out it's because of you!"

"Because of me? I'll have you know…!" Lily stopped, and Severus knew, knew as if he could see the image floating to the top of her brain, that she was remembering times when Potter warned her away from their friendship. She switched tactics. "Severus, you know they use dark magic."

Severus laughed out loud at this, actually enjoying the startled look on Lily's face. "You're going to have to do better than that if you want to pass your Dark Arts OWL," he chided her. "There are objects that are dark, but only three spells are classified as always dark. All the others depend on the intent of the spell caster. Even the simplest of spells. If I'm helping you clean the owlery, Scourgify's a cleaning spell. If I use it in anger to harm another person, it's dark magic. Even a… someone like you should know that."

"Of course I know that! But your 'friends,' people like Avery and that Bella Black, they're not trying to help people with their magic. It's dark."

"Do you think Stuck-Up Potter was trying to help Bertram Aubrey when he enlarged his head? Every hex and jinx and curse he uses to force people to do what he wants or just to show off, that's all dark magic because his intentions are selfish and mean. Just like that spell you stole."

"What are you talking about?"

"I made that for self protection. I intended to use it only if I was attacked. That's light magic. Then old Stuck-Up gets his hands on it, and uses it to attack and embarrass people. That's dark magic." Severus glanced around as if searching for Potter. "Do I see you talking to him about it? No. Clean up Gryffindor first. If we weren't attacked, we wouldn't have to defend ourselves."

"What happened the day before yesterday wasn't self defense."

"What happened the day before yesterday wasn't magic. It was a boy teasing a girl, and there wasn't any magic involved. Tell Macdonald she needs thicker skin. If she'd dinged him back, we'd all be laughing at him now."

"It was mean. You shouldn't hang around with him."

"I should hang around with spell thieves, I suppose. Those seem to be my only choices."

"I didn't give your spell to Potter!"

"No? Maybe you gave it to Lupin, and he gave it to Potter. One big happy family over there in Gryffindor, aren't you?"

Lily stamped her feet, quivering in frustrated rage. "You're making it awfully hard to like you!"

"Believe me, when I want you to like me, you'll know!"

The silence deepened, then Lily turned and, stiff-backed and struggling for dignity, walked away into the castle. Severus watched her go, feeling oddly empty and incomplete. Then he left the corridor and went down to Slytherin house.

One rite of passage for the fifth years was the mandatory meetings with Professor Slughorn in April, about preparing for the future and a career. Since nothing in his social position had changed, Severus expected his own interview to be a short one.

"Well, Snape, you seem to have good marks in all your classes. Doesn't look like you'll have too much trouble with the OWLs. Have you thought yet about what you want to do with yourself after leaving Hogwarts?"

"I'm torn between becoming a numismatist or a spelunker."

"Uh, yes. Well, um, you certainly have the grades for either one, but I, uh, am not certain that those would be the best career paths for someone in your, uh, position."

"Do you think my Herbology grades are too low for spelunking? I have excellent marks in Astronomy and Potions, though, so I was also considering Paleoanthropology."

"Well, you do seem to have given this considerable thought. I think we can leave it at that until you have to choose your sixth year classes."

"Thank you, Professor."

"Get along to class, now."

"Don't you ever go to Hogsmeade, Snape?" Bella was waiting for Rodolphus for the first excursion of the spring into town. "There's so much to do."

"Occasionally, but it's only fun if you're with someone or have money."

"You could be with us, and you have money."

Severus glanced up at Bella, caught the tail-end of a warning look on her face, and turned to the newly-arrived Rodolphus. There was no question what his expression had been at the prospect of Severus being the third member of their party. Severus didn't mind. He almost sympathized with poor Rodolphus, for this had nothing to do with money or status and everything to do with wanting to be alone with Bella.

"Not enough," he said. "Money's been tight since my father died, and when I go back this summer, I'll have to take care of the property. It needs some improvements." Not exactly a lie, but phrased so that Bella could exercise her imagination as to just what his 'property' was.

"Suit yourself. Just remember that we'd love to have you."

They left, along with most of Slytherin house except the first and second years. Severus stayed in his dormitory with his mother's old Advanced Potions book. By now nearly every page was full of his small spidery handwriting, not only hexes and jinxes, but attack and defense spells, and notes on just about every potion in the book. He was going to go into his sixth year potions class knowing more than old Slughorn ever would in his entire life.

Hagrid spied Lily sitting on the low stone wall of the planted area in the fountain courtyard. "Morning, Lily. I hope everything's well with you."

"Good morning, Hagrid. I'm fine, thank you."

"I been looking for Severus. Ya wouldn't 've happened t' see him, would ya?"

Lily's face darkened. "Mr. Snape does not entrust me with his schedule."

"Just thought I'd ask. You have a good day, now."

"Thank you, Hagrid."

On his way back to his hut, Hagrid thought he saw a familiar thin figure near the edge of the forest. Severus appeared not to notice as Hagrid lumbered over. "There ya are. Y're due for a checkup, ya know."

"Don't you think I'm a bit old for that now?"

"That may be, but that's for Professor Dumbledore t' say."

"Maybe I should talk to Professor Dumbledore."

"Maybe ya should. Meanwhile, I got my orders. Come along now."

Severus drew himself up to his full height, which was still somewhat short of Hagrid's chest. "I'm not your servant. You don't command me like one."

Hagrid was suddenly reminded of Professor McGonagall's old image of a dagger. A razor-sharp obsidian blade. "Suit yourself," he said casually, but his expression was worried as he returned to his hut.

First Lily, now Severus. Something had happened there, and Hagrid wished he knew what it was. What was most disturbing was the locked-down hardness, the frosty isolation he sensed in the boy, as if all his and Dumbledore's hard work had been in vain.

"Hi, Evans. What's the sad face?"

Lily looked up at James. Of all people, he was the one she probably least wanted to see that morning. "Nothing," she answered. "Classes. OWLs."

"You can't be worried about your OWLs. You're a top student in almost every class. Bet you breeze through and ace every one."

Lily shrugged.

"Look, Evans. I've been meaning to talk to you… No, not about that; don't get huffy 'til you hear me out. I'm not as good at Potions as you are, and I was wondering if you could help me out on a couple of things I'm having trouble with. It's not a lot, but I'd really like to get an Outstanding in the subject. I know you will."

"I don't know. I've never tutored anyone."

"I'd really appreciate it."

"Let me think about it."

James insisted that he couldn't be tutored in the common room of Gryffindor house since he had a reputation to protect. He chose instead out-of-the-way places like behind the Quidditch field or in the Great Hall in the empty period between breakfast and lunch. He was very careful not to push things, keeping his meetings with Lily strictly to the business of tutoring. When she got really interested in the Potions work, some of the chill left her manner.

Sirius had finally realized that James's interest in Lily involved more than a concern with the Dark Arts. He acted as sentry for his friend, keeping others away from wherever they were working. He was most particularly concerned that Severus not see James and Lily together.

Spring progressed, and the OWL exams got nearer.

They were well into May before Lily made the next move. As she had so many times before, she slipped a note into one of Severus's books saying 'Forest. Lunch. Please.' She got there as quickly as she could after class and waited, concealed behind bushes at the edge of the trees.

It was half an hour before Severus arrived. Looking around and seeing no one, he was about to leave when he heard a "Psst…" from near by. Lily rose and beckoned him closer.

"I really want to talk to you," she said when he approached.

"So talk."

"Okay, first I'm really sorry about what I said, about you hitting me. That wasn't fair. It didn't have anything to do with what we were arguing about and it's way in the past. And I shouldn't have blamed you for what someone else did. I just wanted to tell you I was sorry and ask you to forgive me."

"That's first. What's second?" Severus regretted the words immediately, for it looked as if Lily might start crying. He looked at the ground, then at the lake in the distance. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that. I guess we both say stupid things when we're angry. Of course I forgive you. Will you forgive me?"

"Sure. Water under the bridge."

They stood awkwardly for a couple of minutes, neither knowing what to do next. Lily got her nerve first. "I worry about you. The others in Slytherin – do they ever talk to you about Death Eaters?"

"Why?"

"Haven't you seen in _The Daily Prophet_ how people are being attacked, sometimes killed because of this dark wizard, this Lord… you know."

"I know we're in danger, but a lot of the attacks are from mud… muggles against our people, and the Ministry's doing nothing about it. Someone has to protect us."

"O Severus!" Lily sounded distraught. "You're even talking like them. Don't you know that's what they want you to think so they can get you to join them? Don't you know that all your friends in Slytherin work for him? Sirius says their fathers are all Death Eaters – Lestrange, Avery, Mulciber, Rosier… You haven't joined them, have you?"

"Nobody's asked me to join anything, so if your beloved Sirius is telling you they have, then he's lying to you."

Lily sighed. "I'm glad about that. I'd feel better if you didn't hang around with them. I wish we hadn't quarreled. About that spell…" Severus just watched her, neither helping nor stopping her.

"I really don't know how anyone found out about the spell," Lily continued. "I've been thinking and thinking. I know it wasn't you, because it was Gryffindor using it. You say you didn't tell anyone else. I know I didn't tell anyone else. But it did start with Gryffindor. I've been wondering if maybe I talk in my sleep or something. It's the only thing I can think of. If I did, it wasn't intentional. You believe me, don't you?"

"Yeah. I believe you," said Severus. "It's over now, anyway. It's out. Everyone knows. Water under the bridge. Pax?"

"Pax. Do you think we can get together again? Viking is getting near Mars."

"Hard to say. I'm awfully busy right now with tutoring and everything. I don't know how much free time I'll have before OWLs. Maybe afterwards."

"Okay. Maybe afterwards."

A shout interrupted them. "Hey, Evans! What're you doing out here?" They both looked in the direction of the castle to see James coming towards them, Sirius not far behind. "I thought we had an appointment for after lunch today. I've been waiting for you."

Severus glanced at Lily. "Tutoring," she mouthed and started for the castle before James could reach them.

"Hey, Snape!" James called as he stopped and waited for Lily. "Enjoy your afternoon. I will."

As the trio walked back up the hill to the castle, Severus began practicing Sectumsempra on the bushes.

"What do you see in him? He's weird, he's funny-looking, he's moody, he's up to his eyeballs in the Dark Arts… Why do you care?"

"I don't think that's your business. Your business is learning Potions."

"Look, Evans, I know you know that I don't do this just for the Potions OWL. I'm sure it's occurred to you that there's more than that between us."

"That's it. This lesson is over."

"No, come on. I'd really like to do things with you. Go to Hogsmeade, have lunch together. I've been dying for a month to ask you on a date."

"I wouldn't date you if you were the last man on earth." Lily slammed her books shut and headed for the dormitories.

"Would you date him if he was the last man on earth," said James to no one in particular. "Would he date you if he knew…" He was smiling.

Severus stopped as Sirius stepped out of the doorway from the boy's lavatory. The fourth floor corridor was empty of students, since most were enjoying a beautiful June afternoon, maybe the last before their tests.

"Someone wants to talk to you, Snivellus."

Severus turned to see Peter and Remus blocking his exit in the other direction. _How do they always manage to get the drop on me?_ "What do you want?"

"Not them. Me," said James to his right, from a statuary niche. "I just wanted to give you a little information."

"So." Severus inched to the left so that his back was to the wall.

"That spell of yours that lifts people up? I taught that to everyone. Just wanted you to know."

"No you didn't."

"Sure I did. You want to know where I got it? Evans told me."

Severus felt his insides go hollow. "That's a lie."

"Think so? She had some trouble with it. She was pronouncing it wrong. Leevicorpus she was saying. Once she corrected that, it was easy. That's all I wanted to say."

The four left, James and Sirius laughing together. Severus stood alone in the fourth floor corridor feeling as if his world had ended.

_Week of June 6 - June 12, 1976 (moon waxing to full)_

There was no time left for friendship or enmity, for trust or betrayal, or even for the end of the world. There was nothing for it but for Severus to shut down and turn off everything inside himself but exams. It was a drill he knew well. For the second week of June, there was nothing in his life but OWLs. Theory in the morning, and practical application in the afternoon.

Charms on Monday went well, but that was only natural. Half the tricks he knew with a wand, and every trick he knew without one, Severus owed to his mother. Eileen had enticed him with baby games when he was little, schooled him in elementary magic as a boy, forced him to focus by teaching him to duel at age nine, and given him the discipline and power that no one his age could match. Severus had learned very little at Hogwarts except some incantations.

Tuesday's Transfiguration tests were harder. Toby Snape had spent almost all his adult life trying to transmute the lead of his mundane existence into the gold of the perfect family. That early on he had learned to use the Philosopher's Stone of alcohol was perhaps not entirely Toby's fault. Severus, as a result, had inherited a certain inability to change what was into what he wanted it to be.

On Wednesday, Severus dedicated his Herbology test to Nana. Dealing as it did with the idiosyncrasies of living things, Herbology was not Severus's best subject, but he had the necessary knowledge and skills, and knew Nana would never stop trying to make a healer of him – still the most intriguing, to Severus, of all the possible wizarding professions.

During all this time, Severus kept his head down, his eyes averted, every distraction locked out, and he never once saw or consciously thought of Lily.

Thursday morning's test in Defense against the Dark Arts took place in the Great Hall. All the tables usually in place for the daily meals were removed and replaced with individual desks. June sunlight streamed in through the high windows, tinting everything in chestnut, copper, and gold. Severus wasn't allowed to keep his wand near his hand for the test, so he tucked it into the folds of his robe. He contemplated hanging great-grandfather Wensley Snape's shrunken head around his neck as a talisman, but decided it would shock too many people. Besides, for this one he didn't need luck.

Severus found his place and carefully picked up and examined his ink bottle, quill, and roll of parchment. He knew that everything had been enchanted with anti-cheating spells, but whether or not they had been hexed with anti-success spells was another matter. Everything seemed in order. Professor Flitwick, the Charms teacher, was helping proctor the test. The question papers soared out over the students' heads, then settled simultaneously on their desks, and the test began.

From the moment Severus glanced over the questions, he knew his biggest problem was going to be time. _How am I going to write down everything I know about these subjects in just a few hours? Just have to write fast and leave some of the fun things out, I guess._ He picked up his quill and began writing in his small, spidery script. He kept his head close to the paper so he could read the words easily.

Severus had barely finished when Professor Flitwick called, "Quills down, please! That means you, too, Stebbins! Please remain seated while I collect your parchment! _Accio!_" Severus's parchment rolled itself up and joined the others sailing towards the tiny professor. There was a moment of mirth as the rolls knocked him off his feet, and a couple of students in the front had to help him up again. Then Flitwick announced, "Very well, everybody, you're free to go!"

Severus picked up the questions paper, but instead of putting it into his book bag, he started scanning it again. The whisper of a thought had appeared in his head as he wrote his answers, and he was trying to retrieve it. Somewhere in the middle, between questions 10 and 15.

Students spilled out into the sunshine from the Great Hall. Most of Slytherin house vanished quickly, either back into their dormitories or to other parts of the castle. Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff tended to side with Gryffindor in any confrontation, and the Slytherin students had grown wary of being outnumbered.

Severus didn't notice. It never occurred to him that anything would happen here on the front lawn anyway, in full view of the castle and all the teachers. He didn't want to walk and read at the same time, so he made his way down the grassy hill to a spot not far from the lake where he could settle in the shade of some bushes. There he continued his study of the questions, trying to remember what had set off those warning bells in his head.

Finally giving it up as a lost cause for the moment, Severus rose and folded the paper, tucking it into his bag. As he started down the lawn, a voice behind him said loudly, "All right, Snivellus?"

Severus wheeled to meet the threat, but his wand was not at his hand, and in the seconds it took him to pull it from his robes, James yelled _"Expelliarmus!"_ and Severus's wand flew a dozen feet behind him. Severus dove for the wand, but an Impedimenta from Sirius threw him to the ground and knocked the breath out of him. _Two to one. Here in front of half the school it has to be an ambush and two to one._

Severus felt as if heavy weights were holding him to the ground. As he fought to get air into his lungs, focus, and rise at the same time, he heard the other two approach. He was frantically trying to think of any wandless spell he knew that was of any use in a duel.

"How'd the exam go, Snivelly?"

"I was watching him, his nose was touching the parchment. There'll be great grease marks all over it, they won't be able to read a word."

Around him, Severus could hear the giggling and laughter. Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff – probably not a Slytherin anywhere around. He managed to fight the spell enough to turn his head and look James in the face. "You… wait," he gasped. "You… wait…"

"Wait for what?" came Sirius's cool voice from the side. "What're you going to do, Snivelly, wipe your nose on us?"

"Stu…pify… Petri…ficus To…talus." The words wouldn't come out right with the magical bands constricting his chest. "You cow…ardly bas…tard. You can… go to… hell."

James was as cool as ice. "Wash out your mouth. Scourgify!"

It was a spell meant for scrubbing floors and dirty dishes, not for use against another human being. Severus suddenly felt as if stiff-bristled brushes were scouring the inside of his mouth, and his throat and nasal passages began to clog with soap. He was coughing, gagging, choking, suffocating… Above him as he struggled in panic, he heard a voice screaming as if from a great distance, "Leave him ALONE…"

Lily advanced on the scene in a raging fury. "Leave him ALONE!"

"All right, Evans?" Incredibly, in the middle of everything, James was flirting, in a low, pleasant, come-hither voice.

It had no effect on Lily. "Leave him alone. What's he done to you?"

James pondered the question. "Well… it's more the fact that he exists, if you know what I mean…"

"You think you're funny, but you're just an arrogant, bullying toerag, Potter. Leave him alone.

"I will if you go out with me, Evans. Go on… Go out with me, and I'll never lay a wand on old Snivelly again."

"I wouldn't go out with you if it was a choice between you and the giant squid," said Lily.

"Bad luck, Prongs," Sirius laughed.

The Impedimenta curse was wearing off, and Severus could finally move. Nauseous from the soap and groggy from lack of air, he began to vomit, filling his nose with suds and bile, but at least his throat was clear and he could breathe again. Realizing through his mental fog that James and Sirius had been distracted, Severus began to crawl toward his wand, still spitting out soap as he desperately inched his way forward. His fingers touched it, and he spun his arm around to point at James with a nonverbal Sectumsempra that gashed James's cheek and spattered blood on his robes.

The enraged James whirled and hit Severus with a Levicorpus, and Severus felt his legs pulled up into the air, his robes dangling about him. He heard laughter in the crowd of students and the voice he finally recognized as Lily's say, almost laughing, laughing at him… "Let him down."

"Certainly."

Severus fell in a heap, and struggled to his feet, wand ready, only to be hit from the other side by Sirius with a Locomotor Mortis that knocked him to the ground as stiff as a board. It was a hopeless battle, for whichever one he faced, the other would take him from behind. Fear and frustration knotted his stomach as he waited helplessly for what they would do to him next. Through the haze of his panic he could hear Lily's voice talking to James. Lily, who had betrayed him, sold him, given him into the hands of his enemies to be shamed, humiliated, and tortured. The demon was loose, raging inside him, and he hated her with every fiber of his being.

Then he was free again, and James was smiling at him. The condescending rich boy deigning to notice the poor trash at his feet. "There you go," James smirked as Severus struggled to stand, "you're lucky Evans was here, Snivellus…"

The demon lashed out in fury as he screamed at both of them, "I don't need help from filthy little mudbloods like her!"

Lily froze in shock. "Fine. I won't bother in the future. And I'd wash your pants if I were you, Snivellus."

James was clearly gloating as he threatened Severus from one side while Sirius covered him from the other. "Apologize to Evans!"

Lily spat like an angry cat. "I don't want you to make him apologize. You're as bad as he is…"

"What! I'd NEVER call you a…"

Severus only heard part of what followed for he was fighting to keep himself shut down and closed. He trembled with the effort to control himself, to lock down the rage, remembering this had happened once before, with Hagrid by to restrain him…

"You make me SICK!" Lily shouted at James, turning briskly on her heel and walking away.

"Evans! Hey, Evans! What is it with her?"

"Reading between the lines, I'd say she thinks you're a bit conceited, mate," said Sirius.

"Right," said James, looking around for a way to vent his own frustration. "Right…" and Severus was upside down again, held aloft by his own spell. "Who wants to see me take off Snivelly's pants?"

"Touch him again, Potter, and I turn your tongue into corkboard!"

James spun to face an infuriated Bella Black, who stood just above him on the grassy hillside, her wand pointed directly in his face and backed by a score of students from Slytherin house. "Oh look," he drawled. "The Wicked Witch of the West wants her little dog back." Casually he let Severus fall back to the ground. "I'd be happy to take you on, Bellatrix. Just you and me. Man to man."

The crowd of students was backing away from the line of fire, and some of the Gryffindors were edging around to support James and Sirius. A few students hurried up toward the castle, looking for teachers. The show had turned from amusing to dangerous.

"Funny how you want it one on one now that you're the one outnumbered, isn't it? Funny how that little fairness thing didn't concern you when you had the upper hand. You really are a bully, Potter, aren't you?" Bella advanced down the slope, wand still pointed at James. More students from Slytherin house were coming down to support her.

"_Accio wands!"_ Pushing her way through the crowd, Professors Flitwick and Slughorn behind her, Professor McGonagall advanced to the center of the ring of students. Wands flew from the hands of the confronting groups to fall in a great flock at her feet. She ignored them and addressed the crowd. "Every student involved in this display of hostility and violence is on detention. Any student who lifts a wand against another will be suspended from this school without delay. How dare you fight here! You and you," she pointed at James and Sirius, "go to my office immediately. You members of Slytherin house, you will go to Professor Slughorn's office. The rest of you will hold yourselves available as witnesses…"

She never finished. Severus, having dropped exhausted to the grass, had staggered to his feet. The pressure that had been building inside him all term now exploded. Wandless once more, he launched himself at James, knocking him down with the force of the impact, and both boys were on the grass, rolling, punching, gouging, and kicking.

The rest of the students howled with glee and rushed to surround the combatants. More students poured from the castle and the surrounding grounds, the unerring radar of teenagers telling them a fight was in progress. The three professors struggled against the pressure of the crowd, but were unable to get close enough to immobilize either James or Severus. Though exercise gave James an advantage in muscle, the two were of roughly similar build, and Severus's single-minded fury evened the odds. Every blow of fist or knee that connected on either side was greeted with whoops and cheers from the eager watchers. When Sirius tried to intervene on James's behalf, he was jumped and held by half a dozen students from three houses.

From his hut nearby, Hagrid saw the crowd and knew what was happening. He ran grunting over to the lake to toss students from his path and force his way to the center of the milling, pushing throng. He grabbed both boys by the collars of their gowns and held them at arm's length. Both twisted and struggled, trying to continue the attack, so he shook them hard as the three professors finally made it to the center. Hagrid turned to speak to Professor McGonagall, and his hold loosened. Severus was on James like a wildcat. "Prefects!" McGonagall shouted.

Remus was a Gryffindor prefect and helped hold James back, together with a prefect from Hufflepuff. Severus was in the hands of Slytherin and Ravenclaw. They glared and challenged each other across the ring of students until McGonagall could get both of them hustled back up the steps into the castle. They were taken first to the hospital wing to be treated for bloody noses and numerous cuts and bruises, and then to Dumbledore's office to answer for causing mayhem on school grounds.

Saying that Dumbledore was angry would be like saying the Sears Tower in Chicago was tall – true as far as it went, but conveying no concept of the order of magnitude involved. James and Severus were isolated at opposite ends of the Defense against the Dark Arts classroom, each under separate guard, while Dumbledore interviewed students from all the houses. Then the two were brought into his presence, James first and Severus after him to avoid the possibility of a clash on the spiral staircase.

"Master Potter, Master Snape, you will both please sit down." Dumbledore indicated chairs at opposite ends of a substantial table. Hagrid took a seat near the center. "I have been speaking with students who witnessed the altercation between you two, and it would seem that in the matter of the fist fight you, Master Snape, physically attacked Master Potter. You will both refrain from comment, Master Snape. It appears, however, that you were provoked into this attack by a series of curses inflicted upon you by Master Potter and Master Black, who will be spoken to later. Master Potter, would you explain why you cursed Master Snape?"

"I greeted him after exams. He drew a wand on me. I had to protect myself."

"Master Snape?"

"He already had his wand out. He hit me before I could turn around."

"With an Expelliarmus. Then Master Black used an Impedimenta."

"That's right."

"Let us say for the moment that you were trying to protect yourself, Master Potter. Master Snape had just been immobilized by an Impedimenta. What was the justification for you to use a Scourgify on a fellow student?"

"He insulted us."

"So you used on a helpless opponent a spell generally reserved for cleaning the bottoms of owl cages? "

"Yes, sir."

"I see. Master Snape, you deliberately attacked another student and initiated a fist fight. You will receive two days' detention. Hagrid, would you take Master Snape to your abode, run a physical examination, and discuss with him the seriousness of his offense. Master Potter, you endangered the health and life of another student with your careless and malicious use of a dangerous spell. You will remain here while we discuss the gravity of your offense and the punishment it will entail. You are in serious danger of being expelled from this school. If you would, Hagrid."

Hagrid motioned to Severus, and the two left Dumbledore's office.

"So, ya went for James Potter and ya gave as good as ya got."

"I think so."

"That's going t' be a nasty black eye. Ya want me t' get rid of it."

"I don't know. I've never had a black eye before. It could be a badge of honor. I wish I'd broken his nose. He has a nose that deserves to be broken."

"I'll reserve judgment on that. Y're not supposed t' be fighting, after all."

"Do you think he'll be kicked out?"

"Doubt it. But he'll be cleaning a lot of classrooms."

"Good."

That night began the first of the three days of the full moon, yet Severus still could not recall what had set off the warning bells in his head during his Dark Arts examination. The OWL exams continued all the next week. On Friday of the second week, Viking 1 reached Mars, but Severus was not in good enough spirits to notice. Then came the last week and preparations for the end of year and summer holidays.

During all that time, Severus and Lily did not speak even once to each other.

It was, Severus figured, the last time he would return home with a next-day train ticket and an overnight at St. Pancras church. He would turn seventeen before the end of sixth year, and then he could apparate. Once more. Once more at the beginning of sixth year, and he would be done with this drill for ever. This year, however, he decided to vary the routine.

Severus had never been to Diagon Alley, but he knew where it was and how to get there. The Underground took him to Charing Cross Road and the dingy little pub called the Leaky Cauldron. A passage through a wall, and he was in the crowded London marketplace of the wizarding world.

There was only one place he wanted to go – Flourish and Blotts. Severus spent a pleasant couple of hours going through dozens of books, finally picking out five that he thought he could afford. Four he deposited in King's Cross Station with the rest of his things, taking _Witch Trials of the Seventeenth Century_ with him to read that night and on the train.

Nana met Severus at Colne, and they slipped into an alley near the train station where she could apparate unseen to her cottage. Over tea he explained to her why he still had the traces of a black eye. "Good for you," was Nana's reaction. "You stick up for yourself."

A week later, Severus was back at his parents' house with a basket full of food that Nana prepared for him. He was planning to stay for several days, and maybe get some work done. After unpacking, he started to clean. The electricity and gas were off, but the water was still running, rusty at first from sitting so long in the pipes. Severus found a small supply of candles and decided that with coal and candles he didn't need electricity. He didn't really need candles if he rose and slept with the sun.

It was nearly two years since Eileen and Toby died, and now Severus was prepared to face the stain on the carpet at the foot of the stairs. He scrubbed it for half an hour, and it became fainter, but he couldn't get all of the blood out. As twilight sent long shadows through the house, he had a late supper and climbed the stairs to his little bedroom. It and everything else in the house seemed much smaller than he remembered.

_Go back to bed, Toby. You've had too much. You're still drunk. Sleep it off before you go out again. – Leave me be, woman! A man's got the right to go where he will and no woman standing in the way! – I won't let you! You're in no condition to be on the street. – Get out of my way!_

There was a scream and the sound of something heavy falling on the stairs. Severus was awake at once, ready to help his mother. He burst onto the landing and… there was nothing there. _A dream. I was dreaming._ He went back to bed and lay awake for the rest of the night, but the sounds didn't recur.

The second day, Severus began clearing out the storage room and sorting everything into two groups. The things he thought he would use he moved downstairs. The things he knew he wouldn't need he shifted into his parents bedroom. He was thinking of converting the storage room into a workshop or laboratory. He couldn't use the front bedroom for anything, but it didn't bother him to store things there.

That night he had the same dream of his mother falling down the stairs. This time, after the shock of waking suddenly, he lay in bed and listened. The house was silent. Severus got up and went out onto the landing, but there was nothing there. _A dream. Only a dream._

The third day Severus was in the sitting room sorting books. He was trying to think of a way to make bookcases around the sides of the room. If he continued to make money tutoring, he could afford to buy a large number of books and wanted someplace to keep them.

There was a pop that he recognized as the sound of someone apparating into the kitchen. Puzzled, Severus started towards the back of the house to see who it might be, only to meet Nana coming out of the kitchen clearly looking for him.

"There you are child. I'm glad you look presentable. We need to leave right away."

"What's happened, Nana?"

"It's your grandmother. She's had a stroke."

Together Severus and Nana apparated to Gra's house.

It was over before they got there. The stroke was a massive one, and Gra lived for less than an hour after it happened. Severus and Nana went first to the hospital in Colne, then to Gra's house where they stayed while Severus took care of the administrative details of funeral, taxes, and inheritance. Gra's neighbors knew him from previous visits and came to offer their condolences together with gifts of food. Everyone was very kind, though they seemed wary of Nana.

The funeral was in the little vicarage church. There was a plot in the cemetery there where Severus's grandfather already lay, and Gra was placed beside him. Toby and Eileen were there, too. Nana took one of Edward Snape's three suits and altered it for Severus so that he looked quite distinguished as Gra's chief mourner. Severus was amazed at the number of people who were there to pay their last respects.

Nana hosted a reception at Gra's house afterwards, and people came up to Severus all afternoon with stories about his grandmother: how she had worked as a mechanic during 'the War,' and brought trays of sandwiches to the men demonstrating during a strike at the mill, and delivered the Anderson baby when the midwife was sick with influenza. It saddened Severus to think how little he'd known about her.

For the next few weeks Severus and Nana went through the whole house. There were three basic categories – keep, sell, and give to charity. Most things went up for sale. Severus kept the books and those things that reminded him most of his grandmother, and anything that looked as if it might have belonged to Wensley.

Then the house was locked and put up for sale. Severus went back to Nana's for a few days, and finally returned to his work at his parents' home.

That night Severus dreamt again of Eileen falling down the stairs. The next morning he moved everything left upstairs that he would need into the lower part of the house. He looked through his father's meager tools and selected a heavy mallet and a crowbar.

The first swing of the mallet smashed into the stair railing and sent slivers of wood flying across the room. Carefully, methodically, Severus demolished the entire railing. Then, starting at the top, he used the crowbar to pry up every tread and riser, and finally took out the stringers with a combination of both tools.

With a pair of heavy shears, he cut away the section of carpet at the foot of the now destroyed staircase and burned it in the area yard.

After that, Severus slept without dreaming.

The debris from the staircase turned out to be very useful, for with it Severus began making the first of his bookcases. It took him six days because he had to keep undoing things that weren't fitting together right, but in the end he had a place for most of the books that had been in the upstairs storeroom. He decided that he could go through Gra's books the next summer, when the pain of her death had worn off a little.

It was then that Severus began to wander again. He spent whole days out on the moors rediscovering old haunts and the flat areas where he and his mum had dueled. He climbed the fence around the dilapidated old mill and prowled the huge workrooms with their dusty, silent machines. On the afternoon that he realized he hadn't opened his mouth to say a single word for three days, he decided to go around to Mrs. Hanson's house, only to find she was visiting her sister in Manchester. From Mrs. Hanson's, he went straight across the bridge, past the school, and to the playground where he'd first told Lily she was a witch. He sat there all afternoon and evening, until the late summer sunset tinged the northwestern sky with red. Then he went back to the empty house in the empty town where not one person knew who he was or cared. The next day he returned to Nana.

Severus spent the rest of August with Nana, working in her garden and brewing medicines. It was strange realizing that Nana was now the only member of his family left, and then it hit him that he'd been the only one left of her family for nearly two years. He started wheedling stories out of her, stories about her own parents and grandparents, and anything she knew about the Prince side of the family, too. He bought a notebook and jotted down every detail, worried that if Nana died suddenly all that information would be lost. Sudden death was a constant in life, always lurking in potential ambush.

The other thing Nana did for Severus was help him get his bearings again. After all, it was Nana who thought that 'muggle' was an ugly word, and reminded him that they were all of them people. Out there in the calm countryside of eastern Lancashire, it was easier to see the bonds that held the community together, the shared hardships that made neighbors so important. School and house rivalry seemed distant, and the whispers of 'you know…' more distant still. Severus decided that 'muggle' indeed was an ugly word, and 'mudblood' therefore uglier still. He resolved to try to talk to Lily again.

It was the end of August, and time to return to Hogwarts.


	17. Chapter 17 – Misunderstandings

**A Difference in the Family: The Sixth Year – Misunderstandings**

_Wednesday, September 1, 1976 (the first quarter)_

This time on the Express, Severus arrived and boarded early, not wanting to see or be seen by anyone. Bella and Rodolphus, of course, were not there, having finished seventh year and left the school for good. Severus doubted anyone else would come looking for him. He settled at the rear of the train and watched the scenery.

Once at Hogwarts, it was impossible to avoid the others. Severus was a little worried about meeting his house mates again after the intense embarrassment of his humiliation at the hands of James and Sirius, but it turned out that what people remembered was the fight, and he was greeted almost as a returning hero. All during the Sorting and the welcoming feast, Severus tried to stay out of conversations with the others. He wondered if Lily would even notice.

The next day was Thursday and their first Potions class of the year. This time Severus left a note in Lily's book – 'Lake. After supper. Please.' He was so nervous that he couldn't eat anything and left early to wait down by the water. He waited for two hours, but Lily didn't come.

Severus tried again on Friday with a note in Herbology. Once again, Lily ignored him. He wanted to talk to her on the weekend, but she spent most of her time in the Gryffindor common room, and when she went out into the school, she was always surrounded by friends. Meanwhile, Severus was talking to his dorm mates in monosyllables, if at all, and generally alienating everyone around him.

Sunday night, in defiance of both curfew and the bullies of Gryffindor, Severus went up to the seventh floor and sat in the corridor right in front of the picture of the Fat Lady. It was so late in the evening that the move was almost counterproductive, but fortunately Lily's dorm mates Dearborn and Macdonald were equally late.

"What are you doing here, Slytherin?" Dearborn sneered at him.

"Could you tell Evans I'm out here? I need to talk to her."

"Why don't I tell someone else you're out here and let them slap you around like they did last June?" Dearborn spat at him. "Snivellus," she added for good measure.

"You go right ahead and do that," said Severus. "Maybe it'll lure her out to watch the fun. Two beating up on one. That is Gryffindor's idea of 'fun,' right?" To Macdonald he added, "Tell her I'll stay out here all night if necessary."

The two girls whispered the password to the Fat Lady and stalked past him into Gryffindor house, but apparently something got through because Lily appeared a few minutes later in pajamas and dressing gown.

Severus scrambled to his feet. "Lily, please. I need to talk to you. I wanted to tell you I'm sorry…"

"I'm not interested."

"I'm sorry!"

Lily folded her arms across her chest as if barricading herself from him. "Save your breath. I only came out because Mary told me you were threatening to sleep here."

"I was. I would have done." Severus was talking fast, realizing that Lily didn't intend to stay. "I never meant to call you mudblood, it just…"

She refused to let him explain. "Slipped out? It's too late. I've made excuses for you for years. None of my friends can understand why I even talk to you. You and your precious little Death Eater friends…" Severus opened his mouth, but she cut him off. "You see, you don't even deny it! You don't even deny that's what you're all aiming to be! You can't wait to join You-Know-Who, can you?"

Severus opened his mouth again, but was too shocked to reply. She'd already made up her mind, and wasn't going to listen.

She lashed out again. "I can't pretend anymore. You've chosen your way, I've chosen mine."

It was irrevocable dismissal. "No…" Severus stammered, "listen, I didn't mean…"

"…to call me mudblood? But you call everyone of my birth mudblood, Severus. Why should I be any different?" And then she was gone back through the portrait into Gryffindor house.

Severus, standing there staring at the portrait entrance, felt white-hot rage rising in him. She hadn't let him complete one sentence, one explanation. Instead of finding out what he really wanted to say, she'd interrupted him again and again and supplied her own stupid, prejudiced answers. And, typical Gryffindor that she was, she was probably dumb enough to think that what she'd invented herself was what he'd really come up here to tell her. Why he'd ever thought that such a vicious, vain, cruel, irrational, prejudiced person was nice was beyond him.

A new kind of battle took place on Monday. Severus hadn't planned it, but he and Rosier were standing in the entrance hall when Lily and her friends came to breakfast. On a sudden impulse, Severus raised his voice. "You know how you get into Gryffindor, Evan? The Sorting Hat tests your intelligence. If your IQ is lower than your age, you're in Gryffindor."

Rosier snorted, then realized what was happening and went for extra points. "I thought you had a friend in Gryffindor."

"That's only because my parents wouldn't let me have a pet. If I'd had a goldfish or a turtle, I wouldn't have needed a Gryffindor. Turtles are much better companions, you know."

Lily and her friends marched by as if they hadn't heard, and Severus didn't press the point there. Later that morning in Herbology, however, he noticed that Alderton was at a table next to Lily. He walked over and ostentatiously moved Alderton's belongings to the side of her table farthest from Lily. "You need to be careful, Mina," he said. "Things can get stolen if you don't watch out." He didn't look at Lily then, but a glance later showed him her face was flushed, and she was cutting roots with a savage determination.

The third opportunity came outside Charms class. This time Severus was with Mulciber. "Al," he said in that slightly louder than necessary voice, "how can you tell a Gryffindor girl from a cobra?"

Mulciber laughed. "I don't know, Sev. How do you tell?"

"Easy. Get them to bite each other. The one that dies first is the cobra."

Going in to supper, Severus found himself face to face with Macdonald. "She wants to see you," was the message. "She says you know where."

Severus almost didn't go, but in the end curiosity got the better of him. Lily was already there, sitting on her rock, staring out across the water.

"I'm here." Severus said flatly.

Lily didn't turn around. "I want to know why you're being so mean."

"I thought I was remarkably restrained."

"You've been saying nasty things all day."

"You were pretty nasty to me last night."

"You just came to make excuses."

"How do you know, since you never let me get a word in edgewise?"

"I had a reason. I was angry. I'm still angry. Last year you called me a… you know."

"Considering what I could've called you, I still think I was remarkably restrained."

"I was trying to help you!"

"Why? Guilty conscience?"

"What are you talking about?" Lily was looking at him now.

"I thought maybe since you were teaching him all my spells you might feel guilty when he started using them on me."

"I told you. I keep telling you. I never taught him your spell."

"That's not what Potter says."

Lily blanched and paused. When she spoke again, her voice was nearly a whisper. "What did he say?"

"How you tried to teach him Levicorpus, but you were mispronouncing it, so you had to check with me about what you were doing wrong. He even told me how you were saying it."

"That's not true."

"Then how did he know?"

Lily had no answer to that, but she was determined to find one.

"Hey, Evans!"

Lily kept walking, and James hurried to catch up to her. "I was wondering if you'd like to go into Hogsmeade with me on the first weekend. I know it's weeks away, but I wanted to be the first to ask."

"I don't date liars."

James frowned. "I'm not a liar."

"No? Did you or did you not tell a friend of mine that I was passing you his spells?"

"Snivellus? You're worried about old Snivelly?"

"You did, didn't you? See. Liar."

"You know, I don't have to put up with this. There are other girls who'd be happy to date me."

"Good. Then you can stop bothering me."

"Well good riddance then," snapped Sirius that evening in their dormitory. "Ask somebody else. She doesn't deserve you."

"I don't want to ask anybody else. All I wanted to do was break them up, and now she hates me. What does she see in him, anyway?"

"Can you imagine her kissing him? His long hair getting in the way."

James threw a shoe at Sirius's head. "You're positively vile, you know!"

"I know how to capture her affections. Take a telescope. I hear you can do really kinky things with a telescope."

James stomped out of the dormitory, through the common room and past the Fat Lady, fuming and calling Sirius every name he could think of under his breath. He wished he could start over with Lily with a clean slate, but he'd bungled that relationship royally. Sirius was probably right, he should give up on Lily and date other girls. The problem was, he didn't want to date other girls. He wanted to date Lily.

On the last Saturday in September, the Marauder's Map in hand, James went looking for Severus.

It took a while for James to find Severus in a spot where there were no other students. The little dot labeled 'Severus Snape' stayed on the fourth floor in the library for nearly three hours while James waited in one of the corridors. Luckily most of the students were outside enjoying the fall weather, so when Severus finally left the library, the fourth floor was almost deserted.

"Hey, Snape!" James called as he hurried forward.

Instantly, Severus had his wand in his hand and his back to the wall, glancing quickly up and down the corridor for Sirius, Remus, and Peter. It was a reaction that would have amused James a month earlier, but now only made him angrier with himself for being such a miscalculating fool.

"I need to talk to you."

"Where's your backup?"

"I don't need backup. I can handle you myself."

"You think so? You never have before."

James held his hands up in front of him, palms open. "No wand. No backup. I just want to talk."

"In an empty fourth-floor corridor with no witnesses."

"You're not making this easy!"

"Right. I'm supposed to make your life easy."

James took a deep breath. "I just wanted to tell you that I lied to you. About Evans."

Severus eyed him narrowly. "Did Lily put you up to this?"

"She doesn't know anything about it. But she won't talk to me." James stopped. It was more than he wanted to say, certainly to Severus.

"Sounds like evidence of common sense to me."

"Look, I overheard you talking to her about your spells, and I pretended that she told me herself. I wanted to break you up."

"Now you are lying. You couldn't have overheard that. If you'd gotten close enough to hear, I'd have seen you. Lily put you up to this. Maybe you can tell me why."

"No. She doesn't know."

"Okay. You stick to that story." Severus inched away from the wall and backed down the corridor, his wand still out and ready to fight if James made a move.

James just wanted to bang his head against the wall.

It was shortly after his encounter with James that Severus remembered what had attracted his attention during the OWL exam the previous June. It was Question 10: 'Give five signs that identify the werewolf.' He'd been thinking about the full moon, and that had led to Remus's mysterious illnesses that lasted for about three days every month. Always around the time of the full moon.

Of course, the idea of Remus Lupin being a werewolf was ridiculous. If there'd been a werewolf at Hogwarts for the past five years, everyone would've known it. There'd have been attacks and deaths, and Lupin would have been discovered. No, the answer was something else, but it was connected with the moon. Severus decided that he was going to find out what it was.

In addition, Severus thought he might keep a closer eye on James and Lily. It bothered him that Lily would get James to confess to a lie when the confession was so obviously false. It was even more unnerving that James would actually pretend to apologize to him. There had to be something behind it, and knowing James, it boded no good for Severus Snape. He wished that Lily was not involved.

_Thursday, October 7, 1976 (the full moon)_

Remus wasn't in Potions, but then Severus hadn't expected him to be. All that afternoon he tried to keep at least one of the other three in sight, figuring that at some point they'd want to be with their sick friend.

"There he is again," snarled Sirius, looking over the Marauder's Map. "Right up there by the first floor windows. Just standing there looking out."

James shifted his position so that he was facing both Sirius and the castle. Sure enough, Severus was at one of the windows watching them. Then he was gone.

"Now he's coming down the stairs. He'll be at the entrance in a few seconds." Sirius tucked the map inside his robes. It wouldn't do to have other people get curious.

"We've got to distract him," said James, "send him off someplace else. We have to shake him before we can join Remus."

"I think we should take him with us. Then he'd never bother us again."

"Stop talking like an idiot." Then James brightened. "I have an idea. Give me the map. When you see him follow me, get to the willow."

The little dot labeled 'Lily Evans' was in the fountain courtyard. James set off down the lawn toward the lake, planning to double back and join her there. If all went well, he could kill two birds with one stone. Sure enough, after a minute the dot labeled 'Severus Snape' began to follow him while Sirius and Peter continued in the other direction toward the willow.

Lily was sitting on a bench studying her Advanced Potions book. James took a deep breath and walked over to her. "Hey there, Evans. Can I join you?"

The look on her face was pure disgust. "I'm studying," she said.

James sat on the wall next to the bench instead of on the bench itself. Out of the corner of his eye he caught a glimpse of black and green moving in the cloistered walk and knew Severus was there. "I just wanted you to know I tried," he said, a touch louder than he normally would.

"Tried what?"

"Patching things up with old Snivellus…"

"You are a toad! Why do you call him that? He has a name."

"You called him that."

"I was angry."

"Okay. Okay. Snape. I tried patching things up with Snape. It didn't work."

"What did you do? Lie to him and insult him again?"

"No! I tried telling him the truth… that I'd overheard you. He didn't believe me. He didn't think I could get that close."

"Come to think of it, I don't believe you either. We were out by the forest and there wasn't anyone around. How did you hear us?"

James thought fast. "It's a spell that enhances your hearing. It's like having an ear trumpet or a microphone."

"I don't believe you."

"So don't believe me. But I tried. You can ask him yourself."

"He won't talk to me and it's your fault. And I hate you. Go away."

James got up and left. Once on the lawn he took out the map. Severus wasn't following him anymore, he was headed for the lake. Lily was still sitting in the courtyard. James grinned. His plan had worked better than he'd hoped. With a much lighter heart he headed for the willow to join his friends.

Severus spent a long time by the lake, skipping stones across the water and pondering what he'd heard. It made no sense. He tried to reason out scenarios.

First he focused on the assumption that both James and Lily were telling the truth. That would mean that James overheard them talking, and Lily was unaware of it. This was the most comfortable explanation, but it had one major flaw. There was no such spell as the one James described. Not that people hadn't tried to make one. If such a spell existed, no secrets would be safe from anyone, for the distance that James claimed to be able to eavesdrop was at least two hundred yards. It would be the most coveted, sought after, and therefore most well-known spell in the wizarding world.

Then there was the possibility that both James and Lily were lying, and that Lily had given James the spells. It was simple, easy to understand given that Severus knew Lily was attracted to James, and personally very unpleasant. What it meant, though, was that the scene he'd just witnessed had been concocted by both for the purpose of misleading him. Severus didn't like this scenario at all, not least because he was sure that Lily was not that good an actress.

If James were lying and Lily truthful, there was still the problem of how he'd overheard a distant conversation, and the proposition that James was truthful and Lily lying just didn't make sense. There was always Lily's explanation – that she'd talked in her sleep – but then why would James have to make up a story about nonexistent spells?

No matter which way he looked at it, Severus could see nothing but a puzzle wrapped in contradictions.

The puzzle, and classes, kept Severus busy through the second night of the full moon, and then there was nothing to do but wait another month. He had a lot now to keep him busy. Seventh years were approaching him about tutoring for their NEWTs and fifth years about their OWLs. He had so many requests from timorous first and second years that he actually set up a little workshop where they could review and practice the material they covered each week. Slytherin house was doing very well in Potions.

Severus was doing very well in money, the only problem being that it was all galleons, sickles, and knuts. Then he hit on the idea of charging only two-thirds the fee if he were paid in Muggle money. Half-blood students were overjoyed, and purebloods so desperate that a black market in pounds and pence soon darkened the seedy teenage underbelly of Hogwarts. Or at least of Slytherin house.

Then Gra's house was sold, and Nana sent an owl to inform Severus that he now had an actual bank account with Barclay's of London. He had to go with her to sign a sheaf of papers, but the wonder of possessing a number and a passbook was something that enveloped him in a fluffy cloud of contentment for days.

_Saturday, November 6, 1976 (the full moon)_

The next full moon fell on a weekend. By great good or ill fortune, it was also a weekend when the school was allowed to visit Hogsmeade. This time Severus decided to go. This time he had money. Though most of the students talked about Honeydukes and the taverns and coffee shops, Severus knew that Hogsmeade also boasted a book store.

The sun was heading toward an early setting that afternoon, but not before the full moon rose in the deepening late afternoon sky. Severus was immersed in books, from which pleasant occupation he was summoned by screams and yells. "The Shack! The Shack is shrieking!"

Severus raced out with the others. To be a witness to the phenomenon of the most haunted spot in Britain not just once, but twice, was an opportunity not to be missed. Pressed together with the other students at a respectful distance, Severus listened again to the cries and moans of the Shack, punctuated with howls and ululations impossible to describe. The crowd cheered and shivered at the spectral sounds, and went back to Hogwarts thoroughly pleased with the day's activities.

A little later, Severus stood on the lawn in front of the castle watching the bright orb of the moon rise in the sky. The moon was full, Lupin was sick, and the Shack was shrieking. _I never thought about it before because I never went into Hogsmeade before except that one time. Does the Shack only shriek when the moon is full? And what would it have to do with Remus Lupin?_

The December full moon coincided with end of term exams, and Christmas break was full of workshops and Potions classes. The January full moon was wrapped up in beginning of term papers and assignments. Severus's daily schedule had never been so full, and he was beginning to wonder if the money was worth it. He barely had time to even think of his problems with Lily. They probably wouldn't have had time to speak even if they'd been on speaking terms.

Then January was over and the term settled in, and Severus had a chance to breathe. It was the beginning of February, Imbolc in the ancient way on the first, Candlemas in the Son's way on the second, and by great coincidence the first night of the full moon on the third. Severus thought again of the mysterious illness of Remus Lupin and decided to investigate once more.

James, meanwhile, had continued his relentless pursuit of Lily. He greeted her, consulted her, mugged in front of her and made her giggle, embarrassed himself for her pleasure and allowed her to insult him at her whim. In short, he would have been the perfect boyfriend if she had liked him even a little. As it was, he endured perpetual frustration for a shining goal held always beyond his reach.

Christmas break brought Sirius to the haven of the Potter household, but Sirius was no help because he never looked beyond the throng of Quidditch groupies. James longed for the days when Lily could trample his heart underfoot, and was eager for the new term to begin.

_Thursday, February 3, 1977 (the day before the full moon)_

Sirius stared at the Marauder's Map in disgust. "Snivellus is following us again. Why can't he keep his greasy nose out of our business?"

"Leave him alone." James was watching the spiral staircase leading from the Gryffindor common room to the girls' dormitories where Lily had just disappeared. It was after supper, and they were waiting until the room cleared to sneak out. "Besides, how can he be following us when we're in here?"

"He's outside waiting near the entrance steps. I think he wants to find Remus. I think he wants to get Remus expelled."

"You're paranoid. He doesn't know anything about Remus."

"No? How come he only follows us once a month? Answer that, Mr. Know-It-All. I'm going out to have a talk with him."

James was on his feet in an instant. "You're not going to mess with him."

"Why? Because he's your girlfriend's pet? What's she going to do, beat you up?"

"I'm serious. You're not going to hurt him."

"I'm Sirius, too. And I promise I won't lay a hand on him."

Sirius returned twenty minutes later looking like the cat that had swallowed the cream. "That's it," he said. "Trouble over."

James glanced over at him. "How'd you get rid of him?"

"Told him what he wanted to know."

"Which was…" The room had grown suddenly cold.

"I told him how to find Remus, but he thinks he's after you, too." Sirius laughed. "I said I was sick of you hanging around Lily, and that you and Remus had a secret place outside Hogwarts. I told him about the willow and the knot. I said it'd be a good thing if he caught you two together because then you'd both be expelled for going off grounds. Then you wouldn't be able to bother Lily."

"And he believed you?"

"No. Of course not. He told me what an idiot I was. I was that close to strangling him. But I think his curiosity is going to get the better of him and we'll be rid of a nuisance."

James felt his heart stop. "You sent him into that tunnel without telling him what he'd be meeting?"

"So? Serves him right for being such a nosey Parker."

"No. Curiosity doesn't deserve death. You're going to stop it."

"Hell if I am. If I could have a front row seat, I'd be in it."

There was no time to lose, and James was on his feet and out the door before Sirius finished the sentence.

As soon as Sirius went back into the Castle, Severus started down the hill toward the willow. He'd wondered about that tree. The older students remembered when it was brought in, already substantial, and planted. That was the year before Severus entered Hogwarts. Why anyone would want a whomping willow around a school was a mystery. Yet somehow Sirius Black had the key to that mystery, and it involved Remus and James. Unless, of course, there was no button, and Sirius was watching from the hill, waiting for Severus to get whomped.

_Timing. It's all timing. If I can dart in and back out again before it has a chance to hit me…_ Severus took a deep breath and ran for a great root that arched out like the entrance to a cave before plunging into the earth. The willow reared back in anger, but Severus already found and pushed the knot, and the tree froze. _Amazing. Sirius Black was telling the truth._

Under the root was a low, rough tunnel leading in the direction of Hogsmeade. Behind Severus the full moon lit the school grounds with bright silver light, but the tunnel was pitch black. Severus drew his wand. "Lumos," he said, and entered the tunnel.

James ran out across the lawn to where he could look down on the whomping willow. It stood immobile. _Let me be on time. Please let me be on time._ He raced down the hill and ducked into the tunnel. _I can't even transform. I have to talk to him, and I may have to use magic. I have to face Remus as a human._

James lit his own Lumos spell and hurried as quickly as he could along the low, uneven tunnel, reasoning that he could gain on Severus since he knew his way already. And yet there was no black-robed student in front of him, no twin light spell. James dreaded what he might find at the end of that tunnel and felt sick.

Then the tunnel rose, and James pulled himself up into a lower room of the Shrieking Shack. The door to the hallway was ajar. Beyond it he heard quiet footsteps, and a board creaked. Then there was the horrible sound of ripping, splintering wood, and a crash that made the whole house shake.

James burst through the door to find Severus frozen at the foot of the stairs, his face blank with shock, staring up into the yellow eyes of a huge, raging werewolf. The beast leaped.

James screamed, "MOVE!" and threw himself forward, tackling Severus and pulling him down away from the wolf's claws. Twisting himself around, he shoved his wand forward and yelled, "Impedimenta!" The wolf staggered back, dazed, and James jumped to his feet, pulling on Severus's arm. "Get up! Get up! We have to get out of here!"

Severus scrambled up, but the wolf was between the two boys and the hallway door. The Impedimenta was already wearing off. Severus pointed his own wand, a determined look on his face, and James, realizing what he was about to do, grabbed his arm. "Don't kill him! It's Remus!" The wolf charged, and the boys dove for the floor.

The door was in front of James now. He wheeled and sent another spell at the wolf, giving Severus time to get clear, but the second spell had less effect than the first one. After reeling for a moment, the wolf faced them, teeth bared and snarling, and started down the hallway.

"On three! One, two, thr…" Twin Impedimenta spells hit the werewolf, and James and Severus bolted through the door and slammed it shut. "Down into the tunnel! Quick! It can't follow us. It's too big."

"What about you?' Severus gasped. The wolf was clawing at the door, which couldn't hold long.

"I'll be right behind you. Move!"

Severus slipped down the hole with James on top of him as the werewolf broke through the door and thrust its snout into the tunnel after them. They ran, bent over, stumbling and tripping on the uneven floor, until they were certain there was no wolf behind them, then lit their wands and continued, bathed in the dim green light, to the base of the willow .

There, under the willow, they sat panting and gasping for breath. Severus was trembling uncontrollably, and James realized that he was shaking, too. They looked at each other, then Severus said in a tight, fierce voice, "He tried to kill me."

"He can't help it when he's changed. He doesn't know what he's doing."

"Not him. Black. Black tried to kill me. I'm going to get him. I swear I'm going to get him."

"Can't we please stop the fighting?"

"I wasn't the one who started it."

"Fine. But we don't have to fight tonight. Let's get out of here."

James led the way out of the willow and pushed the knot to let them through. The two walked back up the hill in silence. As they split up, Severus to go down into Slytherin house and James up into Gryffindor, Severus turned. "By the way," he said, "thank you. For saving my life."

"Don't mention it."

Neither boy slept well that night.

After the full moon passed, Sirius greeted Remus like a conquering hero. "You had old Snivellus messing his pants. I'd've loved to see it. Gad, what a show."

Remus shook his head. "I don't understand what you're talking about."

"Sit down," James told him. "This isn't going to be easy to listen to. And you, Padfoot, keep your mouth shut. Snape was following us. He figured out something was wrong, but not what. Sirius thought it would be 'funny' to tell him how to get past the whomping willow and into the tunnel. Told him you and I were visiting Hogsmeade without permission."

"But he didn't do it. You didn't really let him do it."

"When I got there, you and he were facing off at opposite ends of the staircase. If I'd gotten there ten seconds later, you'd have killed him. He had a chance to kill you, too, but when I asked him not to, he didn't"

Remus blanched and looked nauseous. "I've never killed anyone. All these years I've been so lucky, and I've never killed anyone. And then you!" He rounded on Sirius with an anger they'd never seen him display before. "You send someone walking right in where you know I'll have to kill him…"

"So what? It was just old Snivelly."

"Shut up!" James and Remus yelled at him in unison.

Severus sat at the far end of the Slytherin table during supper and kept his eyes on the Gryffindor four. He hadn't yet mentioned his encounter with Remus to anyone else, though he'd been weighing the pros and cons. Finished eating, he rose and left for Slytherin house. The four rose as well and followed him out.

Severus knew they were there. Halfway across the entrance hall, he turned to face them. "Isn't this a little public?" he said. "But I forgot. You like public places."

James planted himself directly in Sirius's path. "This has nothing to do with us," he said. "We're staying here. This is just about you and Remus."

Remus separated himself from the others. "I need to talk to you. Can we go outside?"

They went out onto the lawn where the moon was climbing in the east. Remus watched it wistfully, then said, "I want to apologize to you."

"What for?"

"For what happened."

"Which time?"

Remus was puzzled. "How many times did you go to the Shack?"

"Ah, that one. That's the one you don't have to apologize for. That wasn't your fault."

"I could have killed you."

"No. The werewolf could have killed me. I did get an Outstanding in Dark Arts, you know."

"So what other one are you talking about."

"Ones. Plural. The first one was having my arms held while they took my wand away from me, dragged me into an empty room, and forced slug juice down my throat."

"I wasn't in the room."

"You helped carry me to Slytherin house afterward and left me there paralyzed. The last one was watching a Gryffindor prefect sit quietly on the grass while I was drowning in soapsuds. There were others in between, but those two stand out."

"You're not making this easy."

"Why does everyone expect me to make things easy for them when they've made things so hard for me? Frankly, if I had to choose between apologizing and vomiting slugs, I'd much rather apologize."

"You hit us, too."

"Never four to one. Not even two to one."

Remus didn't know what to say. He was suddenly very tired. "Look," he said, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry for all of it. You're right. I'm weak and I went along with it. I'd give anything to be able to go back and undo it, but I can't. I know we can't ever be friends, but could we at least be not enemies?"

"Are you speaking just for yourself?"

"Just for myself."

"Okay. Not enemies."

On an impulse, Remus stretched out his hand. "Pax?" he asked.

Severus hesitated, his cold eyes glittering in the moonlight. Then he took Remus's hand very briefly. "Pax," he replied.

"Let's walk," James said as Remus rejoined them and the four started up the stairs to Gryffindor house. "Just us." He called to Sirius, who was up on the second flight already. "Remus and I are going out. We'll meet you later in the common room."

The two went back out onto the lawn under the moon. "How did it go?"

Remus thought for a moment. "Better than I deserve. He's awfully bitter. Not that I blame him. But he agreed not to be enemies."

"So we're neutral now?"

"Not you. Just me. I don't think it'll be so easy for you."

"No, guess not. But he did agree to end hostilities with you? That's encouraging."

"Good luck."

"I'll need it."

James was sitting in the common room, the Marauder's Map secreted in the book he pretended to read and an unusually light book bag on the floor next to him. When the 'Severus Snape' dot started moving through the Slytherin common room, he was up and running down from Gryffindor Tower, the bag in hand.

They met in the entrance hall. "I need to talk to you," James said between breaths. "How about in here?" He gestured to the room where the first years waited for sorting.

"I don't like that room," Severus said.

James nodded. "I don't blame you." Then, on an impulse, he reached inside his robes and took out his wand. Holding it by the tip, he offered it to Severus. "Token of good faith?" he said.

Severus took the wand. "You first?"

They entered the room, James first and Severus after. James turned, determined to see this through. "I'm putting all my cards on the table," he said.

"I don't play cards," Severus responded.

"You know, you're not…"

"Making this easy. Yes, I know."

James took a deep breath. "I like Evans. I think she could like me, but she seems to think I'm a stuck-up prick."

Severus raised his eyebrows.

"Okay! I am a stuck-up prick! But she's angry that you won't talk to her and she thinks it's my fault. And it is my fault. So I'm going to come clean." James reached into his book bag and pulled out the length of shimmering, iridescent fabric. "I got this for Christmas last year." He threw it over his shoulders, and most of his body instantly disappeared.

Severus didn't gasp, but his mouth stayed open for a good five seconds. "You have an Invisibility Cloak."

"Not really. It's just this old rag that coincidentally makes you disappear."

Severus's cough concealed a snort of laughter. The laughter was a reflex of relief. He sat down in one of the chairs. "So you wore this… thing, and followed us?"

"Right out to the edge of the Forbidden Forest. She talked about not being able to do the spell. You told her what she was doing wrong. I spread it through the whole school the next day."

Severus stood and walked over to James. Slowly, carefully, he reached out and touched the fabric of the cloak. "Do you know how rare these are?"

"Not really. My parents gave it to me. Family heirloom or something. Look, do you think you could patch things up with Lily? I know you don't like the idea of us being together, but it's only leveling the playing field. If she still doesn't like me, I'm cooked."

"I'll talk to Lily," Severus said.

The note, 'Lake - after supper,' appeared in Lily's book this time.

Lily was early, Severus on time. "What did you want?" Lily asked, cutting right to the important part.

"I had a talk with Potter today."

"Oh. What did he have to say?"

"It turns out he owns an Invisibility Cloak. He got it for Christmas a year ago."

"Do they exist?"

"This one does. He showed it to me. He thinks every rich kid has one. In his dictionary, rare and expensive are synonyms."

There was an awkward silence, Lily not wanting to ask and Severus not wanting to volunteer. Severus buckled first. "He wore it that evening when he overheard us talking."

"So I didn't tell him."

"I guess not." There was another awkward silence while Severus weighed the relative discomfort of spitting up slugs. "I… eh… was wrong. I… should have trusted you. I'm sorry."

"That's okay. An invisibility cloak. Wow. Who would have guessed?"

"So, how are your classes going?"

"Same as usual. Potions is getting hard. It's so easy to brew them, but analyzing them is a lot harder. I still don't understand Golpalott."

"Well, if you need any help…"

They didn't stay. It was cold, and it was late. Both had early classes, and there really wasn't much else to talk about.

The next day James approached Lily and timidly tried to clown for her amusement. She smiled at him, and he grinned back.

Potions was a bigger nightmare for Lily than she admitted. She'd always been good, and working with Severus had made her top in her class, but brewing and analyzing were totally different concepts, not to mention the academic theories, and Lily was floundering.

During the last class of February, Slughorn gave them the hardest assignment yet, which was the practical application of Golpalott's Third Law. Each student was given a different blended poison and required, during the course of one double period, to analyze it and come up with the antidote that would simultaneously counteract each of the poison's separate components. Severus wasn't concerned. The work was rigorous and challenging, but eminently doable. He set out calmly and methodically to uncover the secrets of his poison.

Lily was having trouble. She botched her first test and had to start over again. Then she mismeasured a vital catalytic agent and ended up with skewed results. Time was running out, and Lily was nowhere near finished.

Severus, who'd been immersed in his own work, didn't notice her panic until the class was nearly done, and Lily hadn't wanted to ask him. Their relationship was still too tenuous. He completed his assignment and looked over at her, frustrated and frazzled. Their eyes met, Severus realized what was happening and inclined his head toward his potions book, then bent and scribbled a few words.

When Slughorn wasn't looking, Lily crept over to Severus's table on the pretext of picking up more ingredients. Glancing at the page in the book, she saw written right across a list of antidotes the words _Just shove a bezoar down their throats._ Almost laughing with relief, she slipped across the room to a storage cupboard and returned a moment later with something clutched tightly in her hand. When Slughorn came to check her results and look at her antidote, she held the bezoar in front of him.

Slughorn roared with laughter. "Not exactly the solution I was expecting, Evans, but I do have to give you points for creativity."

Across the room, Lily and Severus winked at each other. For that brief moment, they were a team again.

In March it was announced that apparating lessons would begin within the week. All students who had already turned seventeen, or who would turn seventeen before the first of April, were allowed to sign up. Both Lily and Severus put their names in the first day.

Hagrid looked up from the raked and hoed plot that by autumn would become a pumpkin patch. "Hullo. Haven't seen you in a while. Y're looking reasonably fit. What're ya now, seventeen?"

"Reasonably fit," said Severus. "I suppose that's better than 'at death's door,' though there is that touch of something lacking. And yes, I have managed to survive until age seventeen. How've you been doing, Hagrid?"

"'Bout the same as always. There ain't a lot of variety in the job from year t' year. New students, new faces, same problems."

"Same old same old, I suppose. Well, Dumbledore said I should now have a checkup once a year. I think this is it, if you're not too busy."

"Won't be in about fifteen minutes. Have a seat, lad. I hear y're learning t' apparate." Hagrid bent to his seeding.

"Oh, yes. Wonderful thing, Apparation. No more train tickets and overnights in London. And I can now do magic at home without ministerial interference."

"You got somewhat you want t' do at home?"

"Little things. Improvement projects. Muggle awareness protection. Do you know that last summer I made bookcases? With a hammer and nails? I am not a carpenter."

Hagrid chuckled. "It ain't in all of us t' be handy, lad."

They went into the hut, and Hagrid checked height, weight, teeth, reflexes… Severus endured it all with patience.

"One of your jobs is managing the forest, isn't it?" Severus said as Hagrid peered into his right ear.

"Yep. And it's a full-time job on its own, it is. That's a big piece of property."

"So you've got to notice if things go wrong, like strange animals move into the area."

"Sure enough. Upset the balance, they do."

"Then if some big predator animal moved in, like a wolf, you'd be the first to have to deal with it."

"I would. Though we ain't had that problem since the winter of '54."

"No wolves at all?"

Hagrid paused. His face scrunched up in thought. "Can't say as there's been any at all. Can't say as I've seen any."

"Of course not. There wouldn't be any wolves around Hogwarts."

Later that afternoon, long after Severus had gone, Hagrid went to Dumbledore. "He's asking about wolves on the grounds."

"Dear, dear, we must see about that," was Dumbledore's response.

Dumbledore regarded the earnest student with some affection. "So you see, the whole situation has been under control for some years."

"And you can guarantee that there's never been a time when he's left that shack. Never even a close call?"

"Is there some reason, Master Snape, that you feel that you are better qualified than I to evaluate this situation? If so, I would appreciate hearing it, for I would not wish to make an error in so delicate a matter."

"No, sir."

"And do you have any concrete evidence that other students are in any way endangered?"

"No, sir."

"Ah. Then I shall have to request that you keep your suspicions to yourself. As long as you are unable or unwilling to back them up with factual evidence, then I must insist on maintaining the status quo. Do you understand?"

"Yes, sir."

Sirius Black stopped Severus on the third floor the next day, as Severus was going down from the library. "You peached to Dumbledore, didn't you?"

"Why, Black. Whatever are you talking about?"

"He had us up there for half an hour. I'm on detention. You're a little sneak squealer, and I won't forget it."

"You know, Black, you keep jumping to conclusions, and one day you're going to jump right off a cliff."

"I won't forget. I've got my eye on you."

"Oh, I'm scared, I'm scared. Look how I'm trembling."

Black stomped off, and Severus waited until his next Potions class to speak to Lily. The conversation was whispered, but that didn't disguise Lily's irritation.

"I think it's mean of you to talk about Remus that way. Think what would happen if that rumor started in the school. He wouldn't have any friends at all. And you're wrong. He just gets sick a lot."

"Sick only when the moon is full, and I bet you wouldn't find him in the hospital wing. And he wouldn't lose any friends because his friends already know. I don't want to start rumors, Lily, but I don't want you hurt either. You've got to be careful."

"He's been here nearly six full years. Nothing's happened, not even the rumor of anything happening. Sev, I think you're wrong."

Their eyes met for the first time in more than a year, and Severus felt the barriers melt and the doors swing open in his brain. For a second, just a second, he let it happen. Then he turned his gaze away. "Why can't we be friends again," he said quietly, "like we were before?"

Lily was suddenly engrossed in the potion she was brewing. "I don't know," she said. "Could we both forget what's happened? You've changed." She must have noticed the suddenly stiffening of his back and shoulders because she added, "We've both changed. We're not children anymore. We're not the same people we were then. You have other… friends, and so do I."

"They're not my friends. They tolerate me. I use them. I've only ever had one…" Now it was Severus who found the potion in his cauldron fascinating. After a minute, he whispered, "Couldn't we try? We were best friends once."

"I don't know. Let me think about it."

On Mulciber's seventeenth birthday, Avery snuck a bottle of firewhisky into the sixth year dormitory. Now all five of them, Severus, Wilkes, Rosier, Edison, and Mulciber, were seventeen, but the firewhisky was still not allowed in the dormitory, and they were joined by the underage Regulus Black, so the whole party was technically illegal.

"Here's to the Birthday Boy!" Avery said as he thrust a glass of firewhisky into Severus's hand.

Severus looked down at the glistening amber liquid and thought of his father. He himself had never before tasted anything alcoholic, and he wondered if this would do to him what gin had done to his dad. He started to hand it back. "I don't know…" he said.

"Oh, come on. One small drink isn't going to hurt you. You have to toast the birthday boy. It's customary."

Severus kept the drink. The only one who was firm in sticking to pumpkin juice was Edison, who was now generally considered the prude of the dorm anyway.

Avery raised his glass. "Gentlemen, I give you Aloysius Mulciber!"

The other five, Edison with his pumpkin juice, raised their glasses and responded, "Aloysius Mulciber!" and downed their drinks. Severus had the impression even as he drained his glass, that Regulus had done this before, then he was suddenly and totally preoccupied with the burning sensation in his throat and stomach. He began to cough uncontrollably.

"There's always a first time," Wilkes laughed as he pounded Severus on the back. "Here, have another. It'll stop the coughing."

Wilkes was right. It did stop the coughing. In fact, the little party became quite merry after that, and Severus found himself giggling at just about everything Mulciber said because he realized that Mulciber was a very funny person. The boys started a little hexing game, trying to leave marks on each others' faces.

"I know!" cried Avery. "Let's go out into the castle and see what we can find!"

Edison declined, and he managed to convince Severus to stay as well and get Regulus to bed. If Regulus had been caught outside Slytherin house clearly tipsy, they all would have been in serious trouble.

Regulus was asleep and tucked into bed (in that order) well before curfew and the return of the other four boys. Severus was still in a state where he was highly amused at everything, but Edison was gradually pulling him back down to earth. Then Avery and the others came bursting into the common room with the air and noise of escaping a hue and cry, becoming more sedate once they were safely inside Slytherin, and finally sauntering into the dorm laughing.

"Did you see the look on her face?" Avery crowed. "I thought I'd die! Where'd you ever come up with that spell, Al?"

"A little thing I picked up at Zonkos's, though I doubt the originator intended it to be that… revealing," said Mulciber.

Wilkes was giggling like a maniac. "I thought she'd have a fit when she realized it was under her robes, but the unbuttoning charm… If only it'd gotten one more button. What a treat!"

"What are you talking about?" Edison asked.

"Girls!" Wilkes and Rosier yelped together, and Rosier continued. "We went up to the fifth floor and caught some Gryffindors and Ravenclaws going up to the towers, mostly half-breeds and mudbloods, including Ferguson." He made a motion over his chest to indicate how well-endowed Ferguson was. "Al has these disrobing spells…" He chuckled.

"I swear," howled Wilkes, "it was all the way down to here before she realized her robe was being unbuttoned. And lifting that Gryffindor's robes from behind 'til you could see… Whew!"

"And the tickling curse! You'd think she had a bee in her robes the way she was jumping around!"

"I didn't want her to jump around," laughed Mulciber. "I wanted her to take the robes off. Kind of like a birthday present to me."

"We could have, too," Rosier explained, "because Ken had them boxed in on the landing. He's got this herding spell, and where they were, no one could hear them. Another ten, fifteen minutes and – paradise!"

"What Gryffindor girls?" Severus asked giggling, his attention finally shifting from the general laughter to four comments earlier.

"The plump one," Avery said. "What's her name? Macdonald. She and Ferguson were the oldest there. The others were younger. They'd have put on a great show."

"Why didn't they?" Edison asked, quiet and calm. Of the group he was the only one who hadn't laughed.

"Oh, that," said Mulciber. "A group of Ravenclaw boys came by and saw what we were doing. We had to run. It was great fun, though."

The four continued to relive the incident to their own great amusement, and to Severus's as well, imitating, in a clownish way, the motions of the girls as they struggled to keep their clothing in place despite the disrobing spells. Then, suddenly, Severus was asleep, and didn't wake until the next morning, not really certain how he'd gotten into his own bed.

It wasn't until three days later that Severus noticed there was anything wrong. Lily had spent most of their afternoon Charms class working with Potter and Lupin, but Severus was hoping to talk to her alone during the afternoon break. He followed her discretely downstairs, and when she broke off from the others to head toward one of the courtyards, he called softly, "Lily, wait a moment." To his surprise, she tilted her nose up and stalked on as if she hadn't heard him.

"Lily! Lily, wait," Severus called again, with as little response. He caught up to her at the entrance to the cloistered walk. "Lily, is something wrong?"

She glared at him. "I don't want to talk to you," she stated firmly. "I hate the lot of you."

"Hate me? what did I do?"

"You're just like them."

"Like who?"

"Birds of a feather," Lily said flatly, and stomped past him into the courtyard.

Severus ran after her, his temper beginning to rise. "What are you talking about? You know, Lily, it might help if you explained to me what I did that made you angry. I'm not a mind reader, you know. Lily! I thought we were supposed to be friends? Best friends?"

Lily spun to face him, walking sideways, almost backwards, across the courtyard. "We are, Sev, but I don't like some of the people you're hanging around with! I'm sorry, but I detest Avery and Mulciber! Mulciber! What do you see in him, Sev, he's creepy! Do you know what he tried to do to Mary Macdonald the other day?" She backed into a pillar and stopped there, scanning his face.

The memory was there – fuzzy, but there. "That was nothing," Severus said. "It was a laugh, that's all…" It had certainly seemed amusing while he was listening to it.

"It was Dark Magic, and if you think that's funny…"

Severus began to seethe, the demon rising in him. It was the same prejudice, the same double standard that Lily had been throwing at him ever since the Sorting Hat put her in Gryffindor. The double standard that Dumbledore and McGonagall encouraged. What his dorm mates had done hadn't actually hurt the girls, not like putting Bertram Aubrey in hospital or trying to suffocate Severus in soapsuds, or sending him to face a werewolf and almost certain death. But when Gryffindor did something, it was a boyish prank, and when Slytherin did something, usually something less serious, all of a sudden it was Dark Magic.

"What about the stuff Potter and his mates get up to?" he spat at her, jumping over the logic and going straight to the heart of the matter.

"What's Potter got to do with anything?" said Lily.

_Everything. The different ruler you use when you measure Potter has everything to do with it._ The words didn't come out right, though, and Severus found himself beginning to stammer again as he listed the reasons she already knew. "They… sneak out at night. There's… something weird about that Lupin…" _Like he's on page three-ninety-four of our third year Dark Arts text…_ "Where does he keep going?" _Think, Lily, think._

"He's ill," said Lily, as if she were reciting a memorized passage. "They say he's ill…"

_They! Potter and Black most likely!_ "Every month at the full moon?" _Remember what I told you!_

Lily was suddenly as cold as ice, distant, a stranger. "I know your theory. Why are you so obsessed with them anyway? Why do you care what they're doing at night?"

_Because you let them get away with murder. Because Dumbledore and McGonagall let them get away with murder. Because if you're rich and attractive and in the right clique, the whole world lets you get away with murder._ "I'm just trying to… show you they're not as… wonderful as everyone seems to… think they are."

"They don't use Dark Magic, though," Lily retorted, and before his response could explode on her, she let her voice drop to almost a whisper. "And you're being really ungrateful. I heard what happened the other night. You went sneaking down that tunnel by the Whomping Willow, and James Potter saved you from what ever 's down there…"

Severus recoiled in livid shock. Dumbledore had forbidden him to speak of the incident, but he'd apparently placed no such restrictions on Potter, Black, or Lupin. "Saved?" he spluttered. "Saved? You think he was playing the hero? He was saving his neck and his friends' too!" He couldn't comprehend how she could be so unfair. "You're not going to…" he stammered. "I won't let you…"

Lily's fury blazed now. "Let me!" she screamed at him. "Let me!"

They glared at each other, and Severus felt the sluice gates rise as everything in him seemed to open and pour out. There had never been any doubt who in their relationship controlled whom, and he had never really questioned that it should be so. "I didn't mean…" He was stammering again. "I just don't want to… see you made a fool of…" He paused. _Cards on the table. That's what Potter said._ "He fancies you, James Potter fancies you! And he's not… everyone thinks… big Quidditch hero…"

A look of surprise and then of comprehension illuminated Lily's face. She seized her advantage and held onto it. "I know James Potter's an arrogant toerag. I don't need you to tell me that. But Mulciber's and Avery's idea of humor is just evil. Evil, Sev. I don't understand how you can be friends with them."

Severus relaxed into the sense of ease and peace that Lily's eyes always gave him. He had missed it for so long. Lily was there, talking to him, letting him look in her eyes, and what was more, she'd not yet succumbed to Potter. The world still held hope.

Lily moved away from the pillar, Severus beside her. "Will you stop seeing them, Sev? Can you do that?"

"It isn't that easy, Lil. We live together. We sleep in the same dorm. Well, not Avery, of course. Could you just stop talking to your dorm mates?"

"My dorm mates are nice."

"So are mine, sort of. Most of the time now, at least. Lil, that day was Mulciber's birthday, and Avery brought firewhisky into the dorm. They were all a little tipsy…"

"It isn't just that one time. They're always doing things like that. Promise me you'll try to stay a little distant from them? Please?"

Severus promised. The odd thing was that he was so preoccupied with tutoring for the upcoming OWLs and NEWTs that his dorm mates didn't even notice that he was coming in right at lights out and leaving early. Nobody questioned him, and nobody minded.


	18. Chapter 18 – Bait, Hook, and Catch

**A Difference in the Family: ****Bait, Hook, and Catch**

**The Sixth Year – The Bait**

And so the sixth year at Hogwarts ended. Severus asked for and received permission to apparate home several times during the last week in order to clear out the things he'd left stored in Slytherin house over the years, and he took advantage of the trips to pay brief visits to Nana. Apparation was a wonderful thing, and he'd turned out to be quite good at it.

Now that he was allowed to perform magic outside of Hogwarts, Severus set about seriously remodeling his home. He lined the walls of the sitting room with bookcases, making it smaller and darker and more like a private study. Then he built a new staircase that ended behind one of the bookcases, a sort of secret passage. Upstairs in the now empty storage area he installed tables, cabinets, and a sink, turning it into a proper laboratory for both potions and chemistry.

With all finally prepared, Severus apparated to London. It was a heady thing to have money. He wasn't sure where to go, so he went to the Tower of London, where he was sure there was a tourist information desk. There he found that Charing Cross Road was the best place for books. He wandered in and out of rare book shops until he discovered his favorite building in the whole country, for it contained floor after floor after floor of books. Severus restricted himself to geometry, physics, astronomy, and chemistry, then apparated home, assuring himself there'd be many more visits.

Another day he went to Diagon Alley to buy books at Flourish and Blotts. While there Severus noticed a display of broomsticks, and paused to think. It'd been a while since his disastrous classes, and he was older and more self-assured. Maybe… After all, it might be wise to keep a broom at home. Just in case. He lied to the shop keeper about a younger brother and bought a lightweight beginner's broom to practice with on the moors outside town.

The broom turned out to be easier than Severus expected. He went out onto the moor in the evening when he was certain not to be seen, and tried to recall everything he'd ever been told about handling a broom. Whether it was his own greater maturity or the fact that the broom hadn't already been used by hundreds of other students, Severus found that he could rise and land without losing control and that he could navigate short distances without the ride becoming too bumpy. Not great, but serviceable, and so he was content.

Then there was Voyager. Not as glamorous as Apollo or Skylab, nor as immediate in its results as Viking and Venera, Voyager nonetheless was a scientist's dream. Severus practiced his geometry and physics calculating the trajectory that would take the twin probes to Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. The thought of seeing photographs of something more than two and a half billion miles away was intoxicating.

Severus was upstairs working in his laboratory one sunny day in the second half of July when a beautiful tawny owl flew up and beat her wings against the window. _Who would send me an owl?_ He opened the window to let her in, and tipped her a few knuts. He had the impression she would have preferred a live mouse, but he kept no live animals in the house, certainly not mice.

The letter was from Narcissa. Her whole future happiness was at stake. She was desperate. She was at her wits' end. She had no one to turn to except him. If he wouldn't help her, she would have no other recourse but to die.

_Rich kid drama. No one falls for this stuff except people who really want to and people who watch too many movies. And people who have too few good memories._ The return owl assented to a meeting and gave instructions on how to find the house. The next afternoon, Severus heard the pop of Narcissa apparating into his kitchen.

Narcissa was clearly not prepared for Severus's house. She was uncomfortable with its smallness, its shabbiness, its uncared for look. He persuaded her to sit down on the tiny, worn sofa in the sitting room and prepared tea for her in a chipped cup. She sipped at it graciously.

"I can't stand it. I can't stand being without him. My parents are opposed. His parents are opposed. I'm at my wits' end. I need a spell; I need a potion. I need something that will turn them around and allow us to marry. You're the only spell maker I know. Can't you do something for us?"

"I might be able to do something in the spell way, though I'm not sure what, but I have no idea if there's a potion that will do what you want it to. My grandmother would know. She's made potions for the district all her life. If there's something that can help you, she'll know what it is.

"Oh… You have a grandmother?" was Narcissa's reply.

Nana's cottage was classic, small but perfect in its simple, neat way, and Narcissa loved the garden. She and Nana were polite to each other, and yet there was a distance of blood and heritage that both were intensely aware of that created a certain frostiness between them. It made Severus wonder if Narcissa had ever before been in the position of feeling inferior.

"I do not," Nana said as they inspected the black hellebore and aconite, "brew potions to deceive."

"Oh, no, Mrs. Prince. Not deceive. Just incline to our point of view."

"It would help if I knew why your points of view differ."

"Our fathers have different ideas on a… political issue. It has nothing to do with Lucius or myself, and everything to do with keeping the families apart. I hate politics so. I just want us to be happy."

Later they took tea on the lawn. Nana was using an elegant tea service that Severus had never seen before, and he suspected she kept it packed away, bringing it out for special occasions.

"There is a potion for the healing of psychic wounds that may help you. It dispels bitterness and resentment, and speeds recovery from spiritual injuries. It is a complex potion that will take about six weeks to make and is somewhat expensive. I could not guarantee that it will accomplish what you wish, but it may make your persuasion more successful."

"Oh, money is no problem. We're just so happy to have any help at all. You're too kind."

Narcissa arranged to return in August.

It was a terrible summer. Even in the backwater of eastern Lancashire, they learned of accidents and attacks all through the wizarding world. It was as if the whole country was under some kind of evil spell.

Homes were destroyed by lightning, or by the explosion of gas mains. Families drowned in freak boating accidents, or were buried in mudslides of huge coal slag mountains. Closer to home, mobs of muggles in villages of Yorkshire and Cumberland attacked wizards and witches, driving them from their houses or, in one instance, killing them. The Ministry of Magic was frantic, trying to contain both the disasters themselves and the spread of news. Muggles were being attacked as well, and here the cover-up was more difficult.

Severus increased the protective spells around his house, extending them to neighboring buildings. Most of the narrow street was now empty of inhabitants, and he was quite pleased to keep it that way. The only thing needed was to ensure that the local council ceased to notice that the end of the road existed. It was at the very edge of the village, and drew neither electricity nor gas, and so the spells, while complex, did not involve a large area. He urged Nana to guard her cottage as well, but she didn't see the need.

Voyager 2 launched on August 20. Severus thought it fascinating that the second probe would leave Earth before the first one, but the logic was unassailable. Voyager 1 would be on a faster trajectory, and would arrive first at Jupiter, assuming all the physics had been done properly. Severus had no doubts. He set himself to wait patiently for a year and a half until he could start seeing the pictures.

Narcissa, too, came in August. She went directly to Nana this time, and Severus wouldn't have known of her visit if he hadn't been visiting Nana at the same time. They had a pleasant luncheon on the lawn, the weather being beautiful that day, and Narcissa left with a precious vial of potion for the healing of psychic wounds.

The summer ended far too soon, and it was time to return to Hogwarts. Seventh year, last year. Severus was looking forward to being out of Hogwarts for good. Except for Lily, he had no happy memories of the place. He knew it would be busy, with classes and tutoring, and preparing for his NEWT exams, but he was much more interested in chemistry and calculus, and was already trying to figure out how one could be employed in a laboratory without having a university degree.

On September 1, for the first time, Severus apparated directly to King's Cross Station to take, for the last time, the Express to Hogwarts.

**The Seventh Year – The Bait (continued)**

Severus made his way to the Slytherin club car and sat toward one corner. Rosier joined him after a moment. "Feels funny being the top class, doesn't it?"

"A bit," Severus answered. "How was your summer?"

"Terrible. Haven't you heard of all the attacks? No one's safe."

"We got some of the news. But it's pretty safe where we live."

"Really? I thought a couple of the worst incidents were near you."

Severus wondered how Rosier had any idea where he lived. "North of us," he said. "Quite a bit north of us. But I did fortify the house better. You can't take chances."

"The Ministry twiddles its thumbs and does nothing while our people are dying," Rosier continued in a low, tense voice. "We need leadership that really leads. Someone who'll help us fight back."

"Does someone like that exist?"

Rosier bent closer. "Not only exists, but is already doing something about the problem. You've heard of him. We've spoken of him before. You know… His followers don't speak his name. They call him the Dark Lord."

"I remember. I've only heard a little about him."

"They don't spread it around much. Only the most trustworthy. The Ministry is against him, of course."

Rosier talked about the Dark Lord for a good part of the trip.

Severus looked for Lily at the Sorting. He found her, too, sitting next to James Potter. He almost got away without being seen, but wasn't quite fast enough.

"Severus! It's good to see you. How was your summer?"

The odd thing was that for all those years they'd never spoken in front of other students, preferring to keep their friendship a secret, and now that the friendship was diminished Lily felt comfortable bringing it into the open.

"It was all right. A little dull. How was yours?" He nodded to James. "Potter."

"Snape," James replied with the same almost formal nod.

"It was all right. A little dull." She laughed. "See you in Potions, probably."

"Yeah, Potions." And that was the extent of the conversation. Severus sat with Rosier at the Slytherin table, thinking of his promise to Lily of the year before. There wasn't a lot to talk about.

Before the first month was over three students, one from Gryffindor and two from Ravenclaw, were called to Dumbledore's office because of attacks on their families. Endorpha Reedbinder's uncle was actually killed by crazed wizards in a rampage outside the Ministry of Magic itself. The whole school was on edge, and the seventh years in Slytherin house formed a special group to discuss the situation.

"We have to generate support for this Dark Lord who's actually doing something to halt these attacks," Wilkes insisted at one of the first meetings.

"But we don't really know who's behind it." This was from Mordechai Benedict, and several others agree with him.

"Muggles are behind it!" Wilkes insisted. "Muggles and muggle-borns. Do we have to wait until there's not an old pureblood family left before we recognize the danger? Even the half-bloods come from old families, and they're in danger, too."

Severus agreed that some action should be taken, though he stood with the group that felt caution was needed in assigning blame.

Then, as the October moon waned into nothing, Dumbledore called Severus into his office.

**The Seventh Year: The Hook**

_Tuesday, October 11, 1977 (one day before the new moon)_

"Master Snape, you will not apparate!"

"She's my grandmother!"

"And she has died. And we will go to her as quickly as possible. But you will travel with me. You will not apparate alone. You will go with me by Portkey."

"You're trying to control what happens!"

"I am not ashamed to admit it. You will not apparate into the middle of a volatile situation without backup or without someone who can control you. We do not yet know the full extent of what has happened."

"No, an angry mob just burned my grandmother to death in her own home, but I guess that's not explicit enough for you!"

"You are going nowhere until you have better control of yourself." Dumbledore nodded to Hagrid, who stood guard by the door.

"Lad, ya got t' be calmer. Ya go running off halfcocked and y're just going t' make the thing worse. The first thing we got t' do is find out just what did happen. Then ya can decide the next step."

"They will pay. I swear, they will pay."

"That is not for you to decide."

"You don't understand, do you Headmaster! I don't have any family left! She was the last living relative I had!"

"And you will not dishonor her memory by randomly attacking the innocent."

"You are not going to stop me! You are not… going to… stop…" And then Severus was sobbing like a child, with Hagrid's arm around his shoulders as he was pulled down onto one of the chairs in Dumbledore's office. "Oh, Nana… Nana…"

The Portkey took them first to the hospital to talk to an earnest young physician. "You're the grandson, right. I know she lost her daughter in a car accident. A sorry business, sorry business. Matter for the police, of course. I can assure you she suffered little pain. She was asleep. They found her body, well what was left… I'm sorry. They found her body still in the bed… well as near as… I'm sorry. She appears to have been still asleep in bed when she died, which means she never realized what was happening…"

"How am I supposed to believe that?" Severus confronted Dumbledore outside. "A mob surrounds her house and sets fire to it and she doesn't even wake up? That's not my grandmother. That's not Nana."

The police had little more to add except that eleven people were in custody, all of them having admitted to setting the fire. Severus wanted their names, but that was against policy until he'd consulted a solicitor. Dumbledore steered him carefully towards the door.

Then, finally, they visited the house. Nothing was left except a charred shell. The plants that stood next the house were gone, though the rest of the garden was intact. More to the point, the whole village was silent. No one, not one person, dared approach Severus or the tall wizard with the long beard and pointed hat. If there was an image of an avenging angel, it was Dumbledore.

The funeral was yet another problem. The local pastor was not sure that Nana deserved to be buried in consecrated ground. There not being other ground in which she could be legally buried, Severus was understandably upset. Dumbledore undertook to mediate between the inflexible church and the distraught boy, and ended up making enemies on both sides. It turned out there was a small, freethinking columbarium in Clitheroe, and Nana's urn was placed there, she already having been 'cremated.'

A week after having left, Dumbledore and Severus returned to Hogwarts. Dumbledore was conscious of a situation that had not been handled well. Severus went directly to Rosier to ask what he could do to assist the Dark Lord.

Severus had more or less called a truce with Remus Lupin and with James Potter, but that truce did not extend to Sirius Black. Nor did it extend to Peter Pettigrew, but since Peter was such a nonentity, no one cared. The basic bottom line was that in addition to everything else, Severus and Sirius were still at war.

Once again Severus found himself busy with requests from fifth year students for assistance in preparation for their OWLs. Now he was paying more attention to each student's potential usefulness in the coming muggle war, passing on names and information to Rosier in addition to simple tutoring. To one student in particular, however, Severus gave special attention, promising to help him not only pass his OWLs, but learn how to create spells and invent potions. That student was Regulus Black.

It was the end of October and the weekend of the first trip into Hogsmeade. Most of the students at breakfast were eagerly discussing their day's plans as Severus rose and walked over to his new protégé.

"Are you ready? The earlier we get started, the more you can work on."

The younger student, whose thick black hair and moody good looks unmistakably proclaimed his house and lineage, grinned and said, "Sure. Right now?"

"Why not?"

They walked past the Slytherin table and out the doors into the entrance hall. As expected, they were followed.

"Hey, Snivellus! Where are you going with my brother?"

"Your brother? Oh, of course, Black. Silly of me not to have noticed."

"You keep your greasy fingers and your dark magic away from Regulus or I'll pulverize you with my bare hands."

"The Headmaster will certain want to hear how a Gryffindor student is threatening Slytherin students. Especially considering the situation in the world at large. We don't want fighting in school."

"There'll be fighting if you keep corrupting my brother."

"Leave me alone, Sirius," interjected Regulus. "You don't even live at home any more. You don't have any authority over me."

"Here. What's going on here?" Hagrid stood in the doorway to the Great Hall. Now he advanced to plant himself between Sirius and Severus.

"This Gryffindor student was threatening and attempting to intimidate us when we were just looking for a quiet place to review Regulus's Charms and Potions work. We'd like him to be ordered not to follow us." By now James, Lily, Remus, and Peter also appeared. Severus glanced at them and a note of bitterness entered his voice that gave his words added sarcasm. "Maybe our Head Boy and Head Girl could exercise a little of their authority for the protection of the students at large, and keep this 'person' from accosting us in the halls."

"We'll take care of this, Hagrid," said James quickly. "Come on, Padfoot. Let's go back to the common room and talk about this."

Reluctantly, Sirius allowed himself to be pulled away, while Severus and Regulus continued outside to work on spells.

"It's a trap, Prongs! You've been to our house in London. You've seen all that stuff we have. Regulus has always been interested in the dark side of magic. But it was just a kid's interest. Now Snivellus…" Sirius saw Lily's glare and met her eyes in defiance. "…Snivellus is trying to pull him down into this Death Eater business and make him a servant of their Dark Lord, too. And he doesn't even care about Regulus. He's doing it to get back at me!"

"Why, Padfoot," James said smoothly, "whatever would Snape want to get back at you for? It isn't like you ever did anything to him."

"But this isn't me! It's Regulus! He can come after me with any curse he's got and I'll take him on man to man. But if he hurts Regulus, I'll kill him!"

James watched Sirius, a worried frown between his eyebrows. "Man to man," he said. "I'm not sure. Sometimes I wonder, if we ever had taken him on one to one, who would've won."

"I can tell you that," said Lily quietly. "He would've won. He's that good. He never used all his spells on you. I can also tell you that he never wanted to fight. Everything he did was in response to something you started. So now, please, leave him alone. He's already had enough trouble for the whole year, and it isn't November yet."

James slid over on the sofa so he was closer to Lily. "I've already promised. No fighting. We can still talk to him, and to Regulus, but I've sworn off curses for good."

"I haven't," Sirius snarled. "If he doesn't leave my brother alone, he's going down."

The interviews with Dumbledore lasted most of the afternoon.

"Master Black, you stated within the hearing of Hagrid that you would pulverize another student with your bare hands. Do you not consider this a threat?"

"The slimy git…"

"You will not use such language in my presence."

"He's teaching my brother the Dark Arts. He's recruiting for this Dark Lord, this evil sorcerer. I'm not letting Regulus get caught in it."

"Would it not be more to the point to inform the teachers or me of this? Do you think we are incapable of handling this situation?"

"Professor, you don't know how sneaky he is. He was close to my cousin Bella for years. She's gone off and joined these Death Eaters, and they've got their sights set on Regulus. I'm not going to let it happen."

The next interview was easier, though no more successful. "You have been friends for many years. Do you not think, Master Potter, that you could speak rationally with Master Black and convince him not to take matters into his own hands. If the conflict on the outside comes into Hogwarts, we shall have trouble indeed."

"I've been trying, but when Sirius cares passionately about something it's hard to derail him. He's really worried about his brother, and it's against his nature to sit back passively and watch things happen."

The third held more promise. "You used to be quite close friends, Miss Evans. No, do not look shocked. We have known about it for years, and it has been an excellent association for both you and him. Now I understand that you have formed other emotional attachments, quite natural too, but it has removed a means of reaching Master Snape."

"I'm sorry, Professor. I don't think I ever had that much influence on Severus. We'd talk, and he'd listen, but generally he did what he wanted. If I'd had any effect on him, there wouldn't have been so much hexing and cursing."

"Ah, Miss Evans. I fear you seriously underestimate your own role in the past six years. Could I persuade you to talk to him and find out how seriously attached he is to this Dark Arts group?"

"I'll try. I don't think he'll tell me much, though."

And then the final one. "The accusation is a serious one, Master Snape, that you would teach Dark Arts to another student and actively recruit him into a group bent on guerilla warfare within our world."

"I don't know what they're talking about, Professor. I tutor the others in Slytherin for their OWLs, their NEWTs, and their regular exams. I've been doing it for years. No one's ever accused me of promoting the Dark Arts before. To tell the truth, I think he's upset because he doesn't want someone like me to be a friend of his brother's. They are an old pureblood family, and I am a half-blood. It's just that he can't admit that kind of prejudice to you, so he has to find some other reason. The Dark Arts business is just ridiculous."

At the end of the day, Dumbledore called on Hagrid.

"He frightens me, Hagrid. He truly frightens me. Of all of them, he was the one I had no feeling for. If I did not already know he was lying to me, I would not know he was lying to me. How can one so young be so accomplished at this kind of deception?"

"Seems you asked that question before, sir, and seems I gave you the same answer. Ain't that what you been teaching him to do?"

"Ah, yes. I do recall. And I also recall saying that I had not anticipated that he would be so good at it. Tangled webs, Hagrid. Tangled webs."

A December owl brought an invitation from Bella to spend Christmas in London. Severus's acceptance went out by return owl. Even if he was in a servant's room on the fifth floor, or ate all his meals alone, he would still be living in London near Charing Cross Road. There were many worse ways to spend the holidays.

He was in for the biggest surprise of his life. When Severus arrived at the Black mansion, he was greeted warmly by Bella's parents, and his meager belongings were taken to one of the guest bedrooms. It was so grand, he hardly dared touch anything. Even the house-elves were polite.

That evening he was asked down to before-dinner drinks, and Mr. Black insisted that he have a glass of sherry. Severus's initial awkwardness at having to come to dinner in his school robes was quickly dispelled by the kindness of the family, and his reticence at drinking alcohol was pooh-poohed as well. Mr. Black commented on the boredom of the school wardrobe and recommended a tailor. Mrs. Black assured him that sherry 'doesn't really count.' By dinnertime Severus felt a relaxed sensation around his mouth and shoulders, and talking had become much easier. Which was good, because Mr. Black asked so many questions. Severus actually had answers for him.

"My mother's family? Landed gentry until 1485, when they chose the wrong side at Bosworth. That's how we ended up in Lancashire. There are some things magic can't fix. But they controlled the Pendle district for generations, Even now we're well-known, that is until the recent… unpleasantness…

"Making new spells isn't glamorous work. It takes painstaking research and hours of experimentation. You have to envision the spell, develop an incantation, adjust for variance in voice and delivery…

"I don't think I would call Dumbledore the greatest Headmaster Hogwarts has ever had. He's made some serious errors since I've been there, and his record regarding improvement of the curriculum is certainly eclipsed by that of Phineas Nigellus."

Severus went to bed that night thoroughly convinced that the Blacks were the most civilized, intelligent, and respectable family in Britain.

The Black evaluation took place between Bella and her parents after the rest of the household was asleep.

"He's more intelligent than I thought he would be," said Mr. Black. "You ask him for an opinion, and he actually has one, one that he can back up with evidence. And he thinks fast on his feet. Do you think he was telling the truth about the spells he created?"

"Rodolphus said he and Rabastan got caught in an earthquake spell when Snape was second year. I'd say anyone who could make an earthquake when he was twelve could do everything he talked about tonight." Bella was clearly proud of her own protégé, and wanted her parents to know it.

"I really think," interjected Mrs. Black, "that you should take him to be fit for some new clothes. He would be quite presentable if he had something decent to wear. I mean, he already knows something of how to behave, better than some of our acquaintances, and it's a shame that people would be judging him on his clothes."

Mr. Black did, in fact, take Severus around to his tailor to arrange for formal robes as well as formal and semiformal muggle dress suits. Severus was proud (and immensely relieved) that he had enough money to pay for the clothes himself, though he mentally calculated how much extra tutoring he would have to do to recoup the amount he was spending. It was more than made up for by a gala night at the ballet, to which he was permitted to escort Narcissa. That he helped arrange a tête-à-tête between her and Lucius was just icing on the cake.

At the ballet, at the theater, at dinners with the Blacks and their friends, Severus found that he was meeting more and more wizards who supported the Dark Lord and his agenda for wizarding Britain. He was moving in a rarified atmosphere, and the effects were heady.

The general consensus about Severus, never divulged to him, was that he was a remarkably talented young man, and something of a social climber. So unfortunate about his father's family, though. The reports back to the Dark Lord were universally favorable.

Severus and Lucius also got together several times over the Christmas holidays. Some of it was about Narcissa, but a lot of it was about spells. Lucius had focus and discipline, but he lacked any background in the sciences.

"I don't understand why we can't just make an eavesdropping spell."

"Sound waves. Sound is disturbances in the air that move in wave-motions. As they radiate outward from the source of the disturbance, they dissipate and weaken. You have to have a way to collect and funnel… Do you understand this?"

"No. But you do. That's all we need, isn't it?"

"I thought you wanted to learn how to do this."

"You handle the theory. Show me the practice."

After several tries with material that didn't work, wool being particularly bad, Severus hit on a spider web-like filament that could radiate out in a cone shape to channel sound waves to a point in space just in front of the caster. Since it was a delicate mesh, it was nearly invisible, and would collapse into a tiny ball in an instant. The incantation took awhile to devise as well, but ultimately Autiarachnon did the trick.

It had taken three days. Lucius went away from the experience with a valuable spell, a deep respect for the art of spell construction, and the wish that he'd been trained to do this when he was younger.

One day shortly after Christmas, Severus managed to escape the Black home and go to South Kensington, to Imperial College. Since it was the Christmas break, most of the buildings were closed. He did manage to get some information about submitting an application which, on the whole, was extremely depressing. He'd attended no accredited grammar school, had taken no math or science courses, had not passed his O-Levels and would not sit for A-Levels, and was in every sense not qualified for admission

_Field work. I could volunteer for field work and get experience. I could get a job in a chemist's shop and prove how good I am at preparing medications._ Severus sat for a few hours in the Natural History Museum trying to figure out a way around the massive obstacle to his dreams. _How can you be a scientist if you don't go to university, and how can you go to university if you've never been to a real school?_ The doors to the future were closing, and he hated Hogwarts.

Severus returned to school with the knowledge that in six months he would leave Hogwarts for good, and he had nowhere to go. He could never work for the Ministry of Magic, a thought so distasteful that it made him ill just contemplating it. He could get a job in a shop, or deal in potions like Nana. Maybe, since he'd actually taught himself some real math, he could work in a bank… But he didn't want to work in the muggle world. Muggles were the problem, not the solution.

Regulus had no such concerns. He came from a rich family and assumed there would always be money. "You could buy a yacht and sail around the world."

"I hate water and can't swim."

"You could betray rich widows in Alpine ski resorts."

"Ditto mountains. Ditto skiing."

Their conversation solved no problems, but at least it lightened the mood.

"I," Regulus announced, "shall join the ranks of the Dark Lord and fight for the freedom of our people. Can there be any nobler occupation than the struggle against oppression? To avenge the injuries inflicted upon us by cruel tyrants?"

Severus fought to close out the image of Nana's burned cottage. _Anger destroys concentration. Vengeance is a dish best served cold. They will pay for killing Nana. They will pay for trying to kill me. They will pay for cheating me of my dreams. They will pay…_

"Are you all right?"

Severus looked up at the castle that loomed above them. "Yes, I'm fine," he said. "I need to think about something. I'll catch you at supper." He stood and walked toward the lake, not caring that Regulus looked bewildered and offended.

Sitting on the narrow strip of sand by the lake, Severus tried to sort out the mass of contradictions that was himself and his life. _Muggle or wizard? Scientist or potions master? I'm going to be on my own in six months, and I don't even know who or what I am._

There were three main questions. _What do I want? What do I need? What can I have?_

_I want payback. From the people who killed Nana. From the people who tormented and tried to kill me. From the mine that fired my father, and the pub owners who kept selling alcohol to an already drunk man. From the people who start wars and the people who embargo oil. From a school that won't tell me what I need to learn until I'm too old to fix it. From… No. Anger destroys concentration. Vengeance is a dish…_

_I want a clean laboratory and a white lab coat. I want banks of computers at Mission Control in Houston. I want the world of microscopes and telescopes. I want voodoo dolls and the Hand of Glory._

_I need safety. Physical safety and economic safety. Protection and a way to make a living._

The muggle world provided neither. From airplane crashes to rampaging mobs, it was a world of sudden, violent death. A world where the food on your table depended on a war a thousand miles away. Where they didn't care what you knew, only whether you had the right piece of paper. The wizarding world was no better, full of prejudice and equal violence, where four boys could torment one, and no one cared.

Then he remembered. The one who had stepped forward to save him. The one who had protected him with something more effective than impotent moral indignation. The one who'd charged out of the castle, a small army at her back and wand ready, shouting, "Touch him again, Potter, and I'll…"

Bella.

With Bella he had a place, a place where he was known and accepted, with Rabastan, Rodolphus, and Avery, where Mulciber, Wilkes and Rosier would be, and Regulus Black, too, and eventually Lucius and Narcissa. What did it matter if they didn't really like him? At least they respected his work. And colleagues were always more dependable than friends. Colleagues and a job – it took care of what he needed.

_And of what I want. They'll help me get the payback. Against the people who killed Nana and the people who hurt me._

That left only 'What can I have?' That was when he took the clean laboratory and the white lab coat, the slide rules and the Bunsen burners, the banks of computers and the voice, his favorite voice in the whole world, and packed them away in tightly sealed boxes in the storage room of his mind, toys that he was now too old to play with.

Severus rose from the little sandy area, more settled and focused than when he'd sat down, and went to look for Regulus in the Great Hall.

**The Seventh Year: The Catch**

_Monday, January 9, 1978 (the new moon)_

Severus's eighteenth birthday was cold and clear. He spent the second half of the morning in the library looking up protection spells for buildings and for items left in the open. It was tedious work, and he wasn't sure who was going to get the information when it was done, but Rosier had asked him for it the evening before, and he was trying to finish as quickly as possible.

As he finished his list and gathered his books to go, Severus noticed that Peter Pettigrew was also in the library two tables over. Pettigrew hadn't been sent to watch him since fifth year. A quick glance told him that there were no other Slytherins in the room, not a good sign. He moved three rows closer to the windows, scanned a bookshelf over his head, and picked out a particular volume.

Pettigrew looked up as the book slid in front of him. "What do you want?" he asked.

"Did you know there were seven seduction spells in the Appendix of this book? One especially involves chocolate. Livilla Fairhall likes chocolate, doesn't she? A lot. Of course, if I take it out, then bring it back when you're not here, you'll never know which book it is. They all look so much alike and there are, what? two hundred thousand of them?"

"What do you want?" Pettigrew repeated, but there was a totally different note to his voice.

"Who made you guard dog this time?"

"Sirius."

"Where's he going to jump me?"

"Staircase behind the tapestry. "

"What spell?"

"Petrificus. He has a speech he wants to give you, but he was also talking about tying you to the railing and shaving your head."

"Such tender affection. What does he do to you?"

"Huh?"

"You hate him almost as much as I do. What does he do, insult and belittle you or practice his spells on you?"

Pettigrew didn't answer, his reddening face doing that for him.

"Ah," continued Severus, "he lets you know your place, like the good little dog you are. Here, take it. Good luck with Livilla. Now don't move, this is for your own good." He cast quick binding and silencing charms, then whispered, "Tell him I snuck up behind you. That's why you couldn't warn him."

Pettigrew nodded.

Severus edged towards the tapestry, wand in hand, hoping to surprise Sirius. It didn't work. Somehow Sirius knew he was there, for the tapestry was suddenly pushed aside. Severus got his spell in first, though, and a petrified Sirius fell backwards onto the stair landing.

"My, my. What do we have here? Frozen Gryffindor on a Stick?" Severus stepped over Sirius's body and sat on the step next to him, letting the tapestry fall into place and conceal them. "Such a convenient opportunity for us to have a chat, don't you think? What shall we talk about? I could hang you upside down right here. There's a girls' bathroom two floors down. They'd love to come up and check you out." Then he noticed the wad of parchment sticking out of Sirius's pocket.

"What else do we have? An unfinished homework assignment? A love letter?" He pulled it out, ignoring Sirius's furious glare, and glanced over it. He paused and looked at it more carefully. "My goodness! No wonder you always knew where I was. Here I am right here on the stair, and here you are next to me. And here's that wimp Pettigrew in the library. I didn't have to tie him up after all. You didn't need him to warn you." Severus looked at the front. "Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs. You're Padfoot. I heard Potter call you that. Moony must be Lupin. We all know why. I can't imagine Potter being called Wormtail, so that must be Pettigrew."

Severus stood and smirked down at Sirius. "I know just what I'm going to do. I'm going to give you your map back. Then I'm going to bring you company much more fascinating than I could ever be." He stepped over the supine Sirius again and slipped under the tapestry.

Five minutes later, Filch appeared. Filch's grin was positively evil. Ten minutes after that, and the map was in a cabinet in Filch's office, and Messrs. Moony et cetera were all on detention.

After that day, Severus began to get clandestine visits from Pettigrew, to whom he fed a slow but steady stream of small hexes and jinxes in exchange for information that Severus passed on to Rosier.

A few days later, Severus happened to see Lily and James talking together near the Quidditch field. He'd noticed since the beginning of the year how much closer the two were becoming, but this time they were talking earnestly rather than lovingly. For a moment, just a moment, Severus considered using his new Autiarachnon spell, then shook his head. Lily's conversations were private and none of his business. He turned and walked back towards the castle.

Lily found Severus in the fountain courtyard. "Can I talk to you for a few minutes?"

"Here? In public? That's a first, isn't it?"

"You're right. I think it is. I wonder if there's some special meaning to that, like we've matured and don't have to play games any more."

"Could be. The games were fun, though. There's something about clandestine meetings that adds spice to life."

They were silent. It was a comfortable silence. Friends don't always have to talk.

"James asked me to talk to you."

_Thank goodness she isn't lying about it. I couldn't take that._ "What does he want you to say that he can't say himself? I can't get his map back. I'm not breaking into Filch's office for anything."

"That was quite a coup. You'd have loved listening in to Sirius's ranting after you caught him behind that tapestry. Did you know you had the heart and soul of a bloodsucking vampire?"

"Well I am impressed. I must've really gotten to him to have advanced so far beyond the bloodsucking leech stage."

Lily giggled. "I miss talking to you. "

"You have other things to think about."

"Seriously, though, we're worried about you. James says you're more involved with this junior Dark Lord group, and you're helping them with spells and information."

"Potter has big ears."

"It's like quicksand, Severus. You think it's just an innocent pool of water, and by the time you figure out how deadly it is, you've been sucked in so far you can't get out. This is so much bigger and more sinister than hexes and jinxes. It's dangerous. People are being killed."

"I know."

"Oh, I'm sorry. That's right, your grandmother. But you're in danger, too."

"No. I'm in danger when I'm by myself. That's when I get hit. All those years I never had anyone covering my back. You have no idea how much safer I feel now. And I have somewhere to go after Hogwarts. They're not evil, Lily. It's the world around us that's evil." He regarded her quizzically. "Why so solicitous now? As I recall, two years ago the same prospect made you ready to toss me in the dustbin. Now you…"

"Two years ago the world seemed simpler. Good and evil were clear opposites, black and white. It isn't that simple, though, and I realized how easy it is to set a snare. What about being a scientist?"

"A child's pipe dream. That was never really an option. Not for someone like us. I don't think about it anymore."

"That's sad. It was a good pipe dream."

"How are your dreams doing?" Severus asked, and watched how prettily she colored.

"Good. It's all so… I'm very happy."

"You tell him that if I ever hear you're not happy, I'll turn his tongue into corkboard."

"I will. And you'll think about what I said? And keep your heart open?"

"I will."

Rosier slipped onto the bench next to Severus during lunch in the Great Hall. It was more private there amid all the babble than in the relative quiet of the common room.

"Bella wants to see you."

"I'm flattered. I thought Bella was above Hogwarts now."

"Not where you're concerned. She has maternal feelings for you. You're her own private project."

Severus was not certain if he wanted to be Bella's pet project, but he nonetheless smiled his restrained, sardonic smile and let Rosier know he was pleased. "Where are we supposed to meet?"

"Hogsmeade. Next weekend."

"I'll be there."

_Sunday, February 5. 1978 (two days before the new moon)_

They met at the Hog's Head Inn, where Severus paid for their drinks.

"I see things are improving for you," Bella commented.

"In some respects."

Bella raised her glass, "Here's to more improvement in more respects."

"I can drink to that."

"You're becoming known in high places. And in a good way. The Dark Lord himself has heard that you're resourceful and a team player. So many are looking only for their own aggrandizement, but you're not one of them. Have you thought of what you'll do after you've sat for your NEWTs and you're finished with Hogwarts?"

"Not really. Not that there are a lot of positions available for someone like me."

"I can think of one."

"I'm all ears."

"Join us. Become one of the Death Eaters. It's a waste for you to sit on the sidelines when you have it in you to play such an important part. Our people have already been attacked in the north – I don't have to remind you of that, you've already lost so much – and the witch-hunting fever is moving into the west and the midlands. We need people to defend our communities, to strike back at our assailants. You could be part of that."

"What would joining entail?"

"You have to be sponsored. That's easy. Several of us could sponsor you. There's an initiation, too. It's an interview with the Dark Lord, and you get a tattoo that shows you're one of us."

"Interview?"

"The Dark Lord is probably the most accomplished Legilimens the wizarding world has ever seen. The interview takes place in the presence of a select group of followers, but it's silent, just you and the Dark Lord. It's minor. A demonstration of loyalty."

"I'll think about it."

"Let me know."

The next move was not long in coming, and it was Sirius's.

"They say you can help me with my OWL in Potions."

Severus looked up from his book. The library was practically empty since lunch had just been served in the Great Hall. The fifth year student in front of him was from Ravenclaw house.

"I usually only tutor inside Slytherin. Who told you to look for me."

It was clearly an embarrassing question. After a pause the Ravenclaw admitted, "No one. I heard them talking in class and they said you were good."

"What are you weak in?"

"Blended potions."

"They can be tricky. Let me think about it and I'll get back to you. What's your name."

"Sigfried… Sigfried Thurifer. But you shouldn't contact me at our house. Maybe we could meet somewhere…"

"Don't want to be seen with a Slytherin? All right. Where?"

"By the Quidditch stands tomorrow at lunch?"

"Okay. But if I don't show up it means I decided not to tutor you."

Severus sought out Mulciber for advice.

"I don't want to, I've already got too much to do, but I thought you should know."

Mulciber frowned in thought. "You know, Snape, we don't have anyone in the other houses who can gather information for us. This Thurifer could be our toe in the Ravenclaw door, so to speak. Why don't you take him on and find out how useful he is?"

"All right, if you think it could help."

Regulus was in the common room, too. "Isn't the Quidditch field an odd place to meet a pupil?" he asked.

"Away from prying Ravenclaw eyes was the sense I got of it."

The next day at lunch, Thurifer was waiting by the Quidditch stands. As Severus approached, the other boy motioned him forward and moved behind the stands where he was shielded from the castle windows. Severus shrugged and followed, and suddenly found a hood pulled over his head, a cord binding its cloth into his mouth, and his arms pinned behind his back. He tried to throw himself forward and to the right, but was restrained by several pairs of hands. _Not again._

Behind him, Sirius's voice said, "Here's your money. Now get out. We don't need you anymore."

Severus started to kick, and one of his captors laughed. "We're going to have to tie his feet, too. He might hurt himself." It was a voice Severus didn't recognize.

Sirius laughed as well. "We certainly wouldn't want him to hurt himself. That's my job."

They put binding spells around Severus's arms and legs and carried him under the scaffolding of the bleachers, hidden by colorful cloth panels, where they dumped him unceremoniously on the dirt. Sirius knelt next to him.

"It isn't you personally, Snivellus," he said, in a friendly tone. "Well, yes it is personal because personally I consider you sneaky, slimy, and unwholesome. But things would never have to go this far if you'd just listen when I tell you not to mess around with my brother. Because if I ever find that Regulus has joined up with that Death Eater crowd, I'll kill you. Before I do that, I'll break your kneecaps, rip off your fingernails, and gouge your eyes out of their sockets, but the bottom line is that I'll kill you. Do we understand each other?"

Severus didn't move, so Sirius took the cord that gagged him and pulled, tightening it painfully and jerking Severus's head back. "Do we understand each other?" he repeated. Severus managed a nod, and the pressure was released.

"Now these friends of mine have been looking forward all week to beating the crap out of you, and I have no intention of disappointing them." They pulled Severus to his feet and held him upright. Sirius gave his cheek a gentle pat, then drove a fist into the pit of his stomach. Severus would have doubled over in pain if not for the hands that held him upright.

Then he heard Regulus's voice say, "Hit him again. Go on. Give me an excuse to break your nose against that post. Hit him again."

Regulus helped Severus back to the Slytherin common room, while Sirius returned to Gryffindor.

"What the hell were you thinking of! Hexes are one thing, and sometimes they got out of hand, but beating someone up! Are you insane?" James could not recall ever being so furious with Sirius in all the time they'd known each other. To make things worse, Lily was crying and not talking to either of them.

"He deserves it! I'm not going to stand by and watch him destroy Regulus's life!"

"And you think your own family doesn't have a lot to do with it! Did it ever occur to you that Regulus might be pulling Snape into this? Maybe you're beating up the wrong person!"

"Snivellus has been tight with Bella ever since second year!"

"And Regulus has been tight with Bella ever since he was born! You're cousins, you idiot!"

They both stood, breathing hard, staring each other down.

Lily spoke then, and her voice was very quiet. "He said he needed the protection. That he never had anyone covering his back before, and being with them made him feel safer. I think you just proved he was right. They were covering his back today. What would you've done to him if Regulus hadn't shown up with his friends? I hear that first punch was pretty hard."

"I was angry."

James shook his head. "That's not good enough. You get out of control when you're angry. I know you. You could've killed him. As it is, he'll probably never listen to us again. I mean, how does it look? Lily goes to talk to him about being careful of this Death Eater business and then you jump him? He must think we're the biggest hypocrites in the world. We may never be able to repair the damage you did today."

"If you scared him as badly as you claim," Lily added, "we won't have the chance. He'll never go anywhere alone again."

Severus was lying on one of the sofas in the Slytherin common room while the others did their best to make him comfortable. "How did you know?"

"I told you I thought the Quidditch field was a strange place to meet. I followed you. When I saw Thurifer leave by himself, I went for Mulciber. Luckily they were all together. I wish we'd gotten there sooner."

"Soon enough. That was scary, though. He's your brother. Does he often get that violent?"

"Yeah. Sometimes it's like he's going to explode. He never hides it, and he never tries to control it. On the good side, he never tries to hide his affections either. He can be really nice."

"A side of Sirius Black I have never been privileged to see. And won't if I can help it. I'm taking a bodyguard if I leave the castle again. Maybe even inside it. There're some fourth and fifth years who'd be happy to trade time for tutoring."

"We need to teach Ravenclaw a lesson."

"Agreed. But let me decide what to do. I don't want anyone out of control like your brother. The punishment has to fit the crime."

They waited a week, then four Slytherins jumped Sigfried Thurifer in the quiet fourth floor corridor as he was leaving the library. Hustling him down the stairs behind the tapestry, they suspended him upside down with a Levicorpus spell inside the girl's bathroom. Then they shook him a little to make his money fall out of his pockets onto the floor. Regulus scooped it up with a grin.

"For the Slytherin Defense League. Thanks for the contribution.," he sneered.

Back in the common room they chuckled over the scene. "We didn't hurt him, Snape, I swear, but he looks so stupid hanging there by the cubicles. I hope the girls wait awhile before getting someone to take him down."

"I almost wish I'd seen it," Severus said, "but discretion is more important than personal satisfaction."

"I wish you could teach my brother that."

The spring advanced with little disturbance. Either Severus was too well guarded or James managed to restrain Sirius, but there were no more incidents. Hagrid sent word that he'd have to see Severus one more time. Severus replied that he did not see the need, and was in any case too busy. Hagrid responded that it was purely administrative, a simple matter of closing the books. In late May, Severus appeared at the hut for his appointment. Dumbledore was already there.

"Headmaster, I'm honored," Severus said. "Does two for one mean I'm getting the discount rate?"

Dumbledore chuckled. "We thought you might be pleased. It saves you time this way. You do not have to keep two appointments."

Hagrid followed his usual routine. "Jaw getting bigger. Means the back teeth have lined up better."

"Can they do that?"

"Oh, teeth move around, lad." He checked Severus's ears and eyes, shoulders and spine, then pushed up his sleeves to check the wrists and elbow joints. Severus didn't resist, but his eyes narrowed as he glanced from Hagrid to Dumbledore. "Rickets all gone?" was all he said.

"Looks to be in excellent health, if a tad under weight," Hagrid said as he finished. "I'd say the medical aspect was a success."

"I am pleased to hear it. Sit down, Master Snape. I am sure we both know the drill by now."

Severus met Dumbledore's eyes calmly as he was asked about the last year. "No problems, sir. I assure you," was his answer to Dumbledore's questions.

"Well, that is it, then. I wish you good luck on your NEWTs, Master Snape, and a profitable and happy life after Hogwarts."

"Thank you, Professor. It's kind of you."

As Severus was following Dumbledore out, Hagrid put a hand on his shoulder. "You ever need somewhat, lad, you just come by here."

"Thank you, Hagrid. I will."

There is nothing that will help one better understand a subject than teaching it to others. Severus aced his NEWTs and then it was time to say goodbye. After clearing out all his belongings and apparating home with them, Severus spent hours in the library copying down titles of books he hoped to be able to buy one day.

James and Lily came together. Or rather, Lily came accompanied by James.

"Tell me again, when is this Jupiter fly-by?"

"Not for nearly two years, so don't hold your breath."

"You take care of yourself."

"You, too." On a whim, Severus turned to James. "And you…"

"I know. Corkboard."

The departing seventh years partied on the Express all the way back to London. There was, Severus found, the most intoxicating sense of liberation from time that he'd ever felt. Hogwarts was over and done, never to be returned to. The future had not yet begun. For those few hours the class of 1978 was totally free. It was a good thing the Express sold no alcohol, or half of them would have been drunk by the time they reached King's Cross Station, there was such a strong sense that rules no longer applied.

The farewells on the platform were short as students apparated to their homes. Severus went right to his own kitchen in his own house, registered the amount of accumulated soot from the colliery, and settled down to brew himself a cup of tea over a newly lit coal grate. He was looking forward to a few weeks of solitude.

He got two and a half. Then on July 18, Bella's owl came with the message: 'Meet me in London tomorrow. Wonderful news. He'll see you on the 20th. Initiation at sunset. Bring dress robes.'


	19. Chapter 19 – The Death Eater

**A Difference in the Family: After Hogwarts – The Death Eater**

_Wednesday, July 19, 1978 (the day before the full moon)_

Severus apparated directly into the Black residence, per Bella's instructions. She met him in the grand entry and escorted him to his room. It was not only not a servant's room, it was more sumptuous than the last one he'd been in. "The guest of honor gets the best room," Bella said, smiling.

That evening there was an 'informal' dinner with only twenty guests. Rabastan and Roldophus were there, along with Avery, Mulciber, Rosier, Wilkes, and Lucius sitting happily next to Narcissa. All but Lucius were joining Bella in sponsoring Severus, and Severus expressed his surprise that Rosier and Wilkes had already become Death Eaters while still students at Hogwarts.

"Like you can't get away with murder in that school," was Wilkes's comment on the observation, which won him a laugh and a general cheer.

They coached Severus on what would happen, how he would apparate with Bella, blindfolded, into the dark room at headquarters, kneel and be interviewed, and then receive the first, novice Dark Mark. "Did it hurt?" he asked as he studied Rosier's tattoo, a small green skull with a snake issuing from its mouth.

"I asked the same question," said Wilkes, "everybody does. Yeah, it hurt. It burned. But then it goes away."

"You have to remember to let the Dark Lord see your whole mind," added Bella. "That part feels funny. It doesn't hurt, it just feels funny."

Severus went to bed just a little tipsy because Mrs. Black kept giving him more sherry.

_Thursday, July 20, 1978 (the full moon)_

They assembled in the grand entry at noon the next day, dressed in formal robes, Severus looking very young and slender in his straight, modestly cut green and black, and his tall, peaked wizard's hat. Bella stood in front of him, a delicate gold cord in her hands.

"Cross your wrists in front of you." Severus obeyed, and Bella used the cord to bind his hands loosely together. "It's very easy to get out of, but try not to even if you're scared. It tests how calm you are, how much you trust the Dark Lord, and how willing you are to obey him. Understand?"

Severus nodded, and Bella took the wizard's hat off his head. She showed him the black hood he would wear. "You can't know where we're going, and you're not allowed to see anything until you look the Dark Lord in the eyes. We'll guide you and tell you what you have to do and when to do it. You just trust us. Now from this point on, you don't talk. You don't question. You just do what we say, and you don't say anything. Okay?"

Severus nodded again, and Bella slipped the hood over his head, then replaced his hat. Then she stood next to him and slipped her arm through his. "Everybody ready?" There was the sudden, tight pressure of apparation, and they were standing in a different room, one that was cold and muted, as if the walls absorbed all sound.

"Just walk with me," Bella whispered, steering Severus down an inclined floor. His shoulder brushed something, a doorway, then they were in a room that sounded larger. "Kneel," came Bella's quiet command. Severus knelt, and the hood was removed from his head.

The room was dark and shadowed. One thin, weak beam of light illuminated the spot between Severus and a standing figure robed in black. In a moment bordering on panic, Severus searched his own mind, checking if everything was open, unlocked, on display – this man would know. Then the figure in front of him lowered its own hood, and Severus was staring into the eyes of the Dark Lord. Severus heard and felt nothing, but he knew that questions were being asked.

His own answers were memories rushing to the surface of his mind: Toby drunk – Toby hitting Eileen – Toby lying on the stairs and his own wand in his hand – nights in a vacant church – Nana – the burned cottage – the doctor, police, pastor who wouldn't help – Dumbledore restraining his anger and his vengeance…

Dumbledore saying 'maternal vampire' – Hagrid holding him off the ground as he attacked the headmaster – Slughorn's scorn – the camaraderie of the Slytherin common room – Bella – Rabastan – Mulciber – tutoring – Regulus – Christmas with the Blacks…

Sirius – slugs – James saying Scourgify – a fist hitting the pit of his stomach – Regulus yelling, _Give me a reason_ – Bella yelling, _Touch him again, Potter_…

Severus had no idea how long the session lasted, only that the rush of images and feelings was swamping him, drowning him, like water released from a floodgate.

_What do you bring me?_ a voice asked in his head as the memories rushed to a close. _All I have and all I am are yours._ Severus's own mind responded.

And then it was over.

Above him a voice was speaking, a voice unlike any he'd ever heard, full of spectral power, resonating with authority. "This one has come to us like an innocent child to his father, open and trusting and obedient. Freely has he shown us the deepest recesses of his soul, and he has held nothing back. Greet him now as one of our family. Come forward, Death Eaters, and embrace your new brother, Severus Snape."

The group of Death Eaters helped Severus rise and untied his wrists. Bella threw her arms around him and hugged him. The others were shaking his hand and patting him on the back. The Dark Lord himself was aloof from this display of welcome, his hood once again shielding his face in shadow. Severus realized that he had no clear picture in his mind of what the Dark Lord looked like, and immediately accepted that maybe he was not supposed to know.

The final step was the tattoo, the brand. The Dark Lord stood now next to a brazier that flamed a ghastly green light. Metal rods tipped with tiny stars lay in the fire. Once again Severus knelt before his new Lord, and this time Rabastan and Mulciber knelt with him to support him. They strapped his left arm to a small table to keep it steady as one by one the Dark Lord seared the tiny stars into his skin to form the small, unbroken outline of skull and serpent. The pain was intense, but bearable. The Dark Lord then traced the lines of the mark with a long fingernail, and it seemed to glow.

"It is done," the spectral voice intoned. "united into one body until death. Take him now and celebrate his coming into our family. Teach him what he must know. And when the time comes for his work to begin, I will send for him." And the Dark Lord was gone.

"When you stand up," Bella said as they unstrapped Severus's arm, "lean on me. You'll be dizzy and feel a little sick. It's normal."

The group, now relaxed and beginning to chat, went out the door and up to the first chamber. Holding the wobbly Severus steady, they apparated back to the Black residence.

It was mid afternoon, but the house was full of people. Many of them were people Severus had met either at the Black's house, at the ballet, or seen arriving in their limousines years ago. As the group apparated in, the guests began to applaud, and a band struck up 'For he's a jolly good fellow.' Cygnus Black was the first to shake Severus's hand, and then he was surrounded by well-wishers.

"Party time!" called Rodolphus. "Somebody get me a drink!" and the celebration was under way.

"Does everyone get welcomed like this?" Severus asked Bella as soon as he could escape the press.

"I don't know. We don't know everyone. The Dark Lord has several groups of Death Eaters, and we're kept separate so that we can't be forced to betray each other by spells or Veritaserum. We all know each other here because we've sponsored each other. Some of these people aren't Death Eaters, just people who support us and the work we're doing."

The party lasted all night. There was music and conversation, and a twelve-course dinner followed by dancing in the ballroom, and cards and billiards in the other rooms. The former Hogwarts students (with Regulus, of course, who was also there) ended up in one of the smaller drawing rooms, one with its own bar, where Avery showed them how to mix exotic drinks like Black Russians and Harvey Wallbangers. That was when Severus found out that Avery could almost juggle six table knives at once, and Rodolphus knew how to dance the can-can.

As dawn began to tinge the sky, the party broke up. The guests departed, the family retired to their rooms, and Severus, feeling very contented, went to his own room and slipped, deliciously tired, into bed.

That was when it hit him, and Severus sat bolt upright in bed, wide awake.

He hadn't shown Lily to the Dark Lord. In all that stream of memories, all that river of feelings, emotions, and recollections, there hadn't been one image of Lily. _Impossible. I must be mistaken. Maybe I just didn't notice everything._

Yet every image that had been pulled from his mind was as sharp and clear as if he'd lived it yesterday. Hundreds of images, large events and small. Severus began to review them, looking not for what was there, but for what wasn't there.

Nothing about Lily. Nothing about Gra or Wensley Snape. Nothing about Apollo, or Skylab, or Voyager. Nothing about Hagrid's examinations or Dumbledore's advice on Occlumency. Nothing about an encounter with a werewolf. Nothing about Narcissa.

Severus was frightened. He'd gone to the initiation honest and open, as honest and open as he could, and his own mind had filtered his thoughts without any action from his will. _I'll go to him. I'll confess to him and show him everything. Maybe he won't be angry with me._

But there was a saner part of him that rose in self-defense. _What will he do to me if I tell him that I can hide things from him? That when he looks at me he can never be sure of seeing my thoughts? Can he even afford to have that known? He'll punish me._

And the quietest, gentlest part replied. _That's right. Besides, I don't think I want him to know about Lily._

Nobody in the Black household woke up the next day until well after noon. A quick, simple luncheon, a renewal of congratulations, and by mid afternoon Severus apparated back to Lancashire. The entire London trip would've seemed like a dream were it not for the sting of the novice grade Dark Mark on his left arm.

Severus finished the interior work on the house. The shrunken sitting room lined with bookcases was like a little cave, a real den, his own personal reading room. The stairs going up were behind a set of shelves. He kept the little bedroom as his own, needing no more space, and the back storage area was now a potions workshop. It did have a white lab coat, but Severus never put it on.

Bella's owl came in the middle of August, and Severus apparated immediately to London. They left the Black house for a short walk.

"I'm going to show you a piece of paper. It has an address on it. Once you see the address, you'll know it, but you won't ever be able to write or say it because of a secrecy spell. It's the entrance to our headquarters here in London. Understand?"

Severus nodded, and she handed him the paper. Almost as soon as he glanced at it, it shriveled up and disappeared. "Why did you have to do that? Why not just take me there?"

"Silly, I can't take you there until you know the address. That's the same as saying or writing. The only one who can tell a new person where it is, is the one who wrote that note. Now, when we go there you'll get your first assignments. You won't see the Dark Lord. Only the higher-ups see him. But you might hear him. Or you might not."

"Are you one of the higher-ups?"

Bella looked smug. "He appreciates my enthusiasm for the work."

The outside of the house looked perfectly normal, but inside was the entrance to a labyrinth of underground passages. Bella knew her way. Severus quickly became lost. They reached a small room with a little pedestal in the center. On the pedestal was a parchment.

"Pick it up," said Bella. "You're the only one who can. That's your job."

It was actually several jobs, mostly in London. Severus was supposed to stay in Diagon Alley all of the last half of August, meeting Hogwarts students he knew from tutoring and talking to likely prospects about joining the Death Eaters. He was also to shop for books and artifacts in Diagon and Knockturn Alleys, and anywhere else in Britain for that matter, looking especially for long-forgotten ways to hide things, keep them secret, and protect them from discovery or theft.

Along with the parchment were two small bags, both holding a considerable amount of money, both wizard and muggle.

"Be sure you keep a record of all your expenses," advised Bella. "If you meet other students, and you buy the refreshments, that's okay, that's a legitimate expense. Don't use it just for yourself. though. He's touchy about that."

The assignment turned out to be quite pleasant. Severus got to meet and talk to students now in sixth and seventh year that he'd tutored the year before. He met new students as well, and was introduced to them as a fountain of knowledge about spells and charms. He even made appointments to get together with some students over the Christmas break for tutoring, accepting only those who'd be working to pass their NEWTs.

Browsing through the shops was enjoyable, too. For the first time he didn't have to worry about how much something cost, though he was careful not to buy anything unless he was sure it would be useful.

After September 1, Severus began to go outside London, searching not only through wizard shops, but also in muggle stores, antique shops, estate sales, and the like. Here his muggle background proved very useful since he was able to pass as a muggle anywhere he went, where a pureblood would have been spotted immediately.

By Christmas, the Dark Lord's catalog of spell books had grown immensely, as had the number of dark objects available to his workers. Severus had also managed to add to his own collection, though he was careful how he did so. He always paid for his own things with his own money, and he never took for himself anything that would be useful to the Dark Lord unless it was a duplicate of one the Dark Lord already had.

In all this time, Severus came into contact with none of the other Death Eaters except Bella, although he did hear of more and more attacks against witches and wizards all over Britain. The sense of being on the sidelines while others fought the real battles was galling to him. He had to keep telling himself that what he was doing was necessary, and helped the war effort as much as the true fighters did.

During Christmas he tutored Hogwarts students and found that he could get information from them that he passed on to Bella.

In January, as he turned nineteen, Severus got the message that his job was changing, and he went to headquarters in London for his new instructions.

An older wizard met Severus at the entrance to headquarters and escorted him to the assignments room. A new parchment lay on the pedestal.

'You will work at headquarters and devise spells for our people,' it said. 'There are three to start with.

1) A spell that will enable us to overhear conversations at a distance.

2) A spell that will enable us to walk unheard through dry leaves.

3) A spell that will keep dogs from noticing us.

If you encounter any difficulties with these spells, you will notify us immediately. The attendant will show you to a work area.'

The older wizard took him to an upper room with a window that looked out over roofs. There was a table and a chair, parchment, quills, and ink. "Tell me if you need anything," the old wizard said.

"Tea?" asked Severus, and it was brought immediately.

The first spell was no difficulty at all. Severus already had the Autiarachnon. It was mildly interesting to note that Lucius hadn't told anyone about it. The other two would be harder.

He could think of three ways to move through leaves, one of which was a levitation spell. That, of course, already existed, but was generally not used because it required so much power to sustain for any length of time. The next was to change the consistency of the leaves as you walked to make them soggy. Workable, but it would leave a trail. The third was to muffle the crackling of the leaves with a silencing spell. One that silenced only the leaves.

Severus went to the door and opened it. "I need to go out," he said.

"Why?" asked the wizard.

"Research on a new spell."

"I'll check."

Severus supposed they did have to be cautious around headquarters, but it felt odd not being able to come and go freely. He waited patiently inside the room.

"It's okay. You can go out. Report back before you go home this evening."

There was no snow in London, so Severus went to Hyde Park looking for dry leaves. _How do you find the sound frequency of rustling leaves? There should be something like a sound meter that registers frequencies. Or maybe I could just use trial and error._

The afternoon passed quickly. Severus made some progress with the leaf spell, but it would take a few days of refining. He went back to headquarters and was admitted by the same wizard.

"You have an interview. Follow me."

Severus was nervous, not knowing what the Dark Lord wanted to talk to him about. He followed the wizard to the same room as his initiation. The room was dark, lit only by the narrow beam of light. Severus stood in the center for a moment, then knelt as he'd done before.

"Do you have our spells?"

Warning bells were ringing in Severus's head. He was suddenly frightened This was not the time to try to hide anything.

"I have a listening spell. I made it months ago. I can give you that right away. The leaf spell will take a few days because I have to experiment with the sound waves. I don't think the dog spell will be possible."

"Not possible? Explain."

"Animals have certain instincts that make them immune to magic that disguises. If the dog is right in front of you, it'll know you're there. I think I can make something to alter scent and movement so that a dog at a distance won't notice you, but it won't work if it gets close."

"You have spoken truthfully. Write the listening spell before you leave. Bring the others as they are completed. Do not take too long."

"Yes, my Lord."

The Dark Lord was gone, but parchment and quill lay on a small table by the door. Severus quickly wrote down the Autiarachnon spell and left.

He had the leaf spell two days later, and the dog spell within the week.

The whole spring was spent working on spells and potions. Much of it involved the books and artifacts Severus had bought himself, and his labor seemed to be concentrated on hiding and disguising things.

Hiding and disguising was something of an obsession at headquarters. Severus almost never saw other wizards. Everyone who came or worked in the building was kept in his or her own cubicle except for the teams that went out on raids. Sometimes Severus saw people he knew, and they would exchange greetings, but they never talked for long.

At the beginning of April, Severus was asked to provide a potion that would protect someone from contracting dragon pox. He thought this a strange request, but had a vague recollection of the development of smallpox vaccine, and started researching reptilian viruses. It turned out that no one exposed to moke pox had ever contracted dragon pox. With the proper caveats, Severus suggested innoculation against moke pox.

Severus by now had become very familiar with the area around his own workroom, coming and going without an escort. He normally didn't pay any attention to what was happening in the other rooms, that being none of his business, but there is something special about hearing your own name. In a crowded room amid numerous conversations, you'll notice if someone speaks your name. In an empty corridor one afternoon in late April, Severus heard the word "Snape" and stopped to look around.

"We can't use him." Severus wasn't sure, but the voice behind the door sounded like Rosier.

"All he does is hang around headquarters all day. He never goes out on a raid. We need people."

"His work here is useful. Where would you be if we didn't have that dog spell yesterday? Don't say he doesn't do anything."

"But we need more people this time."

"Look. I'm only saying this once. He never, never comes on this kind of mission. You even tell him about it and I report you to the Dark Lord."

Severus left quickly. He wasn't sure what they were talking about, but if knowing it would anger the Dark Lord, he didn't want to know.

A few days later, the wizarding world was rocked with the news that Abraxas Malfoy had contracted, and quickly died of dragon pox.

Dangerous times make people more aware of the transience of our short lives. That spring and summer saw many young couples, who would normally have waited, rush into unions while there was still a chance for some happiness. It seemed as if there were two or three weddings every week. After an interval of only a month to mourn his father, Lucius Malfoy finally married Narcissa Black. Severus attended the ceremony, and was happy for their happiness.

In June, two weeks after the fact, Severus also heard that James Potter and Lily Evans had wed.

As the spring ended and summer progressed, it became clear that a new force had entered the battle to control the wizarding world. More and more, the Dark Lord's teams were running into opposition from an organized group of wizards and witches who seemed to be particularly well informed and well prepared to thwart their operations. More and more the signs pointed to the source and inspiration for this organization. It radiated out of Hogwarts and bore the stamp of Albus Dumbledore.

By August, the Dark Lord was in a continual foul temper about Dumbledore's new Order. That was when Regulus Black, not yet eighteen, was initiated into the Death Eaters. It was highly unusual for one so young, and rumors abounded of the Dark Lord's expectation of information through Regulus and his brother Sirius of Dumbledore and his plans. Severus, by now a full-fledged Death Eater, was one of many who sponsored Regulus, but he avoided the rumor mill. He'd already learned that it was best if one kept one's own council.

The new school year started, as it always did, on the first of September. In late October, Severus received a message to report to the assignments room for new orders. This time there was no parchment. Instead he was ordered to report to the Dark Lord himself for an interview. Severus went immediately, nervous but excited.

"You have taught your fellow students."

"Yes, my Lord. I began tutoring in Slytherin house in my second year."

"And every year from that time."

"Yes, my Lord."

"You organized them into classes."

"When there were too many to teach one on one, yes, I did."

"I wish you to become a teacher."

Severus opened his mouth to protest, then closed it in silence. He didn't want to teach, but it was not for him to say. "Who must I teach, Lord?"

"You will travel to Hogsmeade for an interview with Albus Dumbledore. You will convince Dumbledore to take you on as a member of the staff. Once you have established yourself in Dumbledore's confidence, you will transmit to me any information you can garner about the movements and whereabouts of Dumbledore and of this organization of his."

"The school year has already started. What if Dumbledore will not hire me?"

"You will have failed me."

"Yes, Lord."

That night Severus apparated home to Lancashire, and the following morning he went to Hogsmeade.

_Wednesday, October 31, 1979 (4 days before the full moon)_

Severus went first to the Three Broomsticks, there to sit at a table near a small leaded window and watch the passersby. He'd almost never visited Hogsmeade as a student, so none of the inhabitants recognized him, and as it was not a Hogsmeade weekend, there were no students who might recall their tutor. Severus was trying to decide how to proceed with the Dark Lord's instructions.

It would be so much easier if he'd even once expressed an interest in teaching during his years at Hogwarts. Then he could go to Dumbledore and say, 'Do you remember…' and they could at least have a normal conversation about it. Now he had to invent some excuse, some reason, for suddenly seeking a job.

_Maybe I can tell him how bad things are in Lancashire, and how I desperately need the money because I haven't been able to find anything… Dumbledore knows about my tutoring, doesn't he? I could point out that I have some experience… I don't even know if they have an opening… I'm going to look like such a fool… It's too late in the year; he won't hire me and I'll fail on my first really big assignment._

Around noon a frumpy looking woman entered the common room to inquire about lodgings, a strange lady with thick glasses and an absent manner. She seemed put off at the price, insisting that she had to have a place because she was expected. She had an appointment. She would have a position. The proprietress suggested the Hog's Head as a cheaper establishment, and the frumpy lady left.

_So maybe Hogwarts is hiring. That's a good sign. And if she has an appointment, it might mean that Dumbledore will be here today. Better and better._

In the middle of the afternoon it began to rain, and the weather became autumnly cold. Severus ordered supper and was beginning to eat when he spied Dumbledore walking down the street, turning, and then heading in the direction of the Hog's Head.

Severus quickly paid his tab and left the Three Broomsticks. At the head of the lane he was just in time to see Dumbledore enter the Hog's Head Inn. Severus didn't dare run, not wanting to attract attention, but he did walk very fast to the inn. There, through a dirty windowpane, he saw Dumbledore talking with the barman. Then the Headmaster left the bar and went up the stairs toward the rooms.

Severus slipped in. _Should I wait for him in the bar? I could at least ask him for an appointment when he comes down._ Then he wondered what job the frumpy lady was applying for, and thought how much easier it would make his own task to know. The bartender was paying no attention, and Severus slipped soundlessly up the stairs after Dumbledore.

It wasn't hard to find them, for voices were coming from only one room. Severus crept closer, the narrow gap between door and jamb making listening all the easier.

"…I am certain that my pedigree could not but impress you, for I am the great-great-…"

"Yes, Madam Trelawney, but you must understand that we have not actually decided to continue the teaching of Divination…"

"Oh, but you must teach Divination! The foreseeing of the future is so important a part of the education of every accomplished witch. And wizard, too, of course. I don't see… don't see… don't…" Her voice became low and harsh, an unearthly voice that could never have issued from a mortal mouth:

_The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches…_

_Born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies…"_

"Here! What are you doing here? Listening at keyholes?"

Severus turned to see the bartender standing behind him. "No," he said quickly, not fully able to disguise his surprise and embarrassment. "I was looking for someone who came up here. I have an appointment. I mean I want an appointment…"

"You don't get an appointment by following people into private rooms. You wait downstairs 'til he comes down himself, 'stead of snooping."

"I wasn't snooping. I was…"

"You were eavesdropping. I don't hold with people spying on the guests."

"No, not spying. I just wanted to see him."

"See me?" The door opened, and Dumbledore stood before them, his head cocked quizzically to one side. "Did you wish to see me, Mr. Snape?"

"You know this bird, Albus?"

"Oh, yes. Former student. What did you wish to see me about, Mr. Snape."

Severus shifted nervously. "I wanted to talk to about the possibility of a job. Things aren't going too well, and I could use…"

"Oh, but I have no jobs, Mr. Snape. There was one, but I have just hired the person to fill it."

And there was nothing for it but for Severus to return to London and admit to the Dark Lord that he had failed.

"How much do you think he heard?" Dumbledore asked the bartender, who happened to be his brother Aberforth.

"Ha! Now why didn't you ask him that yourself, you great legilimens, you? What's the use of having all that natural ability you always bragged about if you can't use it when you need it?"

"I never bragged! And besides, I can't read this one. He's a natural. A born occlumens."

"I thought you said they didn't exist."

"This one does. I can't explain him otherwise. The Sorting Hat put him into Slytherin. Can you guess why? Because it couldn't read him either. It decided anyone that secretive had to go to Slytherin. I wonder though if things mightn't have been different if he'd been in Ravenclaw. I always saw him as a Ravenclaw. Now, how much did he hear?"

"Not a lot. He wasn't there very long. And I stopped him about a minute and a half, near two minutes before you came out."

"That's good. So even if he heard something, he couldn't have heard everything."

"I still think you should've hauled him up to the castle and put thumbscrews to him."

"I like to take the long view, Aberforth. We may yet need him, and it's easier if he still has reason to trust us."

The interview with the Dark Lord did not start well.

"You have returned early. You do not come with favorable news."

"No, Lord. I've failed."

"You do not come with excuses. Your punishment will be abated because of this."

Pain hit Severus with the force of a sledgehammer, and he fell to the floor writhing and screaming in agony. Pain struck at head, gut, and back, and then it was gone. He lay on the floor of the interview chamber gasping for breath.

"Now you will tell us what mistakes you made."

"I followed him too closely. I eavesdropped on a conversation with another applicant. A seer. She went into a trance…"

"You heard a prophecy. Who was this seer?"

Severus shifted his body so that he was on his knees again. "She claimed to be the great-great-granddaughter of Cassandra Trelawney. It seemed that Dumbledore wasn't interested in her until she went into a trance and started prophesying."

"This was not a hoax."

"I don't think so. Her voice changed, harsh and low. I don't think she could have faked it."

"What did she say?"

"The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches… Born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies… Then I was interrupted and I didn't hear the end."

"Did Dumbledore question you?"

"A little. The bartender confirmed that he interrupted what I could have heard. I don't think he realizes I heard any of the prophecy."

"This is interesting. By great fortune you have redeemed your error and brought us a gift of some use. For this reason we will not punish you further. You will return to your duties."

"Yes, Lord. Thank you, Lord."

Severus went back to his workroom deeply grateful to the Dark Lord for his understanding and mercy. _I failed him. I deserve so much worse, but he saw my intentions; he accepted what I was able to give. He is so much better to me than I deserve._

Severus continued his work with a renewed sense of dedication and purpose.

Autumn advanced, and Severus continued his work with spells and potions. The Dark Lord forbade him to mention the prophecy to anyone else, though that was scarcely a problem since Severus saw and spoke to so few people in the course of a day, and then only briefly. Life was so different from Hogwarts, when it seemed he never had enough time. Now the focus of his whole life was the assignments he received from the Dark Lord.

Midway through November a well-known witch, Marlene McKinnon and all her family were killed. Initial shock quickly transformed into enthusiasm as word filtered through the ranks that McKinnon was a member of the shadow organization that surrounded Dumbledore, and the enemy were no longer immune. The Death Eaters had a new source of information, and things were going to turn around. Optimism spread through headquarters. People spoke of the future with confidence.

Severus was called before the Dark Lord at the beginning of December. "Bring your wand," was the only instruction the messenger gave.

Instead of the usual interview room, Severus was conducted to a larger hall. Rabastan Lestrange stood at the entrance, more worried than Severus had ever seen him. "I'm sorry," he said as he shook Severus's hand. "I didn't foresee this. Just remember, you whipped two of us when you were twelve."

It was not a comforting thing to hear, but Severus had no time to ponder it as he was ushered into what was clearly a small arena a little like a bull ring, with stands around it for a small group of observers. Unbidden, his brain began to lock down, to close off, and his senses sharpened in the presence of danger. Across the arena was a large, lumpy, brutal-looking wizard that Severus knew as Amycus Carrow.

The voice of the Dark Lord spoke softly in the silence. "You are being tested. The winner will be high in my favor. The loser, if he survives, will not. There are no rules."

Shock and surprise paralyzed Severus for a second, but Carrow grasped the meaning of the last sentence immediately, hurling an Stupify at Severus, who dove to one side in a defensive roll as he managed to conjure up a nonverbal Protego. Carrow's defensive strategy was to attack, and he unleashed a steady stream of striking and cutting spells, shouting wildly as Severus retreated backwards in silence around the circumference of the arena, barely managing to parry each blow as it came, with no time to consider how to counterattack, struggling to remain focused. Reading Carrow turned out to be nearly useless, since the spells varied little and never paused. It was his first duel against an adult wizard with battle experience, one who was trying to kill him. He remembered his father and Nel Tarleton.

The trick was not to waste time on spells for defense, but rather to use his physical ability to avoid the spells and his wand to attack. It didn't matter if Carrow got off three spells to each of his as long as the three spells missed and his struck home. His biggest handicap was that he had no intention of seriously hurting Carrow, much less killing him.

He spun counterclockwise to avoid another cutting spell and Carrow, not expecting the move, faltered. Severus hit him with a finely tuned Sectumsempra that nicked Carrow's right ear and drew blood. Carrow, bellowing in rage, responded with a blasting spell that Severus escaped by once again diving and rolling. From the ground, he hit Carrow with an Expelliarmus that sent the older wizard's wand against the stands. As Carrow grabbed for his wand, Severus sprang to his feet and scurried behind Carrow's back to the left, using the extra second of time to transmit a Doppelganger to Carrow's right. Carrow lashed out at the ghostly image, then wheeled around, his wand spitting fire as Severus again dove in the opposite direction, sending a leg-binding curse under the other wizard's spell. Carrow lost his balance, fell over like a log, and the fight was finished.

Brushing dust off his clothes as he rose from the floor, Severus glanced around at the spectators. During the whole duel, the only voice had been Carrow's. No one else had said a word, and all Severus's spells had been nonverbal.

"It is as I have been told," he heard the Dark Lord say, and he turned to face his master, breathing quickly and trying to control his trembling. "Your dueling skills are not balanced. You excel at defense; you are weak in attack. Yet you have bound your opponent and would therefore have a prisoner to bring to me. You have a new assignment. You will teach your brothers and sisters to protect themselves in battle, to use these defensive skills of yours to make them better fighters. You will start at once."

The observing wizards came into the arena to congratulate Severus on his success, none more relieved than Rabastan, who couldn't stop grinning as he said over and over again, "I knew you could do it."

The good part was that after months of seclusion amounting almost to isolation, Severus was once again among people, people he could talk to as well as teach. The bad part was that such a large percentage of the Death Eaters were so abysmal at casting nonverbal spells that he had trouble understanding how they ever made it through Hogwarts. Another problem was the almost total lack of understanding about defense.

"Why can't I just go for his head?"

"Because I'm sure even someone with a pea brain like yours has noticed you can't win a fight if you're immobilized on the ground."

"I can just do it faster."

"Not 'til you can do it silently. The first syllable you utter, he knows which spell you're using."

Rabastan came for lessons, and was one of Severus's best pupils. Bella came, as well, though with less sense of its value. Many of Severus's pupils were much older than he was, and the incongruity of a nineteen-year-old teacher with a forty-year-old pupil was a source of mild amusement.

Lucius Malfoy came, too. Freed from parental restraint and in possession of his inheritance, Lucius had quickly become a Death Eater. He and Severus talked a little of old times, and Lucius confided with some pride that Narcissa was with child. Severus was more patient with Lucius than with many of the others, and more careful to teach him the finer points of self-defense, for Narcissa's sake.

As Christmas approached, a raiding party of Death Eaters ambushed and killed Benjy Fenwick, leaving nothing behind but small pieces, a fact which did not please the Dark Lord, who had hoped to 'talk' with Benjy.

Winter deepened and the Dark Lord led his forces to unerring victory. The new source of information was the best they'd ever had, and raiding parties came back to headquarters both successful and without casualties. With the New Year, one group cornered Edgar Bones and his family, leaving almost no one alive. It was a mark of the Dark Lord's power that such an accomplished wizard could be attacked and defeated with impunity.

The only bad news, in fact, was the sudden, unexplained disappearance of Regulus Black. He'd taken a bit of a holiday to spend Christmas with his recently widowed mother and had not returned. Rumor abounded that he'd been kidnapped and possibly killed by Dumbledore's organization, but despite the Dark Lord's sources of information, no answer to the mystery was found.

Feeling that it was now fighting a losing battle, the Ministry of Magic took the extraordinary step of authorizing its Aurors to use Unforgivable Curses against the Death Eaters. This was a great moral victory, since the Ministry could no longer claim to be representing the side of decency.

In May, the Death Eaters scored another triumph with the ambush and disappearance of Caradoc Dearborn, whose body was never found. The brethren who'd gone on that raid never told exactly what happened, though they seemed to think it exceptionally funny whenever anyone asked.

On the fifth of June, 1980, Narcissa Malfoy gave birth to a boy child, a son for Lucius. Severus was invited to the naming ceremony, and was delighted at Narcissa's radiance. Lucius, his patrician reserve for once set aside, was practically bursting with pride.

Narcissa allowed Severus to hold baby Draco during a quiet moment away from the crowd of relatives and well-wishers. It was a precarious moment, for Severus had never held a baby before, but Narcissa assured him, laughing, that he was doing a great job. Severus was entranced by the scrunched up baby nose and the pouting little mouth, and utterly amazed at the tiny perfection of infant fingernails. Most of all, it was good to see Narcissa so happy.

Holding Draco made Severus remember the prophecy. 'A child approaches…' But not this child, and for that Severus was glad. He'd heard that Lily was also pregnant, and he'd checked carefully with all his sources of information. The most reliable rumor said she would have her child before the middle of August, so that was good, too.

June brought a return of students from Hogwarts. One of them was Barty Crouch, who was initiated into the Dark Lord's forces. Crouch was a great coup for his sponsors, as his father was an official in the Ministry of Magic, and Crouch Junior was another good source of information.

The beginning of July almost brought a setback, for a raiding team intending to attack a single family was instead engaged by a party of Dumbledore's followers. There was a fight this time, from which both Avery and Lucius returned wounded. The Dark Lord was satisfied, however, since the team gave better than it got, and both his enemies Gideon and Fabian Prewett were dead.

Starting in the middle of July, the Dark Lord set up a team of researchers to go through _The Daily Prophet_ and all other wizarding news media looking for, of all things, birth announcements. Severus knew why, and the Dark Lord, of course, knew why, even though the team itself was not told the purpose of this information. For a while it seemed as if there would be a total dearth of babies in July, then on the last day of the month they found the article they'd been looking for. The day before, July 30, 1980, Alice Longbottom gave birth to a baby boy. She and her husband Frank would name him Neville.

The news gave Severus an odd feeling. The abstract danger to the Dark Lord that he'd known about for so many months now had a name: Neville Longbottom. For a brief moment he wondered if this child, too, had perfect fingernails, then forced the thought from his mind. Frank and Alice were both Aurors, enemies, and in a very important way it was fitting that their child should be the one that the Dark Lord would seek. It was fate.

So it came as a complete surprise to walk into headquarters on August first and find that the research team was agog with news. The announcements page of _The Daily Prophet_ had a small picture of a beaming James Potter, and the news that his wife Lily had given birth to a boy, Harry James Potter, the previous day – July 31st.

_August. She was supposed to have the baby in August. He won't attack them anyway; the baby isn't a pureblood. Not as dangerous as the Longbottom child. They're Aurors. It makes more sense._ Severus smiled at the Death Eater who told him of the birth. "Is that what you were looking for, then?"

"Don't know. Any child born the second half of July. We're to keep on looking for another week or so in case there's a belated announcement. But we have two good ones. He'll be pleased."

The week passed in suspended animation, but there were no further births. The research team was disbanded and its members reassigned. Severus began to get more chatty with the Death Eaters he was training in defensive spells.

"…You must be getting some difficult assignments. This is your third lesson on repelling Cruciatus curses. Which Aurors are they sending you up against, anyway?"

"Usual Ministry thugs. I'm just not good at it…"

"…I'm getting a lot of repeat work from people going to the northern counties. I hope you're not always being sent against that Dumble crowd."

"It was more a 'muggle control' thing, if you take my meaning…"

"…Sometimes I envy you. Here I have to stay at headquarters all the time and never get to strike a blow for the cause. You must go up against some powerful adversaries."

"Not always. They've got a lot of us chasing the Potters for some reason. I understand it's a personal vendetta. Not that I'm complaining. I don't want you to think I'm complaining…"

So there it was. Several of the teams were specially delegated to hunt down the Potters. Not the Longbottoms, the Potters. Severus felt sick.

As week followed week, waiting for the news that one of the teams had succeeded, Severus racked his brain for the glimmer of an idea of something he could do to avert catastrophe. There was nothing he could do about the baby or about James – the attempt alone could mean his own death – but he might be able to help Lily. He requested an interview with the Dark Lord.

"So, Potions Master, you petition us for this woman? This mudblood?" The shadow of the Dark Lord's form loomed outside the circle of light where Severus knelt.

"Please, Lord. I saw her… her picture, and now I can't get her out of my mind. We were in the same year… I recall her from my Potions class. She's talented. She could be turned to your service… in brewing potions… I've served you loyally, Lord, and now I… I need her… I…"

The Dark Lord's laughter cut across Severus's words. "The body burns when one is twenty, but it can burn for more than one woman. Take heart, Potions Master, we shall consider your need, but it will not be this woman. This woman is our enemy. Find another to suit your 'needs' and we shall listen to your request. But not this one."

Severus left the Dark Lord's presence defeated and despairing.

Faustino Pembertine was one of the Death Eaters that Severus tutored from time to time. At the end of August, all those who'd worked with the unfortunate Pembertine were called into the interview chamber, for he'd been apprehended trying to defect to the Ministry of Magic.

"Did you think we would not know?" the spectral voice asked.

"Lord, I didn't betray you! I would never betray you! But my family, the Ministry, I had to look out for my family."

"We do not see the distinction. Betrayal is betrayal."

Pembertine gasped and began to claw at his left arm. "No, Lord!" he screamed. "I won't leave you! I'll serve you!" He ripped the sleeve from his arm and tore with his fingernails at the flesh beneath. The mark there was glowing a ghastly, putrid green. As Pembertine struggled, boils began to erupt on his skin, burst and spew green slime. He twisted and contorted on the floor of the chamber, clutching his stomach in wild torment, vomiting blood and maggots. And then he was dead.

"We have been merciful," intoned the spectral voice. "His punishment was quick. Those whose betrayal is on a greater level shall have greater punishment. Their torment will last for days. Take care that none of you join him."

Severus returned home that evening in a state bordering on panic and spent hours staring at the tattoo, the mark on his left arm.

Then a team of Death Eaters captured Dorcas Meadows, who was brought alive before the Dark Lord. Everyone at headquarters was summoned for the interrogation. It did, indeed, last for days. In the end it was a shell of a woman who stood before the Dark Lord, but she did not break. And she died there in the interview room, a lesson and a warning to all.

Severus couldn't sleep or eat or even think straight.

_What can I do? I'm not strong enough. I can't fight the Dark Lord. I can't face the pain. It wouldn't help anyway. Who? Who? Who can I go to? There's no one. I have no one…_

_I have Hagrid. Hagrid can get me to Dumbledore. But I can't get to Hagrid. If I go near Hogwarts I'm dead. If I enter Hogwarts he'll know and I'm dead. There's no way. No way…_

_There is a way. The Shrieking Shack. It's a way into Hogwarts. He'll still kill me. But I can speak to Hagrid first._


	20. Chapter 20 – The Spy

**A Difference in the Family: After Hogwarts – The Spy**

_Thursday, November 13, 1980 (two days before the first quarter)_

"I'll be apparating to the Pendle area of Lancashire. There are herbs on the moors that I'll need. They have to be gathered at night." Severus's tone showed that he thought the questioning an unacceptable intrusion into the relationship between him and the Dark Lord. The administrative 'assistant' recorded the request and went on to other things.

Severus didn't go home. He went straight to Pendle Hill where he could watch the countryside around him, and where there were indeed herbs that he could take back to London. _If this plan fails, too._ He waited for a while, listening and scanning the area. No one followed him. Leaving his bag in the shelter of a rock so that it would look as if he'd just wandered away, he concentrated on the room at the base of the Shrieking Shack in Hogsmeade and apparated.

The shack was quiet, and Severus lit a Lumos spell. Through dust upon dust on the floor, through the overlay of Remus's own marks, human and lupine, he could still make out the traces of his and James's footprints, and the marks of the werewolf as it chased them back into the tunnel. No one but Remus had disturbed it since.

He eased himself into the tunnel and made his way to the willow. It was evening. Everyone should be at dinner. Pausing to look around to assure himself that nobody was there, Severus left the willow, skirted the edge of the forest and knocked on Hagrid's door. There was no answer.

_Right. I get up this whole scheme, and then he's not in… Why should I expect him to be in at dinner time?_ He couldn't stand there in full view of the school, so he slipped the latch and entered. _I'll sit here at the table 'til he gets back. What if he's not alone?_ Severus looked around for someplace to hide, but there was none. _It doesn't matter. Nothing matters anymore._

Severus laid his head on his folded arms. After so many days and nights of worry he was exhausted, and he fell asleep at Hagrid's table.

Hagrid came in fifteen minutes later. He stopped in the doorway, then quietly closed the door and went up the hill to Dumbledore's office. There was no ceremony. "The Snape lad's come back. He's in my hut."

"Why is he here?"

"Didn't ask. Lad's asleep. Looking kind of pasty and washed out, you ask me. Not healthy at all. Thought you might want to know."

"Oh, yes, Hagrid, I do want to know. This must be handled carefully. Go back and find out what he wants. If it is to speak with me, tell him it cannot be here at Hogwarts. It must be somewhere, though, where I can first check to be sure we are alone. I shall let him choose the place."

Hagrid was gone for half an hour. When he returned, he looked worried. "It's got somewhat to do with James and Lily, but he wouldn't say more. He's agreed to meet you, wants to in fact. Said Pendle Hill in Lancashire since that's where his crowd thinks he's going anyway."

"Did he say when?"

"Soon as ya can. He's gone there now." Hagrid paused. "Professor, that lad's scared half out of his mind. I ain't never seen him so scared. What d' ya think it is?"

"I have a suspicion, Hagrid, but I shall keep it to myself for the moment. He is frightened, eh? If my suspicion is correct, his fear may not be entirely for himself. We may be able to use that. We may be able to convince him to change masters."

"I don't quite catch yer meaning. He's one o' them Death Eaters, is that it?"

"That is part of it. You know, it has often crossed my mind," said Dumbledore pensively, "that working for Voldemort may indeed be a frightening thing, and that the prospect of his anger and retaliation more frightening still. And yet Master Snape, terrified as he is, is facing that prospect now. The young man is worth saving, Hagrid, and the only way we can accomplish that is to turn him from this darkness and offer him a way back into the light. But he may be too frightened to accept the offer."

"So what can ya do?"

"Frighten him even more. If the prospect of staying with Voldemort is more terrifying than the prospect of leaving… Hagrid, I am off to Pendle."

Cloaked against the cold, Dumbledore left Hogwarts and apparated to Lancashire.

Severus apparated onto the top of Pendle hill with a storm brewing in the Pennines. Scudding clouds obscured the light of the crescent moon, and wind tore through the branches of the few trees that hugged Pendle's slopes. Severus shivered in the biting chill. It was a horrible night, a terrible night, a night of dark portent and fear, and suddenly, standing there alone, solitary in the vindictive presence of a tempest that howled with the bloodthirstiness of a wolf, suddenly Severus knew himself doomed. Two great wizards – and he'd betrayed them both. It was now only a matter of which descended on him first, the vengeance of the Dark Lord speeding north out of London, or the fury of the white one, reaching south from Hogwarts.

Wand in hand, ears straining for the dreaded crack of apparation, turning and looking every way at once because there was nothing to shield his back, Severus waited. He was trembling uncontrollably, his stomach twisted in knots, visions of Faustino Pembertine and Dorcas Meadows clawing at his mind, at that moment wishing himself dead that he might no longer be afraid…

He came in a blinding flash of lightning, yet in that moment of stark terror and panic, Severus wasn't sure which one. He flung himself forward onto his knees, his wand already blasted from his hand, screaming "Don't kill me!" The apparition that towered over him was eerily illuminated in the darkness, and he realized it was Dumbledore.

"That was not my intention," said Dumbledore, his voice as frosty as the cutting air, his hair and robes swirling in the wind, the personification of the storm. "Well, Severus? What message does Lord Voldemort have for me?"

A sharp, unfamiliar pain shot through Severus's left arm, and he closed his eyes, both for the pain and for shame that Dumbledore would know so certainly who and what he was. He'd never been ashamed of being a Death Eater before. He'd been proud, loyal… but that was before Pembertine and Meadows. Before the birth of Lily's son. The Wheel of Fortune was turning rapidly, and what had been, was no longer.

"No… no message…" he stammered. "I'm here on my own account. I… I come with a warning… no, a request… please…"

At his words, Dumbledore cast a silencing spell. "What request could a Death Eater make of me?"

"The… the prophecy… the prediction… Trelawney…" Severus's stammer was worse than it had ever been.

"Ah, yes. How much did you relay to Lord Voldemort?" And as the strange pain stabbed through his arm again, it seemed to Severus that Dumbledore was sneering.

"Everything… everything I heard! That is why… it is for that reason… he thinks it means Lily Evans!" Even as he said the words, in that instant Severus understood that his bridges were burnt. He'd betrayed the Dark Lord, and his only hope lay in the man who stood before him. Lily's only hope as well. He did this for Lily.

It was the moment Severus had hoped for, the moment for Dumbledore to spring into action. But he did not. Instead he bandied words. "The prophecy did not refer to a woman. It spoke of a boy born at the end of July…"

"You know what I mean!" Severus shrieked, not believing what was happening. "He thinks it means her son, he is going to hunt her down…" – he thought suddenly of James and the unknown baby - "…kill them all…"

No sense of urgency tinged Dumbledore's voice. "If she means so much to you, surely Lord Voldemort will spare her? Could you not ask for mercy for the mother, in exchange for the son?"

"I have… I have asked him…" Severus began to explain, but Dumbledore cut him off.

"You disgust me." Severus knew the tone, knew it was his fault. He'd failed Dumbledore as he'd failed his father, as he'd failed the Dark Lord, as he'd failed Lily. Through the pain in his arm, he heard Dumbledore state his error… "You do not care, then, about the deaths of her husband and child? They can die, as long as you have what you want?"

_No! No! That isn't it at all!_ Severus struggled to amend his error, to placate Dumbledore. "Hide them all," he begged. "Then… keep her… them… safe. Please."

"And what will you give me in return, Severus?"

"In… in return?" The impact of Dumbledore's callousness, his lack of concern for what became of Lily hit Severus like a physical blow. He couldn't speak for the shock of it. _Pay? I have to pay for him to protect his own people? for him to protect Lily?_ The enormity of his miscalculation swept over Severus – a tidal wave of renewed fear. He'd thrown everything away for this chance to save Lily, and now there was nothing left for him to cling to but the chance to save Lily. He groveled before Dumbledore. "Anything," he managed to whisper. "I'll give you anything."

There was a moment of silence, and then a deep sigh. "It is well," said Dumbledore gently. "You and I, Master Snape, need to talk. I believe your home is nearby. Shall we go there?

"You have redecorated," was Dumbledore's only comment as Severus ushered him into the tiny sitting room, lodged him on the little sofa, and hurried to the kitchen to boil water on the grate for tea. After that, both were silent until Severus returned with the cups and Dumbledore motioned to him to pull a chair over so that they sat face to face.

"Now, if I may…" Dumbledore held out his hand, his gesture clearly indicating that he wished to examine Severus's left arm. Severus turned his face away, but extended hand and arm, silent as Dumbledore pushed back the sleeve of the robe and unfastened the cuff of the shirt beneath, exposing the arm. The silence stretched out while Dumbledore's finger probed the mark.

"It is smaller than I anticipated," Dumbledore said at last. "And less detailed."

"It's not the full mark," Severus explained. "That's only for the inner circle. This one is for those of us who work at headquarters. The lower ranks have no mark at all."

"And where is headquarters?"

Severus opened his mouth to answer, but no sound came out. He tried to think the location, but no image entered his brain. He began to tremble again, for he'd said he would do anything for Lily, and was failing at Dumbledore's first request.

"It is no matter," said Dumbledore quietly. "There is a Fidelius Charm. How was the mark made, and what does it do?"

"It's burned on with green fire. It identifies us. It can summon us. It can punish us. It may be able to locate us – I'm not sure."

"Punish? Can you show me?"

Severus allowed Dumbledore to search his eyes, and let the images of Pembertine's last moments surface. Dumbledore watched, apparently unmoved, then sighed, rose, and stood for a moment by the window. "It has indeed burrowed its way deep into the flesh," he said at last. "I do not think it can ever be removed. I noticed that you flinched whenever I said… his name." He paused. "You came to me after you witnessed this. Do you not fear him? Of course you do. When I first came to the hilltop, perhaps even then you thought it might be him. I was concerned that you had grown so distant that you would expect me to kill you. But if you were also expecting him…" He returned to sit facing Severus. "Will you show me your own punishment?"

It was shorter and less painful to watch than the images of Pembertine. Knowing now how small his own torment had been compared with others, Severus was certain that Dumbledore would despise his weakness and his cowardice. He was wrong.

"So, you did not run to him in triumph, waving the prophecy like a banner of victory. You gave it to him only to escape further punishment. Tell me now of James and Lily's child."

Severus explained about the teams searching for reports of birth, and of finding the news about the Longbottoms and the Potters.

Dumbledore looked grave. "And you are certain which baby he is looking for?"

"Yes. The Potter baby. Lily's baby."

"Ah. I wish to ask you a question, Master Snape. If this were the other baby, any other baby, would you be here today?"

Severus closed his eyes and thought of the Aurors' child. "No," he said. "I wouldn't," and he was deeply ashamed of his own cowardice.

"Then perhaps we are fortunate that it is the Potter baby, for now we can take action. What is being planned?"

"Tonight. After midnight. Two teams of six. One to the Potter estate, the other to the Evans home in Surrey. There's something about getting information directly from the Ministry, but I don't know how that works."

Dumbledore again went to the window, but this time he opened it, pulled out his wand, and extended arm and wand outside. Something silver spurted from the end of the wand and vanished.

"We shall warn the Potter family and get a crew to Surrey," Dumbledore continued. "Now I fear you are going to have to prove yourself."

Severus was grilled on his spells and potions, his defense training, the layout of the interior of headquarters, other Death Eaters, and the fates of Benjy Fenwick and Caradoc Dearborn. The death of Dorcas Meadows was particularly difficult to relate, and Severus wished the earth would open and swallow him forever.

Then Dumbledore said, "Thank you, Master Snape. I believe you have answered all my questions. Now we must find a place where you will be safe."

"Oh, no. I have to go back. If he finds out I've spoken to you, he'll kill me."

"You would be safe at Hogwarts." Dumbledore said.

"I don't think so. I can't take that chance. If I don't report back, he'll know I betrayed him. Maybe he can't reach into Hogwarts, but I can't risk it. I'm not that brave. I have to go back."

"He will know when he looks at you."

"No, he won't. No more than you do unless I want you to. He didn't know anything about Lily until I asked him to spare her, and that's still all he knows."

Dumbledore smiled. "Well, if you are going back anyway, you did promise me anything I asked. I will ask you to consider helping me. Today will not be the end. If you hear more about attacks on the Potters, will you send me word? You do not need to decide now. Are you familiar with Hyde Park? Good. Magic can be sensed and traced, so we sometimes employ muggle techniques. There is a drop point near Marble Arch."

It was now nearly midnight. Dumbledore apparated to Hogwarts. Severus apparated back to Pendle Hill where he hurriedly collected as many herbs as he could, then spent the rest of the night sleepless at home. The following morning he returned to headquarters to report in. No one questioned the time he'd been gone, and no one inspected his herb bag. It looked as if he'd finally been successful at something after all.

The first raids to locate the Potters were glaring failures, and the Dark Lord was not pleased. His anger reverberated through headquarters, and everyone moved cautiously for a few days. Then at the beginning of December word came that the Dark Lord had inside information about the whereabouts of another of Dumbledore's people, one who might be able to tell them where the Potters were. Another raid was planned.

"When are you going out?" Severus asked Rosier with studied casualness.

"Tomorrow night. For some reason it has to be well before the full moon. Strange, but that's what he wants."

Rosier didn't understand, but Severus did. Now there were two in danger, Lily and Lupin. Severus knew Lupin would never betray Lily, but did he want Lupin captured and interrogated? How different might he feel if it were Sirius instead?

And then there was Dumbledore. Dumbledore had listened and trusted. Even knowing that Severus had betrayed him once before, Dumbledore had trusted and acted, and Lily was safe. He'd allowed Severus to go back to the Dark Lord without fearing further betrayal. _I've disappointed him so much, and he still trusts me. Can I fail him again?_

That afternoon Severus left headquarters and, to avoid the traces of apparating, took the Underground to Hyde Park. A crowd was milling around Speaker's Corner listening to a political harangue, so it was easy to mingle and reach the drop point next to Marble Arch without seeming too conspicuous. There Severus left a note telling Dumbledore of the next day's raid to capture Remus Lupin. With a silent prayer that it be found in time, he returned by Underground to headquarters.

As Severus entered his training area, the impact of what he'd done hit him. _I've just chosen sides. I work for Dumbledore, and I'm a spy._

The raiding team ran into a group of Aurors, and Igor Karkaroff was captured. The Dark Lord was furious, and there were rumors that whoever his source of information was, was now in serious trouble. Severus's mood was much lighter. For the first time in a long time he felt as if he'd done something worthwhile, something that made a difference in the world. Lily was safe, Lupin was safe, and Dumbledore trusted him.

It was several days before Severus went back to Speaker's Corner. There, in the Marble Arch drop, he found instructions for a different drop and orders not to use Marble Arch for at least three months. The new drop was outside the zoo in Regent's Park, along the canal near Camden Town Underground station. _How does Dumbledore know I take the Tube?_

When he returned to headquarters, Severus was hailed by a large Death Eater named Crabbe, one of his students who was particularly inept in learning defensive moves. "Hey, Snape," Crabbe called from the end of a corridor, "we need people on a job next week. You never go out. Want to join us?"

Severus was about to say that he had another assignment, then thought that this might be an opportunity to gather information. "What kind of job?" he called back.

"Muggle riot outside Shrewsbury. Interested?"

Severus started to ask what a muggle riot was when Rosier suddenly appeared at the door of one of the rooms. "Get inside here, you big idiot," he yelled at Crabbe, who instantly obeyed. "Sorry about that," Rosier said to Severus. "False alarm. We have a full crew, so you don't have to come."

"Okay."

His curiosity piqued, Severus moved closer to the door behind which Rosier and Crabbe disappeared. He could hear Rosier still yelling at Crabbe.

"How many times do I have to tell you, he doesn't go on jobs like this. He doesn't hear about jobs like this. He doesn't even know that jobs like this exist."

"But he'd be useful, wouldn't he?"

"Learning we set muggle mobs on wizards? If he ever finds out Wilkes and I lead raids like that, I'll nail your ears to the Ministry of Magic myself. Don't you know that's how we recruited him? That old lady in Lancashire?"

Severus listened no further. In a state bordering on shock, he made his way back to the workroom where he still occasionally made potions and spells. The old lady in Lancashire. That was Nana. Rosier and Wilkes, Death Eaters while still at Hogwarts, had led a muggle raid against Nana to recruit him. _How could I be so blind? How could I be so naïve?_ An icy, deadly fury enveloped him.

Vengeance is a dish best served cold. Severus waited three days before going to Camden Town. The message was short. 'Sometime in the next week a mob of muggles will be incited to attack and possibly kill a wizard in the vicinity of Shrewsbury.' Discretion being more important than personal satisfaction, he then returned to headquarters to be the quiet, obedient little potions master who also taught defense. He asked no questions and made no outside excursions for several more days.

Both Rosier and Wilkes died in that raid, and another Death Eater named Antonin Dolohov was captured. The leader of the Ministry forces was an Auror named Alastor Moody, who was now singled out for the Dark Lord's wrath, especially as it was learned he'd also been the one to capture Karkaroff. With two major disasters in just a couple of weeks, the mood at headquarters became somber.

Then more shocking news came from above. The source that had provided so much success for nearly a year had informed the Dark Lord that there was a spy within the organization. Operations shut down, Death Eaters were forbidden to speak to each other, permission to return home in the evenings was denied, and everyone was required to be re-interviewed. The entry logs were picked up and movement in and out of headquarters for the last two months was carefully reviewed and analyzed.

As it turned out, Severus's precautions served him well. None of his exits from headquarters showed any deviation from his habits of previous months, and so gave no cause to suspect him. The interview was another matter. The time before, when his own mind independently concealed information, he'd intended to be open. Now he intended to deceive, and he couldn't rely on the automatic reflexes of his brain.

Severus's interview was an hour and a half ordeal. His sense of peril at a fever pitch, his nerves on a razor edge, he still had to appear calm and relaxed to the Dark Lord. Any image he'd shown during his first interview had to be available. Every moment of his life had to be accounted for. There could be no gaps, no omissions, no inconsistent images or emotions. And through it all he had to convey innocence and obedience. One slip meant a slow and painful death.

Just as he felt his will ebbing, as he was losing his focus and concentration, the Dark Lord ended the interview, pronouncing Severus a good and loyal servant, and not the spy being sought. Severus returned to his workroom and collapsed in a chair. _I can't do this. I can't do this. I'm not strong enough._

But he knew he was strong enough. The Dark Lord had ordered the deaths of both Nana and Lily, and the best way to avenge the first would be to prevent the second. He had so much to atone for. Severus closed his eyes and thought of Lily teaching him to skip stones. A pure thing, a clean thing, and he would stand between her and the darkness while there was still breath in his body, even if she never knew of it.

Now life had purpose. Life had meaning. All those long years of hiding, turning himself off, retreating from friendship, from involvement were gone. Severus was like a medieval knight. He burned with his mission to destroy the Dark Lord, and worshipped a lady unattainable and pure. He knew now he was no coward, for now he understood that life glows brighter when you live in the shadow of its ending, and he embraced that knowledge with the fervor of the newly converted. Never before had he felt so much alive as he did now, flirting with death.

All that he'd once loved came back to him, books, potions, and spells, mysteries and puzzles, the Pendle moors where he was now able to go only on weekends. Severus even spent a couple of evenings playing cribbage with himself, just to keep his hand in. He snuck back to South Kensington to pick up information on adult education classes and reinvestigate his chances of applying to Imperial College.

Then one cold December day in an Underground station he saw the magazine with the photos of Saturn. _Saturn! How did I miss Jupiter?_ The Jupiter fly-by had been more than a year earlier, before he'd gone to Hogsmeade to overhear a prophecy. He bought the magazine, which had pictures of both planets, and pored over the great red storm bigger than the whole earth, active volcanoes on moons large enough to have their own atmosphere, and crisp rings whose beauty and symmetry pierced his heart.

The warning messages continued to come to drop points all over London.

'Attack on Dedalus Diggle in Kent on the 13th.'

'Muggle riot in Lincoln on Thursday.'

'Explosion planned in St. Paul's, London, Easter morning.'

And still the teams of the Dark Lord sought the hiding place of Lily and James Potter, and of the child that had been born as the seventh month died.

Then, at the beginning of August, Severus received a new assignment. Or rather, an old assignment revisited.

"It is our desire that you go to Hogsmeade to apply for a position as a teacher at Hogwarts. We need information about Dumbledore and his plans. As a member of the staff, you will be able to provide us with it. You failed two years ago. Do not fail this year. We must hunt down our nemesis, and we must destroy him. If you fail, you will die."

Once again Severus made the trip to Hogwarts and waited for Dumbledore at the Hog's Head, under the watchful eye of the bartender. This time, however, Severus was the one with the appointment.

[_Notice to Readers:_

The original 2005 story _A Difference in the Family _ended shortly after this with a brief account of Lily's death and Severus's despair at the thought of his own bleak future. Later, after I had reworked the first canon books from Snape's point of view, I went back and rewrote that part, expanding in into _The Middle Years_, which continues in the next chapter.]


	21. Chapter 21 – The New Professor

**Severus Snape: The Middle Years – The New Professor**

_Saturday, August 1, 1981 (1 day after the new moon)_

Minerva McGonagall apparated into the trees on the edge of Hogsmeade a little later than she'd intended. Each year seemed to be worse than the one before it, ever since the rise of this renegade wizard who called himself Lord Voldemort. Now she dreaded coming face to face with both old and new students, never sure which were the children of this Dark Lord's servants. Her only consolation was that she was the Head of Gryffindor house, and the families of Gryffindor students tended to oppose Voldemort rather than support him. For several years now she'd felt sorry for Horace Slughorn, the head of Slytherin house, knowing that many of his students had to be the children of Death Eaters, Voldemort's followers. Slughorn had just retired, however, and was out of the fire. Who would take his place only Dumbledore knew.

It was in this frame of mind, as she passed the Hog's Head Inn, that McGonagall noticed a familiar young man. He was a little on the short side, very slender, and dressed all in black. His pale, aquiline features were framed in shoulder-length black hair, and highlighted by equally black, impenetrable eyes. McGonagall recognized him immediately, even though she hadn't seen him for more than three years.

He saw her at the same time, and stepped to one side to allow her to pass him. "Good morning, Professor McGonagall," he said politely.

"Good morning, Master Snape," she replied, and continued on her way to the Hogwarts gate without stopping. _I need to tell Albus about this,_ she thought. _That boy was hand in glove with the biggest group of Death Eater children Hogwarts has ever seen. If he's not a Death Eater himself by now, I'm a silly goose._

By great good fortune, McGonagall met headmaster Albus Dumbledore on her way up the hill to Hogwarts castle. He was clearly on his way down to Hogsmeade. After the pleasantry of greeting each other was past, McGonagall voiced her warning.

"You will never guess who I just saw outside the Hog's Head," she stated, and continued without waiting for a response. "That strange boy from Slytherin house, Severus Snape. I doubt he's here for anything good. If he hasn't gone over to the dark side, I'm a cockatoo."

"Excellent!" was Dumbledore's response. "Not only on time, but early. He always was punctual."

"You mean you're expecting him?"

"Why of course. I always expect the people that I am interviewing for positions."

"You can't be serious. Headmaster, that boy was dangerous when he was knee-high to a goblin. Surely you remember the trouble he used to cause."

"I remember that the trouble was two-sided, Minerva. Your charges were not always models of good deportment. Especially where poor Severus was concerned."

"Poor Severus! No boy who can do what that boy can do deserves anyone's sympathy. Why he… he…"

"I know what he did. I also know what Sirius and James did. Now if you will excuse me. Otherwise I shall be late for our appointment."

With that, Dumbledore continued down the hill, and McGonagall huffed her way up to the castle.

As he approached the Hog's Head, Dumbledore slowed his pace. He was not one hundred percent certain that the move he contemplated was wise. _This boy… no, he is grown now, and has lived through more than most of the people I know… this young man is still very much an enigma. Is he as true as he claims to be? I would be more easy about this if I could read him, but I have not been able to do that since he was thirteen years old. And more to the point, I am not sure that he would be a good teacher. Oh, I know he can teach – he has been doing that for years – but patient with a classroom full of less than sterling students…? Somehow I cannot see that._

The front room of the Hog's Head was dingy and crowded. Dumbledore caught the eye of the barkeep, his brother Aberforth, and raised an eyebrow. Aberforth swiped a dirty cloth along the bar, then sidled over to Dumbledore.

"Is he here?"

"Came in about fifteen minutes ago. I hadn't realized it was the little sneak you were meeting. At first I wanted to chuck him out of the place."

"Understandable under the circumstances. Where have you stashed him?"

"Room off the back. Want I should announce you, or you want to surprise him?"

"I think I shall surprise him. Probably easier on all of us that way."

Dumbledore made his way across the front room to the door Aberforth pointed out to him.

Severus rose as Dumbledore walked into the tiny parlor. He might have been a trifle nervous, but Dumbledore could not be certain. He crossed to the hearth and sat in one of the great chairs, motioning to Severus to sit as well.

"It has been what? A year since we last saw each other? You are looking well considering the pressure I am sure you are under. I was somewhat surprised to receive your request to interview for Professor Slughorn's old position."

Severus steepled his hands and rested his forehead on his fingertips. After a moment he said, "I've been ordered to get a teaching position so I can spy on you. If I don't get it, I'll be punished."

"Ah. Direct and to the point. To tell the truth, that is very convenient."

"I don't understand." The dark eyes were wary, and Dumbledore noted the fatigue hiding behind them.

"You have been engaged in dangerous work. You cannot hope to escape detection forever. If you are here at Hogwarts, we can protect you. What's-His-Name will think you are working for him, so you will be in less danger. He will be expecting information from you, so we can feed you the information we want him to have. It is a perfect situation."

"I hadn't thought of it like that."

"That is why I am Headmaster."

"I don't really want to teach. I don't think I'll be any good at it."

"At least you have the honesty to admit it. I will not insist that you enjoy the job. I do think you could prepare students for their OWLs, however; you have been doing it for years. As long as that is accomplished, we shall be tolerant of your attitude."

"Thank you, sir."

"This is really the oddest interview I have conducted, you know. Most of my prospective teachers try to convince me of how well they will do the job and how dedicated they will be."

"You and I both know that would be a lie." Severus paused for a moment. "There is one other thing, though. He's still after Lily. They need protection. If I'm not in London, I can't learn about all the raids. I won't be able to warn them. You have to have some way to protect them."

"We are returning to an old idea. We are contemplating a Fidelius Charm. I shall be the Secret Keeper. You have no need to worry. Everything will be fine."

"That's all right, then. When do you want me to start?"

"You could come back to the castle with me now. Most of the teachers have already arrived. We usually take most of August to clean the classrooms, order supplies, relax and socialize. It would give you a chance to get to know the others."

"I think I already know them. They were my teachers for seven years."

"Ah, but you will find being at the head table is much different from being at the Slytherin table. Your perspective changes."

The two walked up the hill together in silence, Dumbledore reflecting on the young man's air of melancholy and depression. _Which weighs on him more, the accumulated tension of a year's living in the shadow of death, the knowledge that he has just become less of a factor in the fate of someone he loves, or does he truly hate this place so much that being here saps the life out of him? At least when this is over he will be free to go. Until then we must both endure what we cannot change._

Stepping into the entrance hall, the two encountered a small stream of teachers heading into the Great Hall for lunch. Severus hung back a little, as if diffident in the presence of all his former instructors, but they recognized him, and most of them nodded a polite, if somewhat formal greeting.

Once the other teachers were seated around one of the lower tables, Dumbledore presented Severus to them. "Almost all of you remember Mr. Snape, who was a student here not so many years ago. He has applied for the position recently vacated by Professor Slughorn, who retired at the end of last year, and I have considered his application and approved it. Henceforth he is Professor Severus Snape, teacher of Potions. I know you will all give him a warm welcome."

The murmured welcome was anything but warm. Dumbledore set his mouth in impatience. He knew Severus had never been popular, either with the teachers or with the other students, but they were barely even being polite. Severus himself simply stared at the surface of the table.

Finally Professor Kettleburn spoke up. "No offense Headmaster, or to you Master Snape, but Severus is barely three years older than the seventh year students he'll be teaching. Correct me if I'm wrong, but he tutored a lot of them as a fellow student just before he graduated. What experience is he going to bring to the position, and more importantly, how is he going to maintain discipline? Teenagers don't like having their peers placed in a position to supervise them. They'll walk all over him."

"Well, Severus," said Dumbledore, turning to his newest professor. "There is your first challenge. What do you have to say for yourself?"

Severus looked mostly at his hands rather than at the teachers. _Speak up with confidence, boy,_ thought Dumbledore. _You have faced the most dangerous wizard of our day and hoodwinked him. If you cannot handle a dozen teachers, how can you handle a roomful of students?_

"I know that I don't have any experience teaching classes of thirty students," Severus began, "and I know I'm very young, but I think I have more to offer than you're aware of. First, I had seven years studying how you manage your classes, and while it will take time to accustom myself to the situation, I already know some of the theory of classroom control from your example.

"Second, I do have experience teaching. Many of you know that I tutored students in Potions most of my time at Hogwarts. At first it was one on one, but later it was groups, especially each year as the OWL exams got closer. I know there's a difference between teaching people who want to learn and teaching a general class, but I don't have to learn all of it at the same time. I already know part of it. What you don't know is that for the last couple of years I've been teaching… seminars for people older than I am. So the closeness of age doesn't intimidate me."

"Next, I think the age factor would only be important for the sixth and seventh years, the ones who were second and third years while I was still a student. But not all of them are taking Potions, only the ones who got Outstanding or Exceeds Expectations on their OWLs. That means the ones I might have had the biggest problems with won't even be in my classes. Just the most dedicated students. I think I'm enough older than the others that it won't be a problem."

"You don't think any of them would try to take you on outside of class?" asked Kettleburn. "You weren't famous for the number of friends you had."

Dumbledore was not pleased with the turn things were taking, but kept out of it, watching to see how Severus would respond.

"Not from Slytherin house. They know what I can do. I don't believe there's anyone in any of the other houses who remembers me that well or would have cause." Severus paused, then continued.

"Finally, I think any new teacher, regardless of age, would have some of the problems you anticipate for me. How does anyone maintain order in a classroom of teenagers? Until you face the situation, you don't really know how to handle it. That has to be true whether you get your first class at twenty-one or forty-one. How did you handle your very first class, Professor?"

"Well said," called out Professor Flitwick. "You have presence and a quick wit. You'll be fine."

The rest nodded agreement, and the ordeal was over. The newly accepted Professor Snape was invited to sit and join them for lunch.

"Could I postpone that?" Severus asked. "I mean, you are hiring me as of now, right? I'll be staying here at Hogwarts from this point?"

"That's the way it generally works when you are hired after the year has begun," answered Dumbledore.

"I wasn't expecting it to happen so fast. I have a couple of… things I have to take care of in London and at my own home. It isn't much. It'll probably just take the afternoon and then I could be back by supper time, but if I don't start now, I know I won't have the time to finish it today."

Dumbledore smiled. "I think it is truly amazing that you can wind up your affairs so quickly. By all means, go now. I'll walk you to the gate."

Severus took his leave of the other teachers and he and Dumbledore strolled down the hill.

"They don't like me," Severus said.

"They'll get used to you."

"No, I mean they really don't like me. Do you think they know?"

_Are you just nervous, or are you really picking up something?_ "I do not think they know. A couple of them may suspect. After all, the colleagues you associated with as a student have gone on to bigger and better things. It is natural to wonder whether you have followed in their footsteps."

"If they do, they're right. I don't have a lot to be proud of."

"I think you do. You have already done something no one else has ever done. Having joined him, you left him. You are the only one to do that. It means something."

"Thank you, Professor."

They reached the Hogsmeade gate, and Severus disapparated as soon as he passed through. _Good luck on your meeting with Voldemort. He should be pleased at the successful beginning of your new assignment. Though I will only be able to relax when you come walking back through that gate this evening._

"Well," said McGonagall after the two had gone. "I am not ashamed to say that for once something has taken me completely by surprise. I would have thought Albus would mention… I mean, since I am Deputy Headmistress. I would have thought I might be consulted."

"Does anybody really know anything about the boy?" asked Dawson. "He never bothered to take my classes."

"He wouldn't have had to, dear," Sinistra told her gently. "I believe he's a half-blood, raised as a muggle. Wonderful student in Astronomy. Took an Outstanding in his NEWT. There were times I was sure he knew more than I did. Quiet, though. Always by himself."

"Took an Outstanding in Charms as well," piped up Flitwick. "Years ahead of his class from the day he was sorted." He turned to Sprout. "I believe he got an Outstanding in Herbology. Mullein, your predecessor, spoke highly of his work. Not that he would have expected any less from Constantina Prince's grandson. And in Potions."

"Well, he got no Outstanding in Transfiguration. He barely managed an Exceeds Expectations." McGonagall narrowed her eyes. "I'm certain he got Outstanding in Dark Arts. That was something he always excelled in, if you know what I mean."

"That should not surprise anyone. I have met that young man before." Everyone turned to Trelawney, who like Sprout was new, having been hired two years before. "Even then, the Inner Eye told me our paths would cross again."

McGonagall, who normally never paid any attention to Trelawney's mystical pronouncements, leaned forward. "Tell us, dear. We're dying to know."

"You know I came to interview with Dumbledore before the end of the first term last year. We met in Hogsmeade. Even before Dumbledore came to see me, I knew that I was fated to get the position, despite there being another applicant – that pushy young man who was just here. Snape, did the headmaster say his name was? He was not above trying to overhear private conversations. Through keyholes. He was apprehended and removed from the premises. I would recommend being careful what you say when he is around."

"My!" exclaimed McGonagall, savoring the tidbit of information. "Now that I think about it, Slughorn never mentioned the boy much. And Slughorn was his head of house. Not unless he was in trouble, of course. He was notorious for casting hexes on other students."

Kettleburn burst out laughing. "Like the time he turned Sirius Black's hair Slytherin green? I seem to recall Black and Potter were pretty free with the hexes, too. They kept life interesting around here for a few years, didn't they? And as for Slughorn, the boy's family wasn't rich enough or famous enough for him to interest Slughorn."

The conversation shifted to the peculiarities of Horace Slughorn, and by the time lunch was over the question of the new Potions instructor had faded somewhat as the teachers went off to their individual classrooms to assess what had to be done to prepare for the coming year.

Right at dinner time, Severus returned to Hogwarts, apparating next to the gate with several cases and a battered old Gladstone bag. He waited for a while as Filch came grumbling down the hill to let him in, then started to gather his things.

"You can leave that, Professor," said Filch. "You get your traps carried for you now that you sit at the high table. Go on up. They've just started supper."

Severus entered the Great Hall and then paused, not sure where he was to sit. His confusion was resolved by Kettleburn, who waved him over to the table and made room between himself and Sprout. It seemed the memory of Sirius Black with green hair had mellowed Kettleburn considerably, and he was now more than willing to tolerate the newcomer.

During most of the dinner conversation, which centered around the upcoming term, Severus was silent. He listened attentively, which seemed to give Trelawney satisfaction, but had nothing to add. After the meal was finished, however, Dumbledore addressed him in particular.

"In just a moment I shall take our newest professor to his rooms. The classroom you already know well. You have an office, which I am sure you have seen before, and an adjoining bedroom. There is, however, a matter of some importance that we need to discuss. We are still missing one teacher, and until the position is filled we do not know who it will be, but as of this moment we have only one teacher on staff who was in Slytherin house. That, my dear Severus, is you. Traditionally the head of a house should be a teacher who was in that house as a student. It is unusual to have a head of house who is so young, but Professors McGonagall and Flitwick will be able to assist you, as will Professor Sprout, who became head of Hufflepuff house last year."

Severus opened his mouth, closed it again, and looked at his hands. Then he turned to Dumbledore. "If you think I can handle it, I'll certainly try. But I don't know all the things a head of house is supposed to do. I'm going to need the help." He glanced around at the other teachers, who nodded encouragingly.

"Good. Now I am sure you want to see your rooms. And you need to unpack your things. And you are probably very tired. So let us wish you good night, and I shall take you to your rooms and let you familiarize yourself with your new domain."

"Before we check your rooms," continued Dumbledore as they started down the steps and into the passageway to the left of the great marble staircase in the entrance hall, "we need to visit Slytherin house." The corridors beyond the Potions classroom became labyrinthine, but the way was still familiar to Severus, who'd come this way every day for the seven years of his school life. In front of the blank wall that was the entrance to the house, they stopped.

"Wall of Slytherin, do you know who I am?" asked Dumbledore.

The stone hissed in reply.

Pulling Severus forward, Dumbledore continued. "This is Severus Snape, no longer a student but the head of Slytherin house. You will answer to his command as long as his authority remains in effect."

The wall hissed again.

"Good. Now all you have to do is tell the wall to open and it will. You can set the password, or delegate that job to a prefect. The others prefer to do it themselves."

"Are there any special commands to give?"

"No. Just talk to it the same way you would talk to anyone. It does like to be addressed as 'Wall of Slytherin.' Even a wall has its pride."

They returned to the Potions instructor's office, where Dumbledore handed Severus a huge set of keys on an enormous ring. "For the doors and all the cabinets and such. Once you've opened them, you can set your own locks, mechanical or magical. You are required to keep them locked, however. Poisons and such, you know."

"Yes, Headmaster. Thank you."

"Well, good night. Enjoy the evening. If you need anything, you know where my office is." Dumbledore then left Severus standing in front of the Potions office door.

Severus waited until the headmaster was gone before opening the office door. For this he wanted to be alone. The office was as Slughorn had left it – jars on the shelves, papers on the counters, ashes in the fireplace. It would definitely need to be straightened and cleaned. The bedroom was the same. A rather small room, it contained not just a bed but also a table, three chairs, two wardrobes, a bureau, a nightstand, lamps, and a hat tree. There was barely room to move around.

Leaving the office and the bedroom, Severus went next to the classroom. Here again, there was some untidiness and disorder. It was also clear that many ingredients would have to be ordered, as the supply cabinets were sparsely stocked. _That's my first big job tomorrow._

Finally, Severus went back to the Slytherin wall. "Wall of Slytherin, do you know who I am?" he asked.

The wall hissed.

"Let me in, please."

The wall slid open, and Severus stepped into the familiar common room. Here there was neatness and order, for the house-Elves kept the area swept and tidy. Severus spent nearly twenty minutes exploring the various dormitories, seeing for the first time where his older colleagues had lived. His own former room was now occupied by students who would be fourth years in September. It didn't look any different, but that was likely due to the house-Elves.

At last Severus returned to his office and room.

"There you are," snarled a voice in the corridor, and Severus saw Filch with his various boxes and cases. "You can have the taking of them into the rooms, unless you want me to do it."

"No, no. I'll handle them from here." The truth was that he'd far rather do everything himself. Severus was really looking forward to making the inner space his own, and the presence of Filch was an impediment.

After first dragging all his things into the office, Severus went back into the adjoining bedroom. There he opened every door, drawer, lid, and cover, checking how much space there was for storage. He immediately determined that he didn't need all the furniture. Just the bed, one wardrobe, the nightstand, a lamp, one comfortable chair, and a smaller table from the classroom. The rest he shifted into the office with a few flicks of his wand. _I'll ask Dumbledore tomorrow what to do with the extra furniture I don't need._ Another few flicks, and the room was swept and dusted.

Then came the very pleasant task of unpacking and arranging his things. _This is my space. It was Slughorn's, but now it's mine, and I can do anything I want with it. It's better than Spinner's End. There are no memories. No one yelled at or cuffed me here. No one threw up a night's worth of gin. There's no bloodstain in the wood under the carpet. This is a place where I'm free of the past. The rest of the school has memories. Even the office has a few memories. But this room that I never saw before in my life, this room is where I can be myself._

Severus had already decided that he would add a small bookcase and bring some of his favorite books here – here where he could read them in peace.

_Sunday, August 2, 1981_

Professor McGonagall was buried in _The Daily Prophet_ as she absent-mindedly ate her oatmeal porridge and sipped her tea. _More fighting_, she thought, _and no one is sure if that multiple vehicle accident was just that, or some of You-Know-Who's doing._

"Excuse me, Professor."

McGonagall looked up. Professor Snape had approached so quietly that she hadn't noticed him at all. _He moves like a cat. I shall have to remember that_. "Good morning, Professor. What can I do for you?"

"I was hoping you wouldn't mind if I asked you for some advice later. About being the head of a house. At your convenience, of course. I wouldn't have interrupted your meal except that I wanted to catch you before everyone left for their own rooms."

_Now that's a surprise,_ thought McGonagall. _Who would have thought that such a withdrawn, taciturn boy would grow up to be such an articulate young man? Well-mannered, too._

"Why don't you join me for breakfast instead? It's a good topic of conversation during a meal. Interesting and diverse, but with nothing to quarrel over. Sit down here. And when the students are not around, we generally go by first names. You may call me Minerva if you don't feel too awkward about it. May I call you Severus?"

"Of course," he replied, slipping into the chair next to hers, "though I fear it may take me a while to be comfortable with anything less formal than Professor or Ma'am."

"It will come. Now, help yourself to anything you want, and tell me what you want to know."

Snape took a kipper, some toast, and a cup of coffee. "I don't even know enough to know what I want to know." He thought for a minute. "What should I be doing now so that nothing catches me by surprise? What are my precise duties after the students arrive, and what do I have to do with them during the first week or so?"

"You want to know everything, in other words. I would suggest you spend a lot of time looking at the students' files. Learn their names, study their pictures, find out who's taking which classes, especially in the upper levels. It always impresses them more if they can see you've done your homework."

"Do we already have files on the new first years?"

"Already done. I made one up on each of them as I got the replies back from the letters. Normally after they arrive we interview all the first years, but you might want to stretch it out and interview all of them. Just to get to know the students better. It will reduce problems in the long run. Then there are the rules."

"Rules? Aren't they the same for all the houses?"

"Some are. Some are peculiar to each house. Don't you remember Slughorn's speeches?"

Snape looked a bit embarrassed by the question. "They were long-winded and a touch… boring. I didn't always listen."

"Well now you have your chance to be boring as well. But you have to do the speech. You also have to work with the Quidditch team."

"Oh, no. I don't like Quidditch."

McGonagall smiled to herself. _Looks like the cup is safe with Gryffindor._ "Nevertheless, you are the supervisor of the team. Not the coach, of course, but the formation of the team has to be under your control and you monitor the players' behavior."

"What else?"

"Later in the year you'll be advising the second years on their electives for third year, and the fifth years will need career counseling. Other duties are patrolling the halls in the evenings, supervising Hogsmeade excursions, contacting parents from time to time. You do have to live on the grounds. Heads of houses must be here all the time."

"We don't have any free time?"

"An evening a week. Back by eleven. It isn't so bad unless you have a family that you can't see but once a week."

"No, no family."

McGonagall remembered then that Snape's parents were dead, that everyone in Snape's family was dead, and she felt like slapping herself for having brought the subject up. She looked down at the table and noted that they'd finished eating as they talked. "I think that's the most important points," she said.

"Thank you, Profess… uh, Minerva… I think I shouldn't take up more of your valuable time. I also have a lot to do this month."

"You're very welcome, Severus. If you have any more questions, feel free to ask."

Snape rose and walked softly from the hall. _Like a cat. Smooth and quiet… I do believe he was blushing, too, at calling me Minerva. Maybe he isn't such an unpleasant young man after all._ McGonagall picked up her newspaper and resumed reading.

Severus went straight from the Great Hall to the Potions classroom. There he pulled a copy of every textbook used by every level and opened them on the desks. _These are the potions I have to teach. I'm going to have to figure out how many ingredients I need and in what quantities._

He started with the first year book, then stopped at page five. _No. First I have to inventory what I have. How do I know what I need if I don't know what I have?_ That proved no easy task, since the jars and flasks seemed to have been put back into the cabinets haphazardly. Severus started taking everything out of the cabinets and arranging them on the desks, but then he found three small tins of powdered aconite. _Aconite is poisonous. It needs to be under stricter control. I wonder how Slughorn did this._

A lengthy search of all the drawers and cabinets in the office revealed no files, no inventories, no records of previous orders, nothing. Back in the classroom, Severus looked around at the new disorder. He'd been working for a few hours without accomplishing anything, only making it worse; the enormity of the task at that moment seemed almost overwhelming.

There was a heavy thumping at the door, and a very large, hairy head thrust itself into the room. "It's just about lunch time, Professor. Ya ought t' be getting t' the Hall t' get somewhat t' eat."

"Hagrid!" Severus cried, happy at that moment to see any friendly face, but especially that friendly face. "I don't think I deserve lunch. I haven't gotten anything accomplished."

"Looks like ya done a lot of work, pulling stuff out of cupboards. Ya got t' have sustenance. Y're not careful and Dumbledore's going t' put me onto watching your feeding schedule again. We wouldn't that, now would we?"

"No, we wouldn't." Severus locked up and followed Hagrid to the Great Hall. "It would be easier if I knew where to start, but I don't even know that."

"Well, that's by way of being the nature of Potions, now ain't it? Ol' Slughorn, he always did order more by way of supplies than all the other teachers put together. Here." They stopped by the Slytherin table. "Let's sit and talk here. I'll go get the grub. We got a lot t' catch up on, and the rest of them won't mind."

Severus sat at the end of the long table, glad to be off his feet and sitting anywhere, until Hagrid returned with two heaping plates.

"Now, tell me all what ya've been doing this past year," Hagrid said after he'd dulled the edge of his hunger. Severus was eating much less and far more slowly. "Ya didn't never get in no trouble 'cause of us, did ya?"

"There was just one time, when he first suspected a leak. All of us at headquarters were interrogated. My session lasted an hour and a half. I made it, though. Obviously, or I wouldn't be here."

"Humph. Dumbledore didn't tell me 'bout that. Prob'ly thought I'd go running down t' London t' rescue ya. And I would, too, if I knew where t' go." And they talked a bit about spying and drop points, and the self-defense lessons Severus taught to half the Death Eaters in Britain. "Maybe ya could show me what ya teach them," Hagrid suggested. "Then ya could show me how t' block what ya teach them." It was a good idea, and Severus agreed to meet with Hagrid for lessons.

The conversation shifted to the Potions class and Severus's quandary about how to handle the job.

"That's easy," said Hagrid. "It don't really matter what ya do first. Any one of them jobs could be first, second, whatever, just as long as at the end ya know what ya got, what ya need, and what ya have to order. Ya just do first what ya like best. The rest 'll follow. And it don't all have t' happen today. Ya got a month. The supplies come in a week after ya order them."

It was useful information and good advice. Severus returned to his task with a better feeling for what he was doing. The cabinets on the long side of the room would be for herbs and other plant material – leaves, stems, roots, flower, fungi. The narrow side of the room was for animal parts – eyes, spleens, dried blood… Anything poisonous, rare, or expensive would be stored in the office.

Severus first moved out all the cabinets, cleaned the area, cleaned the cabinets, and put them back in, rearranging with an eye to both utility and aesthetics. Then he set up tables in front of the cabinets to begin sorting the ingredients, cleaning the exterior of each container, and moving some from the class to the office and others from the office to the class.

By supper time, every jar, flask, bottle, and tin had been looked at, wiped, and put into the correct room on the correct table. Severus was assembling sheets of parchment, quills, and ink to begin his inventory when Dumbledore looked in and reminded him it was again time to eat.

Supper was Severus's fourth meal as a teacher at Hogwarts, and at none of them had the teachers sat at the high table. Breakfast was random, with each coming in and eating at leisure, frequently alone. Lunch was scattered through the Hall in groups of two or three generally. Only supper was eaten at one long table, but this was in the middle of the hall where they could sit on both sides and face each other. It was then that Severus realized that the teachers sat at the high table not from preference or pride, but in order to monitor the behavior of the students.

Now he sat at the foot of the table where McGonagall presided, with Flitwick to her right and Sprout and Severus to her left, and they talked house business. Most of it was meant to fill Severus in on the details of his job, and to give him a taste for its trials and rewards.

Later, in the staff room, the three older teachers met to chat, Snape having returned to his rooms to continue working.

"I wish I knew what was in that lad's head," said McGonagall, and the other two knew instantly who she was talking about.

"Personally, I don't see why you're all so suspicious of him." Sprout responded. "He seems quite nice to me. Maybe a little shy."

"Shy! There's nothing shy about that one. At school he was withdrawn, secretive, moody, unpredictable, I'd even say vindictive and vengeful because…"

"No, Minerva," interrupted Flitwick, "now you're showing your prejudice. You just liked those rascals James and Sirius so much it blinded you to their shortcomings. My students tell me that it was more likely Gryffindor to start something, and then Slytherin just gave tit for tat, and I never heard that young Severus ever hurt anyone. Embarrassed a couple, but no actual damage. I couldn't say the same for your charges."

"No? What about the fight in fifth year? I disarmed the whole bunch of them, and he attacked James like a little wildcat. An actual fist fight right there on the front lawn, kicking and punching and rolling in the grass…"

"That quiet, polite young man started a fight?" Sprout was entranced.

"I'd say James started the fight." said Flitwick. "He attacked Severus without provocation, and he and Sirius humiliated the boy in front of the whole school. At least that's what my students told me. They rather admired Severus's spirit, still ready to fight after being whipped so soundly. Ravenclaw hasn't quite trusted Gryffindor since. Come to think of it, our incoming seventh years would have witnessed that fight in their first year. I hope they don't give him trouble over it."

"Do you remember their sorting, Filius? You wouldn't know it now because he's grown up so much, but he was one of the smallest students we ever had, short and skinny with those black eyes… Like a changeling child. And spooky? He wouldn't give anything away, not even that young. Locked up tighter than a Gringotts vault, and hard and sharp as obsidian."

"But without equal in Charms. He could do anything I gave him. Years ahead of the others."

"Mostly hexes and jinxes from what I hear."

"Not your usual ones, though. He actually created his own."

"I still don't know how he did the green hair."

"Or made the bats attack Sirius, even in the daytime."

Soon the memories of the curse fights between Slytherin and Gryffindor houses had all three teachers laughing merrily. It was late before they left the staff room and went to bed.

McGonagall had, by that time, renewed her determination to keep a close watch on this former student who had already proven himself such a delinquent. Flitwick, on the other hand, treasured the realization that he might finally have the opportunity to ask Snape how he'd cast some of the more famous hexes. And Sprout was now thoroughly convinced that anyone with a mischievous streak in him as strong as that, was certainly worth getting to know better. Especially since he was reported to be such a good herbologist.

_Monday, August 3, 1981_

Severus woke the following morning to pounding on the door of his office. He was still sleepy, not having gotten to bed until two in the morning, but he rose and went to the door, rubbing his eyes and yawning. It was Filch.

"Sorry to wake you, Professor," said Filch, who was clearly not sorry at all, "but Professor Dumbledore would like the entire staff to be at breakfast by seven. There's to be an announcement." He turned and walked back along the corridor to the entrance hall.

Severus returned to his bedroom and dressed quickly. _Is this normal for Monday mornings? Maybe they always gather early during the week for a staff meeting. It is the same time breakfast is served to the school during term. If so, it was good of Filch to let me know. Then again, it might be something special…_

Before leaving the dungeons, Severus checked his rooms. The sheets of parchment with the inventory he'd finished the night before lay neatly on their respective tables. He'd be able to put the various ingredients away and start making his list of what he needed as supplies for the school year. He had a comfortable sense of accomplishment.

Other teachers were passing through the entrance hall on the way to breakfast when Severus stepped out of the underground corridor. _Am I the only one down on this level of the castle?_ he thought, then saw Professor Sprout leaving the corridor on the other side of the marble staircase. _Of course, Hufflepuff is near the kitchens. So there are two of us._

This morning the staff was breakfasting at one long table, just as at supper. Severus took what appeared to be his regular place at the foot of the table with the heads of houses. Far away, next to Professor Dumbledore at the head of the table were two men he'd never seen before.

The first, on Dumbledore's right, was a tall, athletic-looking man around forty with a mane of reddish hair. His resemblance to a lion was heightened by his eyes which, though hazel, had more of yellow in them than green or brown. The other man was truly unusual, much older and shorter, heavy-built and powerful. His face was misshapen, craggy, and scarred, and it looked as if someone had bitten off part of his nose. His eyes were small and beady, and seemed to be trying to look at everything at once.

When the entire staff was seated, before the food was served, Dumbledore rose. "Ladies and gentlemen, I should like to introduce to you this morning's guests, one of whom will be a colleague as of today. They have made a special effort to come up this morning from London just to be able to spend some time with the entire staff at the beginning of the day. On my right is Mr. Rufus Scrimgeour and on my left Mr. Alastor Moody. Both are employees of the Ministry of Magic, Department of Magical Law Enforcement, Auror Division. Mr. Scrimgeour has been sent by the Ministry to take the position of Professor of Defense against the Dark Arts, as the Ministry feels the situation in the country is currently dangerous enough to warrant the presence of an auror at Hogwarts. I am sure that both these gentlemen will wish to address you as a group, but first we shall eat."

Dumbledore then clapped his hands and took his seat. The table was immediately filled with food for breakfast, more ornate than usual as a tribute to the guests. Severus tried to ignore the men at the other end of the table and focus instead on the food. Of particular interest was a dish that looked like some kind of bread topped with ham, egg, and a sauce. "What's that?" he asked Sprout.

"Eggs Benedict," Flitwick answered for her. "Very rare to see it here. Must be due to them. That's Canadian bacon and Hollandaise sauce."

Severus took the eggs Benedict and was surprised at how good it was. _I don't know anything about food,_ he thought. It could be a profitable line of study.

From time to time Severus glanced up at the head of the table, and each time he had the impression that one or other of the aurors had been watching him. After the third time, he began to get nervous. _Don't be silly. They're probably watching everyone._ Then he turned to say something to Professor Sprout, only to discover that Professor McGonagall was looking at him, too.

When the meal was finished, and the teachers lingered over last cups of coffee and tea, the new Professor Scrimgeour rose to speak to them.

"Ladies and gentlemen, my new colleagues. We live in dangerous times. For the past decade our world has been gradually overwhelmed by the power and ruthless ambition of the dark wizard who styles himself Lord Voldemort. Though we have made some major advances against him in the past year, his threat is still very real and very immediate. The Ministry fears that it may extend to the safety of our children here at Hogwarts."

At the mention of the Dark Lord's name, Severus had winced, pain stabbing through his left arm. He hoped it had gone unnoticed in the general gasp of surprise from people used to hearing, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, or You-Know-Who, but when he looked back at the head of the table, Mr. Moody was staring at him. Then, unnervingly, Moody smiled. It wasn't a friendly smile.

_Just when life was starting to get bearable,_ Severus thought. _Now I have aurors to deal with._

The rest of Professor Scrimgeour's speech was predictable – how he wanted to get to know each and every one of the others personally, and how he was looking forward to working with them. When it was over, the staff rose and moved toward the head of the table to be individually introduced to their new colleague and his friend.

Coming from the foot of the table, Severus was near the end of the line when he took Professor Scrimgeour's hand in greeting. Then Dumbledore said his name, and Scrimgeour's grip tightened. For an instant, Severus's startled eyes met Scrimgeour's, but Severus quickly looked down.

"Pleased to meet you," said Professor Scrimgeour.

"Likewise," Severus murmured.

"Snape," Mr. Moody said when Severus was introduced to him, rolling the name in his mouth as if savoring its taste. "You wouldn't happen to know a chap named Dolohov, would you? Antonin Dolohov?"

"No," said Severus, a bit too quickly.

"Odd. He knows you." Moody turned away from Severus to greet Professor McGonagall, though his eyes continued to glance back in Severus's direction and a little downward toward the left arm.

Severus turned and hurried from the Great Hall, finding safety in being among the others who were also heading to their classrooms. He felt as if he was going to be sick. He slipped quickly down the dungeon corridor to his office and, once inside, locked the door. Then he went into his bedroom, locked that door as well, and lay down on the bed, his heart pounding.

_This is what 'out of the frying pan into the fire' means. I thought I was safe from the Dark Lord, and now I have aurors after me. Aurors who're going to send me to Azkaban. Send me to Azkaban and feed me to dementors._ Severus didn't have a clear idea of what dementors did, but everything he'd read or heard sounded terrifying.

A half hour later, Severus calmed down a bit. He reminded himself that Professor Dumbledore would handle the aurors. Dumbledore would take care of him. His heart back to normal and breathing more regularly, Severus rose and unlocked his doors. He opened the office door and looked into the corridor. No one was there. _Work will help calm me down,_ he thought, and went into the Potions classroom to put away the bottles and jars of ingredients.

The work did calm him down. Severus had a quiet and abiding love for putting things into order, and would have been content at this moment if his whole job consisted of rearranging and taking inventory. By mid morning everything was put away, and Severus sat down at a table in the classroom – there being more room to spread papers out there than in his office – and began to go through the textbooks figuring out how much he would have to order in the way of supplies.

It was almost noon when a shadow obscured the doorway, and Severus looked up to see the auror Moody standing there watching him. Severus stopped writing, staring up at the bulk of the man, his forgotten quill making ink blots on the page.

"You're making a mess of that parchment," said Moody after a moment.

"Drat!" Severus exclaimed, sticking the quill back in its bottle and cleaning the blots with his wand. He rose then from the table. "Is there anything I can do for you?"

"Just looking around. It's been a while since I've been here. Thought I'd see what's changed and what hasn't. Potions room looks a lot neater than it did with Slughorn here. That your doing?"

"I've been working a little."

"More 'n a little if what Dumbledore says is true. That this is just your second day on the job, I mean. Interesting that you should want to come back to Hogwarts right now. What kind of work are you leaving?"

Severus didn't answer, not being prepared for the question. As each second lengthened the silence, Moody began to smile again, his eyes flickering back and forth between Severus's face and the left arm. "I… did… private tutoring," Severus stammered at last.

"I can imagine," said Moody.

"Here now!" thundered Hagrid's voice from the corridor. "What're you doin' here, Moody y' old goat? Botherin' the professors at their work an' all?"

"Hey there yourself, Hagrid," Moody replied cheerfully, "Professor Snape and I were just having a friendly chat."

"Yer going t' have to chat some other time then, 'cause I come t' take the Professor t' lunch. He and me got some school business t' discuss. Ya ready, Professor?"

Immensely grateful for Hagrid's appearance, Severus said brightly, "Coming right now. Give me a second," and tidied up his papers. He then followed Moody out of the room and locked the door. Hagrid put a great arm around his shoulders and led him toward the Hall, leaving a frustrated Moody standing alone in the corridor.

Moody watched as the enormous hulk of the groundskeeper and the slight figure of the Potions teacher disappeared down the corridor. _I don't know what Albus is playing at,_ he thought, _but that little lad is as deep into this Death Eater business as they come, and Albus knows it. Why else would everything behind those black eyes be locked down so tight I can't find a crack in it to slip through? That boy has been trained to hide secrets, and I'll wager not even Albus can get through his defenses. When he's a bit older, the façade 'll be perfect. Gad, what a weapon! And he's Voldemort's weapon, not ours._

The best tactic at this point was to go in to lunch and talk casually to Dumbledore. Moody considered it fortunate that the teachers didn't sit in one group at lunch. It made it easier for him to join Dumbledore, who was eating with Scrimgeour away from everyone else, and discuss what interested Moody most. He had to return to London that evening, so there was a lot to talk about. Some of it about Professor Snape.

Not everything could be discussed in front of Scrimgeour. Business of the Order of the Phoenix, for example. Scrimgeour was Ministry through and through, a rising star in the bureaucracy, and the Order was quasi-legal. But they could talk about physical security at Hogwarts, and about background checks for the staff.

"Where'd you pick up the new one?" Moody asked after they'd talked about everything else.

"Severus? He was the brightest Potions student we have had at Hogwarts, certainly in all my years. A natural for the job. Do not tell me you found something on him."

"No, not in the check. Nothing at all. I'd like you to pay close attention to those three words, Albus. Nothing. At. All. No family, no friends, no one knows where he's from except he went to Hogwarts…"

"I can tell you where he is from, Alastor. I have been to his home. It is in Lancashire. You have found nothing on his family because he has none. His last living relative died about four years ago. As for friends, he was always a lonely boy. That he has no friends does not surprise me."

"What about employment? For the last three years he hasn't been working anywhere."

"Pish-tosh! That young man spent most of his years at Hogwarts tutoring all of Slytherin house for their OWLs and NEWTs. Yes, Alastor, in fifth year he was tutoring seventh years for their NEWTs in Potions. He was that good. Made a fair bit of money, too, I understand. Go ahead. Ask him what he has been doing. I would wager he will say private tutoring."

"All right, Mr. I-Have-All-the-Answers. I'm a better than fair legilimens. Why is he hiding? Why has he shut his brain down like a ship's hatches in a storm? Tell me that." Moody looked over at Scrimgeour who, though not taking part in the conversation, was following it with great interest.

"Now you have hit upon my greatest secret." Dumbledore lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "Dare I confide in you? I believe I can have faith in your discretion. I am in the process of preparing a monograph, a scholarly paper, on a highly disputed topic. I intend to prove the existence of congenital occlumency, and that young man is the subject of my study. You have no idea how long I have been working to get him to return to Hogwarts. You must not tell him, however, as his awareness of my observations will compromise their validity."

The two aurors stared at Dumbledore for a moment in total disbelief, and then Scrimgeour spoke, his voice struggling to hide its scorn. "There's no such thing as congenital occlumency. It's a biological impossibility. The whole world will ridicule your ideas."

Moody managed to hide his amusement. Scrimgeour had fallen for Dumbledore's ploy and allowed the subject to change. Aside from his interest in the occlumency question, Moody wanted to watch the two spar.

"No, no, Rufus – and I may call you Rufus now, for you are a member of my staff – no, Rufus, there is congenital occlumency, and Professor Snape is living proof. Ask any of the professors who were here the day he was sorted. Ask McGonagall or Flitwick. Ask Hagrid. That little eleven-year-old brain was sealed off like a pharaoh's tomb. Hagrid and I worked for months just to help him break out. We have never been able to break in."

"That may be as you say," said Scrimgeour, having no argument to counter Dumbledore with, "but I'll still reserve my opinion."

"You may reserve what you wish, my dear fellow, but please do not interfere with my research."

Moody leaned back in his chair, grinning. He still thought young Professor Snape was knee-deep in Death Eater business, but he was somewhat appeased by the occlumency explanation. If there was even some truth in it, then Moody's inability to read the Potions instructor wasn't as sinister as he'd first thought. He'd be sure Scrimgeour kept an eye open, but it looked like they didn't have to sweat the small stuff.

After lunch, Moody poked around a little more, talked to a few more people, then said his goodbyes and returned to London. Scrimgeour remained, to spend at least that night at Hogwarts, though many of the staff commuted from their homes on a daily basis, apparating into Hogsmeade each morning. Only the heads of houses were required to stay on the grounds at night.

Severus spent all Monday afternoon and evening working on his supply lists, taking time off only to go to supper where he gleaned as much more as he could from the others about supervising a house. It seemed that every day one or the other of the three would come up with a new piece of advice or a new anecdote that gave him useful information. Once again, Severus didn't get to bed until after midnight.

The next day he was working on his lists, having gotten almost to the end of fifth year, when Severus had another visitor. This time it was Rufus Scrimgeour.

Having learned from his mistakes, Severus this time carefully placed his quill in the inkwell and rose as soon as he saw who it was. "How can I help you?" he asked.

"Just looking around and getting reacquainted," said Scrimgeour. "It looks different from when Slughorn was here."

"So I've been told."

"Would you mind letting me see what you've been doing? I'm new at this, too. I could use some hints."

There was no good reason to refuse, so Severus pointed out what he'd changed from Slughorn's arrangement and why, trying to limit the majority of his comments to things that might apply to the Dark Arts position.

"It sounds like you've done this before," Scrimgeour commented. "You know, organized a classroom – or a potions work area."

_What did Dolohov tell them?_ Severus thought. _I have to act innocent. I have to be innocent._ "I have," he answered. "I assisted my grandmother in her potions workshop, and I converted a room in my house to my own laboratory. So I have done this before. Just not quite on this scale."

"I hear you're an expert with charms, too."

That was a trap. At the worst it meant knowledge of his work inventing spells for the Dark Lord, but there were other interpretations. "I've been told Slytherin's exploits against Gryffindor are legendary. I personally think it wasn't that spectacular."

"You're modest." Scrimgeour was examining some of the jars of animal parts.

"I'm sensible."

"I hope so," said Scrimgeour. "It's so much easier working with sensible people."

This time it was Dumbledore who rescued him. "Rufus! Rufus!" the Headmaster's voice could be heard calling as he came into the dungeons. "Professor Scrimgeour, are you down here?"

"Here, Professor Dumbledore," Scrimgeour called back. "Potions classroom."

"Good, Rufus, I am pleased that I have found you. Would you mind coming with me for a while. I need to talk to you about your class schedule." Scrimgeour turned to go with Dumbledore, though somewhat reluctantly.

"Professor," said Severus suddenly. "May I ask you something?"

"Will it take long, Severus? I do need to speak with Professor Scrimgeour."

"Only a moment, sir. I need the answer before I can order supplies. If there's a potion in the book, but I know that there's also an new, improved version of the potion, which do I teach, the book, or the new recipe?"

Dumbledore smiled and peered at Severus over his glasses. _He knows,_ Severus thought, _he knows I'm talking about my own experiments._

"Think for a moment, Severus. What is the goal of the majority of your students?"

"To pass their OWLs."

"And to do that, they must be tested on what they have learned from the book. It would not be fair to teach them something that would hinder them from reaching their goal."

"So I teach to the test?"

"Until they have taken their OWLs. Those who are truly interested in potions will continue into NEWT level work. There you may be more creative."

"I understand, sir. Thank you, sir."

"I am pleased to have been of assistance. Now Rufus, we must go up and look at your classroom. There are certain changes..."

Severus listened as they walked away, then sat done to finish his requisitions.


	22. Chapter 22 – Shifting Sands

**Severus Snape: The Middle Years – Shifting Sands**

_Wednesday, August 5, 1981_

On Wednesday morning, Flitwick wandered into the Great Hall for breakfast. McGonagall, always the first up and the first downstairs – although, as Flitwick often teased her, this might have something to do with being deputy headmistress with rooms on the first floor instead of up near Gryffindor and Ravenclaw houses on the seventh floor with Flitwick – saw him and waved him over to sit with her.

"We haven't had a chance to chat since the lightning bolt struck, Filius. Do join me for a spot of gossip."

"With pleasure, dear lady," said Flitwick, climbing onto the bench next to her and reaching for eggs, bacon, toast, and tea. "Another shock to your system, I take it. You didn't know about Monday's surprise?"

"Know? I am seriously considering accosting Albus in a crowded corridor, accusing him of trying to drive me from the school through public humiliation, and resigning after an emotionally charged and highly dramatic scene that will shame him before his entire staff."

"Why don't you?" Flitwick said, sipping his tea. "I for one would love to see it."

"Because the scoundrel would only twist it to his own advantage. But you would think he'd at least give me a hint."

"I wish he had, Minerva, because then you would have given me a hint, and I could have told Pomona."

McGonagall stared down at him, a look of feigned horror on her face. "Filius Flitwick! Are you implying that I would spread information of a confidential nature imparted to me in official capacity by the headmaster of this school?"

"Why not? You've done it before." Flitwick suddenly stood up on the bench so that his head was now above McGonagall's. "There's Master Snape. Let's get him in on this."

"Well, I'm not sure…" McGonagall started, but Flitwick was already waving and calling Snape's name.

Snape came over and was pleased to join them. Flitwick let him start eating then asked, "How do you feel about having an auror in Dark Arts?" Black eyes glinted up, then back down at the plate. _Are you nervous about something?_ Flitwick thought.

"I suppose under the circumstances it's a wise precaution," Snape answered. "We do live in dangerous times. Best to be prepared."

"I must say, though," said McGonagall, "that I don't envy you at all. Aurors in the school."

"Why should that affect me more than you?" Snape's voice reflected some of his apprehension.

"You're head of Slytherin house! What are you going to do the first time that Scrimgeour person asks to interrogate the students of your house about their parents and their parents' colleagues?"

The look of shock on Snape's face told Flitwick that he hadn't considered this aspect of the situation at all. Flitwick quickly added his own opinion. "I'll tell you what you do, Master Snape. You go right to Professor Dumbledore. You handle the day to day matters of your house, but something that affects school policy goes right to the headmaster. Or to the deputy headmistress," he added slyly.

"There you are," said McGonagall. "I've barely finished my breakfast, and he's heaping me with problems. I've half a mind to suggest that Albus give the position to you and leave me in peace."

There was a lull in the conversation, then Snape said, "I did have a question. It's more of an administrative matter. I need to order supplies, but I don't know how to go about it. Are there forms to fill out?"

"You just make up a list and give it to me," McGonagall answered, only to have Snape pull several sheets of parchment from his robes and lay them on the table. She glanced over the list, written in small, rather cramped handwriting. "You need all of this?" she gasped.

Snape looked embarrassed. "I know it's a lot, but the stores are low, and I don't see how I can get through the year without…" He stopped as McGonagall began to laugh. "I'm sorry. Have I done…"

"No, no," said McGonagall. "It's just that Slughorn was never organized enough to ask me for more than half a month's supplies at a time. Are you telling me this will last you until June and you won't bother me again all year?"

"I think so. I don't want to make any promises, though."

"Laddie, I'm softening to you already. If you gentlemen will excuse me, I'll leave you to talk. I'm off to take care of administrative matters." McGonagall rose and swept from the Hall, leaving Flitwick and Snape at the table.

Flitwick waited until McGonagall was gone, then leaned across the table. "Truth be known, I've been wanting a private chat with you since Saturday. You are the repository of several secrets that have been eating at me for years." Snape's eyebrows shot up, but Flitwick just chuckled. "Two words – green hair. How did you do it? If it's a professional secret, just tell me to mind my own business."

Snape actually smiled. It was a timid, shy smile, but Flitwick was pleased that the young man seemed to be relaxing. "I'm afraid I'll disappoint you, Professor. That one wasn't a charm. It was a potion."

"Even more mysterious. Feeding them a potion in the middle of the Hall when you weren't even there. Now you have to tell me."

"It was a two-part potion. I put the second half in the morning pumpkin juice. The first half was in a box of candy I owled to myself. They took the candy from me, then drank the pumpkin juice less than twenty-four hours later. Green hair."

Flitwick laughed and clapped his hands. "The beauty is, if they hadn't bullied you and taken the candy, nothing would have happened, right? Dumb Gryffindors!"

"They wanted to blame me for it to Professor Dumbledore, but they couldn't without admitting what they'd done."

"Why did you do it?" Flitwick regretted the question at once as he watched the humor in Snape's face fade.

"They… did something to me. If you don't mind, Professor, I'd rather not talk about it."

"That's all right. I don't need to know. I thought it might have been retaliation. Now I have another word for you – bats."

That got them into a discussion of the physiology of vocal chords and the frequency of sound waves, and then they rose from the breakfast table to return to their classrooms and their work. It left Flitwick with a lot to think about, though. _He did that when he was thirteen. Thirteen, and he knew all that about sound waves! What does he know now? And why on earth did the Sorting Hat ever put him into Slytherin? He should have been in my house!_

Severus went from the Great Hall to McGonagall's office to ask for the files on the current Slytherin students. He hadn't intended to start reviewing them this early in the month, but something they'd mentioned at breakfast was now bothering him greatly. McGonagall was pleased to give him the hundred files for his sixty students and the incoming first years. They were in two boxes, and he levitated them down to his office.

It didn't take two minutes before his worst fears were confirmed. There were Death Eater children in Slytherin house, maybe as many as fifteen of them. Their parents worked in the clinic, in supply, in operations. He'd taught spells and self-defense to fathers, mothers, uncles, aunts, cousins, and in one case an older brother. Before the welcoming feast was over on September first, all Slytherin house would know he was a Death Eater.

Flitwick's advice was good, though. This wasn't just his own problem. It was Dumbledore's problem, too. Severus left the dungeon and climbed the stairs to the top of the castle and the entrance to Dumbledore's office. He wasn't sure how to knock, but that was apparently taken care of by some system or spell, for as he stood there the stairway began to move, and he went up to speak to the headmaster.

"I would not be too concerned, Severus. I assumed that many of your students would know as soon as they wrote home to tell their parents who their teachers were. That is of little importance, since those same parents would caution them to secrecy. I do see where the presence of Professor Scrimgeour might complicate things. I would in any case never countenance the interrogation of students."

"One of the things that bothers me is that this didn't occur to me before. How could I not have realized it?"

"My dear boy, you compartmentalize everything. Your brain has been sorting information into sealed sections since you were a baby. You just do not equate Hogwarts with the outside world. They are in separate compartments. You need to consciously focus on these things for your own safety."

"I am going to have to go down to London soon to report. What should I tell him?"

"There is not a lot to tell. About Scrimgeour, of course, and Moody. And the fact that your cover is not secure. He might even caution the parents before the students arrive, so that there will be less gossip."

"I hadn't thought of that. It's a great idea. Professor McGonagall says we get one day a week off. What's my day off?"

"During August, you may come and go as you wish. Once the school year starts, your free evening is on Thursdays."

Thursday turned out to be too far in the future. Almost immediately after Wednesday lunch, Severus's left arm began to sting. It was nothing urgent or really painful, just a gentle nudge, but he went directly to Dumbledore.

"He's calling. I should go to London."

"When?"

"Right now if I can. The longer I delay, the better my excuse will have to be."

"All right. Let me walk you to the gate."

They didn't say much, but Severus appreciated the gesture of concern. As soon as he was through the gate, he apparated to Pendle, and from there to London. Direct apparations were traceable, and he wanted the Dark Lord to know he was being cautious.

He was expected. As Severus signed in, the porter said, "You're to go straight through. He wanted to know when you arrived."

There was no one else in the interview chamber, and the light was soft and diffuse – a conversation rather than an interrogation or punishment. Severus relaxed. The Dark Lord sat in the center and beckoned. "Stand before us," he said.

That he didn't have to kneel was also good. Severus advanced and the Dark Lord searched his eyes. "Tell us now of Hogwarts," the Dark Lord said.

"The Ministry has sent an auror to be a teacher there," Severus said at once, the most important information having to come first.

There was a hiss, then the Dark Lord spoke again. "Continue."

"His name is Rufus Scrimgeour. He came early Monday morning with another auror named Alastor Moody. Moody's returned to the Ministry, but Scrimgeour's still at Hogwarts. I think he plans to commute, though – arrive each morning and return home in the evenings. He's been given the Defense against the Dark Arts job. The other teachers don't like his being there. They're afraid he'll take advantage of his position to investigate them or question the students. They're all, including Dumbledore, opposed to the idea of interrogating students. I don't think they trust the Ministry."

"This discord among our enemies is good news. We shall try to minimize this Scrimgeour's effectiveness. Continue."

"Lord, I am concerned about the security of my own position and my ability to serve you there. Both Scrimgeour and Moody seemed suspicious of me as soon as they heard my name. Moody asked if I knew Dolohov, and said that Dolohov knew me. I took that to mean that Dolohov has been giving the aurors names since he was sent to Azkaban, though that may not be the case. I've also checked the school files and find that several of my future students are from families that serve you. They'll know I'm one of your servants, and word may spread through the school."

"We understand your concern. Our people here will instruct their children in discretion. We shall also investigate this business about Dolohov. It is displeasing to us that he may have divulged our secrets. You must move with caution. As you know, the aurors have been given authority to use Unforgivable curses against our people. You may be facing the Cruciatus curse and Veritaserum."

Severus's eyes widened with the recollection, and he allowed his fear to wash through him. Dropping to his knees, he said, "Lord, I fear my own weakness. I'm not one of your operatives, a soldier in your army – I'm a potions maker, a spell caster, the humblest of your servants. Please, Lord, let me return here where I can serve you without fear of being forced to betray you."

"We desire that you remain at Hogwarts. Your loyalty is of great value to us. Your information is of greater value. Be cautious. Be discreet. Is there something that will minimize the risk of your detection?"

"Once the students arrive, I'll only be allowed off the grounds one evening a week. I've found that this will be Thursday evenings. If I'm summoned on any other day, it will look suspicious. Also, I'll need to be able to tell people what I did with my free time or after a while that will look suspicious, too."

"Come to us then on Thursdays. Your reports should not take long. Then you will have time to create a story for your… colleagues. What reason did you give Dumbledore for coming to us today?"

"I told him I had to go to Diagon Alley to be sure the cauldron shop and the apothecaries had all the necessary equipment our students would be buying, and that the books had arrived at Flourish and Blotts."

"Then you must do what you have told him you would do. Go now. You need not come tomorrow if there is no news. We shall expect you the following Thursday."

It was over. Minutes later Severus was back out on the street in the August sunshine with an entire afternoon to spend in London.

One of the first things Severus did in Diagon Alley was send an owl to Hogwarts telling Dumbledore he would be in London for several hours and that everything was all right, then he went to the cauldron shop and the apothecaries as he'd told the Dark Lord he would.

The business in Diagon Alley took but a few minutes, after which Severus stopped at Barclay's bank to get some muggle money. He'd had the account for several years, since the death of his muggle grandmother, and the sum he'd accumulated there was quite respectable. He didn't withdraw much, enough to buy some books and get a meal.

His first stop was Foyle's bookstore, only a short distance away from the Leaky Cauldron, at least as Severus reckoned distance. In the past he'd loved to just browse through floor after floor of books on every possible topic, but this time he had a purpose. He was looking for a cookbook, one with a recipe for eggs Benedict. This wasn't hard to find, Severus being forced rather to chose from a wide selection of books. What he ended up with, in fact, were two books he'd not come for. The first was a simple instruction book on kitchen terms and basics, the second a two-volume boxed set on the history of food with an accompanying volume containing menus and recipes, neither of which had anything about eggs Benedict.

On the way out of the store, Severus's eye was caught by the magazines, splashed with pictures of royal pomp and circumstance. The Prince of Wales had finally married, at the end of the previous month, and Severus had been too concerned with Death Eater affairs to notice. The photographs reminded him of his younger self leaning out a dormer window of the Blacks' London residence watching guests arrive in formal attire. He decided to buy one of the magazines, then noticed the picture on another.

It looked liked a funny little airplane, with stubby wings jutting out from its tail, but Severus knew what it was. It was an orbital spacecraft, a spacecraft meant to leave earth and reenter, and then be used again. He flipped through the magazine to the article. _April twelfth. The Americans sent the shuttle up on April twelfth and I missed that one, too._ Severus purchased both magazines.

This gave him an idea. Returning to the Leaky Cauldron, he waited for several minutes to speak to Tom, the barkeep. "You're the tutor chap, aren't you?" Tom said when he got to Severus. "Haven't seen you come in here for quite a while."

"I haven't been here," Severus admitted, "and I won't be around much in the future either. I've got a job up at Hogwarts."

Tom nodded his head, looking pleased. "That's a piece of luck for you now, isn't it? Good position, a little security. What can I get you?"

Severus decided to splurge. "A glass of mead," he said. "And I'd like to ask you something else as well."

"Go ahead," said Tom.

Taking a sip of his mead first, Severus plunged in with what was sure to be an odd request. "If I had a muggle newspaper delivered to the Cauldron every day, could you send it up to Hogwarts by owl?"

"What do you want with a muggle newspaper?"

"These days you have to avail yourself of all sources of information."

"You doing this for Dumbledore?"

"I'll be passing it on to him."

"Sure, as long as you're paying for the service."

That done, Severus had to arrange for delivery, buying a copy of the Guardian and then apparating to their offices, but it was something he was able to accomplish in about half an hour.

It was now early evening. Severus wandered through the streets around Leicester Square until he found a little restaurant that seemed interesting, but not too unusual. He didn't want to eat too much strange food on his first excursion. He sat at a corner table, observing the one table with other customers without actually staring at them, and checked the menu, finally ordering something called beef Stroganoff.

The dish was delicious, especially the sour cream sauce, and Severus took out his cookbook to find what was in it, discovering to his surprise that the book included tomato paste in the recipe, but there was no hint of tomato in the food he was eating. Not certain what to do, but intensely curious, he finally asked the waiter, showing him the cookbook. To his great surprise, the chef came out to talk to him.

"I didn't mean to bother you," Severus apologized.

"That's all right. It's early. We're not busy yet." He explained how different chefs prepared things to their own tastes and that as long as certain basics were there – in this case beef, onions, mushrooms, sour cream, and dry mustard – sliced and cooked by a certain method, there could be infinite variations on beef Stroganoff.

Severus returned to Hogwarts fired with the magic of cooking, every bit as complex and exact – and yet how much more personal – a science as potion making.

"There you are!" called Sprout as Severus passed the open door of the teachers' staff room, just to the left of the steps leading down to the dungeons and his own rooms. "We were wondering where you were. Is everything all right?"

Severus came over and stood in the doorway, thankful that the twin guardian gargoyles didn't challenge him. "I had to check a couple of things in Diagon Alley and thought I might make an afternoon of it."

"And evening," said Sprout. "Looks like you bought something."

It was an invitation to come in and open the bag, so Severus did, showing them the two cookbooks, the magazines, and the copy of the Guardian. "I should start getting the newspaper in a couple of days," he said.

"Well, if that's what you like to read, dear," responded Sprout, picking up one of the magazines. "Who's this lovely couple?"

"He's the son of the Queen," Severus explained. "Just got married last month."

"So this is fancy muggle clothing. You know, it's quite elegant in a way. Minerva, look at this blue gown."

"What's this?" Flitwick asked, looking at the pictures of the Columbia.

"It's a scientific vehicle. It goes into space."

"Didn't know you were interested in things like that."

"I used to follow all the moon shots when I was a student." Severus noted that Flitwick seemed not to understand, so he elaborated. "The muggles in America were sending rockets to the moon. People were walking on the moon."

"How clever. Was it cheese?"

"Sadly, no. Just rocks and dust."

Flitwick glanced over at the two women, who were examining and commenting on the clothes in the other magazine. "Don't mean to offend, but word has it you grew up in a muggle family."

"Sort of," Severus admitted. "My mother stopped using magic at home, and my dad was a muggle."

"I don't mind telling you it can get boring here in the evenings. Slughorn was no fit company for anyone but himself, and I don't always share the ladies' interests. While Mullein was here we had interesting conversations almost every night, but now sometimes we do, and sometimes we don't. Futhark comes down from time to time, but all he wants to talk about are runes. And when those two, Pince, Pomfrey, Hooch, and Trelawney get together… well, I'm a little lost. What do muggles do for entertainment?"

"My dad and I used to play cards. Cribbage mostly."

"What's that?"

"It's a two player card game where you peg points according to what you hold in your hand. It's like a race to see who can go around the track on a board first. The math is simple, but the combinations can be complex."

"Could you teach me this game?"

"I'd love to. I haven't played a cribbage game since…" Severus paused, then went on. "Well, not since my dad died. Hold on. I'll get the board."

Picking up everything except the magazine with the wedding photographs, Severus hurried to his rooms and collected the cribbage board with its pegs and deck of cards. The rest of the evening was quite pleasant, showing Flitwick how to cut for deal, who got the crib, why thirty-one was twice as good as thirty, how a pair gave you two points but three of a kind gave you six, why it was important who counted first, and why nineteen was the lowest hand you could have.

And then, in the perfect example of beginner's luck, Flitwick skunked him. Twice.

They went to bed after midnight.

_Thursday, August 6, 1981_

After breakfast the next morning, Professor McGonagall called Snape over to speak with her before he went to his office. "Yes, ma'am?" he said, smoothly and politely as he approached, all respect and diffidence.

"Now that you're finished with those supplies you were working so hard at, I thought I might show you around the school – I can tell you things you have to watch out for, explain some of your duties, and show you places the students never see."

"I'd appreciate that very much, ma'am. It's kind of you to spend so much time on me. When would be most convenient for you?"

"I thought perhaps in an hour. Would you meet me at nine in the entrance hall?"

"With pleasure, ma'am."

McGonagall watched him go, smooth and quiet. Smooth. That was the perfect word for him. _You got to Flitwick last night with that card game,_ thought McGonagall, _and you'll find a way to Sprout soon enough, I can tell. You're trying to get to me by buttering me up, but you'll find I don't fall so easily. You may not be as bad as I thought, but I'll still wager you're no saint either._

When McGonagall left her office and walked to the marble staircase at nine, Snape was already waiting at its foot. "Come up with me, then," she called. "We'll start at the top and work our way down."

McGonagall talked as they climbed the stairs. "One of your most important duties, outside of teaching, of course, is to see the children don't get into trouble. Curfew is our biggest weapon, but you'd be amazed at how creative the little darlings can be. Fortunately, we haven't had a pregnancy in the last few years, but that's due to constant vigilance."

There was no response from Snape, so McGonagall looked behind her to find that he was blushing again. She adopted a stern face. "Surely you knew as a student that your classmates were engaged in extracurricular activities? Well, it's your duty to break them up. We owe that to their parents."

"You mean I have to interrupt…"

"You have to hunt them down, chase them out, and deduct points from their houses. Be ruthless." She didn't ask if Snape had ever snuck off to a hidden part of the castle with a girl. She didn't have to. The look on his face was answer enough. _You're more innocent than I thought, laddie. At least about some things._

"At night, Flitwick is responsible for the seventh floor – Gryffindor and Ravenclaw. Sprout handles the ground areas – Hufflepuff and Slytherin. Dumbledore and I check in between. You help us, but you also help Hagrid with the exterior areas. Filch takes over after eleven and roves. By eleven you're usually free to go to bed, since the prefects should have accounted for everyone in their houses by then. In an emergency, the other resident staff are Trelawney, Futhark (though not on weekends), Hooch, Pince, and Pomfrey, but they don't have regular patrol duties."

Every floor had a small staff washroom with an adjoining rest area. "Just in cast you suddenly feel that if you don't get a moment of peace and quiet you're going to commit murder. And the children will drive you to that point from time to time. The key to survival in the jungle is knowing where your safe areas are."

"I never realized these existed," Snape said when McGonagall showed him the rest area on the sixth floor.

"Of course not. They're here to allow us to escape from the students. What use would they be if the students knew where they were?"

The fifth floor had the storeroom. "Anything you want to put away here that you'd like on the grounds, but don't want to have cluttering your room, you can put here." McGonagall showed Snape his own store area, which so far held just the boxes and bags he'd carried his things in. "And if there's something you need, we have extra furniture here as well." The whole back end of the store area was filled with chairs, tables, desks, bookcases, even a couple of beds.

The teachers' bathroom was on the third floor. It was a large, elegant room faced in marble with a great rectangular tub, a little like a small pool, sunk into the floor. Around the tub were faucets that provided water and bubble bath of different temperatures and fragrances. Huge towel racks held warm towels. A large window looked out over the lake.

"Most of the teachers have smaller tubs, sinks, and basins in their own rooms," McGonagall said, "so we use this only when we feel the need for some luxury, but Slughorn was in here almost every day. He never could get enough luxury, though I understand, too, that the Potions rooms are the smallest and coldest in the castle, so there was some excuse for it."

It was fascinating to watch Snape's reaction to the bathroom, for he seemed almost frightened by its grandeur and openness. He touched the towel rack with tentative fingers, but made no effort to explore further, and when McGonagall showed him the lockers where he could put his clothes while bathing, he began to blush furiously, his embarrassment so acute that McGonagall felt sorry for him.

At lunch, McGonagall sought out Dumbledore. When the two of them sat together in one of the corners of the Great Hall, the others understood that they were discussing school business and left them alone.

"Bee in your bonnet?" Dumbledore asked.

McGonagall was watching the other side of the hall, where Snape had come in with the cribbage board and cards, and he and Flitwick sat down to play. Turning, she realized that Dumbledore knew she'd been observing them.

"Is there something I should know about Professor Snape," she asked, filling her plate and beginning to eat. "I mean, is there anything wrong with him that could affect his teaching or the operation of this school?"

"Whatever do you mean, Minerva? Has Severus said or done something amiss?"

"Done? No. Said… it's more what he doesn't say. And what he doesn't do. He's been here six days, eating with us, joining us last evening in the staff room, and he hasn't said one word about himself outside of his job here and buying books yesterday in London. And that he played cards with his father. Did you know he's been avoiding Scrimgeour? Just a few minutes ago he was coming to the Hall, saw Scrimgeour, and walked back into the dungeons before Scrimgeour could see him."

"Anything else?" Dumbledore appeared quite serious, but McGonagall could hear the smile in his voice.

"In addition to that, I do not believe I have ever met a more painfully prudish person in my life. You should have seen him, Albus, when I talked about stopping students' trysting, or about using the staff bathroom. It was all very straightforward and matter-of-fact, but I swear he was about to sink through the floor with embarrassment. It isn't natural. There's something wrong there."

"I would prefer not discussing anyone's private affairs, though I can see how you might be concerned for the school. Let me assure you that he will not be a problem."

"Are you so sure?" McGonagall's voice had dropped to a whisper, even though none of the other teachers was near. "You didn't see him, Albus. I swear it was abnormal for a young man of his age."

Dumbledore sighed. "This is in strictest confidence, Minerva, headmaster to deputy headmistress. I shall not go into detail, but prior to his parents' deaths, Severus's home life was sufficiently unpleasant that it left scars, and I am not speaking of emotional scars, though I am certain those are there as well."

McGonagall stared at Dumbledore in horror, forcing herself not to glance across the hall at Snape and Flitwick. "That wee bit-bit of a thing?"

"Indeed. Before he came to us. I discovered it in his second year. He managed through seven years at Hogwarts to avoid any situation where someone else might see the scars. I would not be surprised if he does what he can to avoid seeing them himself. I hope that allays some of your concerns."

McGonagall nodded, for if what Dumbledore said was true, it was surprising that Master Snape had coped as well as he had under the social pressure of a school like Hogwarts.

"Good," said Dumbledore. "Now, if you will excuse me, Minerva, I have some things to attend to."

McGonagall sat alone after that, thinking. _It was the openness and sense of exposure, poor lad. No wonder he was uncomfortable. It would explain the lack of girlfriends, too, the shying away from physical intimacy. And why he's reluctant to talk about himself or his family._ She felt her heart swell with maternal protectiveness. _And to think that I suspected him of more sinister motives. Minerva McGonagall, you should be ashamed of yourself!_

Getting up from the table, McGonagall crossed the hall to return to her own rooms, pausing as she did so by the two playing cribbage. She watched the game for a few minutes, then smiled as she asked, "Who's winning?"

August passed quickly. Severus received his supplies and spent a pleasant couple of days putting them away, needing more cabinets from the storeroom on the fifth floor in order to have room for all of them. Desks were cleaned and arranged, equipment set up, and lessons prepared. His office, too, was in order, and he brought books from home for the bookcase. On one of his weekly trips to London, he discovered a new series of murder mysteries, the fourth volume only just published, that set him researching the twelfth century to find out how much of the background was true.

Severus was also getting to know his students, or at least as much as one can know from a file. He knew their classes and their academic abilities, who was on the Quidditch team and who got detention nearly every week, and which parents wrote constantly asking for special treatment for their children. He was beginning to look forward to the start of school.

Even the other teachers seemed to like him including, unexpectedly, Professor McGonagall. Indeed, if it hadn't been for the brooding presence of Rufus Scrimgeour, Severus might almost have thought of his life as happy.

"Do I frighten you, Professor Snape?"

"No, sir."

"Then I would appreciate it if you would look at me. I realize these interviews are unusual and outside the normal routine of Hogwarts, but I find it, frankly, irritating to have to talk to someone whose face I can't see."

"Yes, sir."

Severus looked at Scrimgeour, not exactly into his eyes, but a little past his left ear at the picture of the Minister of Magic on the wall behind him.

"Your full name is Severus Snape?" It may or may not have been intentional, but Scrimgeour sounded like the police homicide detective in a television program Severus had seen as a child.

"Yes, sir."

Scrimgeour noted the question and its answer on a piece of parchment. "Parents?"

"Tobias Snape and Eileen Prince." Severus paused, then added, "Both deceased."

"You're a half-blood then." Scrimgeour seemed to relax a little. "Not exactly top drawer - for the other side, I mean."

"No, sir… uh… yes, sir."

"How long have you been teaching at Hogwarts?"

"This is my first year. I was hired at the beginning of this month."

"Aren't you a bit young for a Hogwarts professor? Normally Professor Dumbledore requires more experience."

"I understand Professor Slughorn retired rather suddenly. You'd have to ask Professor Dumbledore about that, though. I really don't know myself. But I did have an Outstanding on my Potions NEWT, and I've been tutoring since I was thirteen."

"That's what Dumbledore said. I understand it's the only work you've had since you graduated. Could you give me the names of some of your pupils?"

"Names?" Severus said. "Why would you need their names?"

"We just want to be able to verify your statement. It's routine. We might not even contact them. It depends on the Ministry, really. I just need them for my report."

"I'd really rather not give you any names, at least not until I've had a chance to contact people and ask permission."

"How many pupils are we talking about?"

"I'm not sure."

Scrimgeour looked up from his parchment. "Come now. It was just a couple of weeks ago that you were seeing them regularly and collecting payment. Just run through the list in your mind and give me a number."

Severus looked down at his hands. The problem was, of course, that the tutoring hadn't been in Potions – it had been in self defense. And the pupils weren't paying him – the Dark Lord was. Anything he told Scrimgeour could be proven false. What was the penalty for lying to an auror conducting an official investigation?

"I'm sorry, sir. I've never been in a position like this before. I'd like to help, and I know I'm supposed to answer your questions, but I also have a responsibility to my… my clients. I'd appreciate it if you could give me some time to talk to them, or at least ask for advice on my conflicting duties…"

"You want to talk to a lawyer? I'm conducting a routine check into Hogwarts personnel, and you want to talk to a lawyer?"

"No. No, that's not…" Severus felt his face paling and hoped Scrimgeour didn't notice. "Just, maybe Professor Dumbledore. If I could speak with Professor Dumbledore…"

"That's all right, Professor Snape. I don't need to ask any more questions. I'll just note for the record that in a routine interview you were unwilling to provide information. I'm certain no one at the Ministry will even notice. You may go now."

"Yes, sir. Thank you, sir."

Severus rose and left the Dark Arts office. His hands were trembling slightly, and he felt weak. _I need to learn to face times like that. I need to have the answers ready. How do I know the answers if I don't know what the questions are going to be?_ He returned to his own rooms, thinking of what he might have said, should have said, already preparing for the next time.

He went straight to Dumbledore.

"I think he knows. I'm sure he knows. It was like a cat playing with a mouse. Dolohov. Dolohov told them. That's what the other one said, the one that went back to London. He said Dolohov knew me."

"Calm down, Severus. This cannot have been the worst of your experiences. After all, you have faced down Voldemort himself… Oh, dear. I am sorry. Does it hurt badly?"

"Not terribly. It's a little like an electric shock."

"How would you know what an electric shock feels like?"

Severus paused in his pacing and glanced over at Dumbledore, sitting at his desk in the tower office. "I stuck a fork in an electric outlet when I was five." He smiled a little at the memory. "Mum had hysterics, but Dad thought it was funny. After he made sure I was all right, of course."

"Such a wealth of experience you have, Severus, growing up in the muggle world. I have a friend in the Ministry who would love to meet and talk with you. If he knew about you, of course. Fascinated with muggles. Now, where were we? Ah! We must have some other way to refer to… him. I refuse to go through life saying 'What's his name,' and you cannot take the other sobriquet. Maybe something classical – Mephistopheles, or some such thing. Do you have any suggestions?"

"Moriarty?" Severus said without thinking, then remembered that he spoke to a wizard. "Sorry, sir. Muggle reference."

"The Napoleon of Crime? Would that then make you Dr. Watson, my dear Severus? Note how I flatter myself by assuming you meant me to represent the incomparable Sherlock."

"Who better, sir? With Professor Scrimgeour standing in as Gregson."

"Not Lestrade?"

"Too pompous. Lestrade at least admitted Holmes was smarter, and kept coming back for help."

"I shall defer to the expert, Severus. Gregson it shall be. There, see? You can laugh at the incident. Well, maybe not laugh, but at least smile. Do not worry about Rufus Scrimgeour. He knows nothing and can learn nothing, and even if he could, he would have to go through me to get to you. You are perfectly safe here at Hogwarts. They will not touch you."

"Thank you, sir." There was another pause, then Severus said tentatively, "May I ask you about something else?"

"Certainly. Why waste this splendid opportunity?"

"What's happening with Lily?"

Dumbledore leaned back in his chair. "I have been wondering when you would get back to her. It has been over half a month, and you have been so circumspect, so cautious, as if there were nothing in the world but potions ingredients, inventories, and student files."

"I'm sorry, sir. It's none of my business."

"You mistake me, Severus. Whose else's business would it be, besides Lily's herself – and James's? I have people who owe their lives to the fact that you consider Lily to be your business. No, I am simply commenting on how you have been able to bottle it up so well over such a span of time. I commend you."

"And Lily, sir?"

"Is well. For the moment they are in hiding. They have found a place well away from anywhere that Volde… Moriarty might look. They are preparing to perform a Fidelius Charm to protect the house. I believe I already told you that they have considered me for the Secret Keeper. Once that is done, Lily will be quite secure. You have nothing to worry about."

"It's good to know. That I have nothing to worry about. Except Scrimgeour, of course." Severus was looking at his hands again. "Sir, what's the worst they could do to me? Could they send me to Azkaban?"

"Good heavens, no! Azkaban is for serious criminals, not for fourth-level potions brewers and gymnastics instructors."

"Gymnastics! I don't teach…"

"You teach people how to fall down. That is gymnastics. You teach a few other things as adjuncts to falling down, but I gather they are peripheral."

"Sir, falling down is just preliminary to…"

"Severus, do you want Rufus Scrimgeour to think you are important? If it comes to it, you teach people how to fall down."

Severus nodded, understanding. "Yes, sir," he said.

_Thursday, August 20, 1981 (two days before the last quarter)_

By the third week of August, all of the teachers were aware that the newspaper Professor Snape received by owl every morning was not _The Daily Prophet_. At first they'd been curious about the pictures that didn't move and the weather forecasts, but the novelty soon faded, and he was generally left alone to read it. Cribbage was relegated to lunch or the evening, Flitwick having decided he wasn't sharp enough in the morning to have a chance of beating Snape.

"Anything happening in the world?"

Severus looked up from the article he was reading. Professor Kettleburn clearly wanted to sit and talk, so he folded the paper and gestured to the bench opposite him. "Please join me, Professor. The news isn't very cheerful anyway. It seems the Americans shot down two Libyan fighter planes in the Mediterranean."

"That sounds serious." Kettleburn helped himself to sausages and toast.

"Just a difference of opinion over where Libya ends and international waters start. What can I do for you Professor?"

"To put it briefly, young man, what are your plans for Quidditch?"

"I don't play Quidditch."

"No, but Slytherin does, and a lot of us are hoping to see someone challenge Gryffindor's iron grip on the Quidditch cup."

"What have you got against Gryffindor?" Severus was intrigued at the idea that inter-house rivalry extended to the whole staff.

"Not a thing. Hufflepuff myself, though. I just want the matches to get more exciting. Put a little spice into it. More sporting, if you get my meaning. Are you a betting man?"

"No, not really. I don't even go to Quidditch games. Was Gryffindor winning all those years I was in school?"

"Pretty much. Don't get me wrong, they've had some great teams, and they do tend to get players willing to take risks. That's the Gryffindor mentality. Old Slughorn, now, he rather thought of being on the Slytherin team as a reward for the rich and famous."

"Even I can see that's not the way to get a topnotch team." Severus sipped his coffee pensively. "What would I have to do?" he asked after a moment.

"That's the spirit! Take charge and come out fighting!" Kettleburn's voice became conspiratorial. "Now look, your captain and half the team were seventh years, so now they're gone. You get to pick the new captain. Doesn't have to be one of the old players – could be someone completely new. Have tryouts. Be there to show them the old system of favorites is out and skill is in. Learn the game and take an interest. The team 'll appreciate it and play better for you. The first game of the season is always Gryffindor-Slytherin. You probably won't be able to beat them with a new team, but you could at least make them sit up and take notice."

Severus nodded as Kettleburn rose to leave, his breakfast finished. "Thank you for the advice, sir. You've given me some ideas."

"Glad to hear it, Snape. Keep me posted. I'm real interested in learning how the team shapes up."

"Are you a betting man, sir?"

Kettleburn laughed as he turned away, "Why do you think I was over here talking to you?"

A week before the students arrived, Severus wandered over to the greenhouses where Professor Sprout was sorting through supplies of pots and soil. She was wearing a large apron and heavy gloves, and muttering about mandrakes.

"What can I do for you?" she called as soon as she saw him. "People don't usually visit my little domain. It's good to have some company."

"It's a nice place. I always liked the Herbology classes. My grandmother grew all her own herbs, though she didn't have a greenhouse, so she couldn't raise the more exotic ones. Actually, there were a few specific ones I was curious to see if you had."

Sprout straightened up, hands on hips. "Go ahead and ask."

Severus pulled out a list. "Rosemary, bay, oregano, thyme, sage…"

"Whoa, there. What potion are you making with those?"

"No potion. I was thinking of doing some of my own cooking, and these are herbs I might need."

Sprout was intrigued, and she and Severus spent the rest of the afternoon planning a small kitchen herb garden just for him.

_Monday, August 31, 1981 (two days before the new moon)_

"I say," said Snape decisively, examining the contents of his goblet, "that the Sorting Hat is the biggest con game in the Wizarding World."

"Do tell?" Sprout replied, adding some more mead to his glass. It was the last evening of August, and the heads of houses were mourning their final hours of freedom. Sprout had just made the enchanting discovery that Master Snape had trouble holding his liquor, and she was experimenting with just how talkative she could make him before McGonagall came to his rescue.

"Of course. We have four houses with fourteen dormitories each, for seven years of boys and seven years of girls. Each dormitory has five beds. Every year we bring in twenty boys and twenty girls, and defying all odds on random chance, each year we get five boys and five girls per house. The Hat may actually be sorting at the beginning of the alphabet, but you get down to the Zs, and they go to the house that still has an empty slot. If your last name is Zoltan, you have no choice at all."

"It can't be that bad, Severus," said McGonagall. "I'm sure the Hat sorts them all very conscientiously."

"Then the admission process is rigged. Students usually go in the same house as their parents, right? So you select students by what house their parents were in and voila! Sorting done before they ever get on the train."

"You forget that I handle admissions. If what you say is true, I would have to know about it."

"Maybe you do, and you're not admitting it."

Sprout ducked her head down to hide a quickly stifled laugh and put a finger to her lips as warning to the shocked Flitwick. Neither of them ever dared challenge McGonagall.

"Are you calling me a liar, boy?" McGonagall's eyes narrowed, and her voice grew cold. She turned to poke the fire, the night being chill and the motion well adapted to concealing the expression on her face.

"Why is it that whenever I make a point against you my age suddenly becomes an element of the debate? You're a lot like my grandmother, you know. She used the same _ad hominem_ arguments…"

"I am not your grandmother!" McGonagall snapped as she spun to face him, just in time to catch a glimpse of the mead bottle disappearing into Sprout's robes. Ignoring Snape, she advanced on the unlucky Sprout. "Are you getting that poor lad drunk? Setting him on me like a hound on a bear? Give me that bottle!"

Sprout handed her the mead, and McGonagall took it and Snape's goblet, replacing it with a cup of coffee. "You drink that, child. It's better for you. And now that I think about it, being compared to Constantina Rossendale is not such a bad thing."

Snape took the coffee without complaint. Sprout wanted to focus the conversation on Snape's hitherto hidden family, but McGonagall refused to take advantage of his temporary vulnerability and firmly changed the subject.

"Do you remember what you have to do tomorrow, Severus?" she asked, sitting next to the fire and arranging her robes neatly over her feet.

"Yes. I go out onto the lawn with you three when the carriages come up the hill. Basically we herd the older students into the Hall as quickly as possible so that everyone's in place before Hagrid comes up from the boat dock with the first years. Then I keep an eye on Slytherin house to make sure no one causes any trouble during the feast. By the way, where do I sit?"

"End of the board, right in front of the Slytherin table. It's where Slughorn sat as well. Normally the Dark Arts professor is next to you, but we'll have to see what Dumbledore wants. He may prefer the Ministry wallah next to him." McGonagall motioned to Sprout, who refilled Snape's cup, this time with coffee.

"I certainly hope so," said Snape. "That man makes me nervous with all his questions."

"Has he been questioning you? What about?"

Snape was suddenly alert and wary. "He said he was doing a routine check of the whole staff. You mean he didn't ask you any questions?"

"Nary a one," McGonagall replied. "You, Flitwick?" but Flitwick shook his head.

"He asked me a few," said Sprout, "about where'd I'd been before I came to Hogwarts and things like that. And he talked to Sibyll, I know because she got all huffy about it. I think it was just the newer teachers, the ones they haven't known for years."

Severus relaxed again, relieved that he hadn't been singled out. School was about to start, and he had enough to think about without having to worry unnecessarily about Rufus Scrimgeour into the bargain.

_Tuesday, September 1, 1981_

Lunch was served later than usual on September first since there would be no supper, and the Welcoming Feast would not start until after eight o'clock. All the last minute checks of the dormitories and common rooms were over and Severus spent the rest of the afternoon going over what he had to say to the students in his house the following morning. By six-thirty he and all the other teachers were in the Great Hall, waiting for news that the train had arrived.

"I am so nervous," Severus confided in Flitwick. "This does get easier as the years pass, doesn't it?"

"A little bit," replied Flitwick, "but that feeling never completely vanishes. It's the unknown, Severus. We are facing the unknown. One-seventh of it at least. But you know some of them."

"I know nearly half of them, though not well. And they know me. It's going to be interesting."

Then word came that the train was in. "They'll be loading the carriages now," said McGonagall. "Places everyone."

The heads of houses, Hooch, Kettleburn, and Futhark went out onto the lawn. The others were spread through the entrance hall and Great Hall to usher the students to their seats. If they did it right, the students would never realize they were surrounded by shepherds. Severus never had when he was a student.

Down at the bottom of the hill the great gates opened, and the carriages began their ascent. That was when Severus got his biggest shock of the night. "What are those creatures pulling the carriages?" he gasped to McGonagall. The creatures in question were like horses with wings, but with skeletal black bodies, dragonish heads, and glowing white eyes.

"Those are thestrals," McGonagall told him. "They've always been there."

"I never saw them before," Severus whispered. "Is it because I'm a teacher?"

"No, dear. Didn't you take Care of Magical Creatures in school?"

"Only the first year. Then I switch to Arithmancy and Ancient Runes."

"Then I suggest you look it up later, or ask Kettleburn. Here they come! Look lively now, everyone!"

The carriages were upon them, disgorging students in a total chaos of legs, wheels, voices… Following the example of the others, Severus maintained a constant litany of "This way, up the steps, please, you know where you're supposed to go, quickly now, inside before the feast starts, this way, up the steps, please…"

"Hey, Snape!" yelled an almost familiar voice. "What're you doing back here? I thought you were shut of this place years ago!"

Severus turned to see Algernon Colfax, considerably taller than he'd been in third year when Severus had tutored him in Potions and Charms. It had to be the rarified atmosphere of seventh year that made Algie think he could address someone four years ahead of him in such a familiar way, but Algie had always had more than his fair share of self-confidence.

"Hey, yourself," said Severus, "but watch your mouth. I'm on the detention/demerit side of the table now, and my eye's on you. And it's 'Professor Snape' for your information."

"Ooooo!" exclaimed Algie. "Does that mean Gryffindor falls this year?"

Severus looked keenly at Algie in the light from the carriage lamps. Algie was, in some ways, like him. Not quite famous enough, not quite rich enough, to merit Slughorn's attention. But a good chap and a decent student – and better than decent on a broom…

"There are falls, and there are falls. No curses or hexes, not on my watch, but how are you at Quidditch?"

Algie's eyes widened in surprise. "I am, without a doubt, the world's greatest beater… But Slughorn would never…" He eyed Severus suspiciously, then it hit him. "No! NO! You're head of house! I don't believe it! Chris! Marlie! Look who's head of house instead of old Slughorn!" Algie was waving at a couple of classmates, Christopher Tobin and Marlene Kingsford, and attracting way too much attention.

"Shh! You're not supposed to find out until later. You want me to look bad in front of the others?"

"You? Look bad? Not you, Cursemaster. And if you're revamping the Quidditch team, I'll be your loyal slave for the entire year."

"Good. I'll hold you to that. Now get inside where you belong. And Algie… it's Professor Snape to you. Don't forget it."

Once the carriages were empty and the students in the Hall finding their seats, Severus and the others entered the castle to join the rest of the teachers, Severus first hurrying into the dungeon area where he'd left his professorial robe. He'd chosen black, a bit like the academic gown worn at a traditional university and, now properly attired, walked into the Hall and to his place at the high table.

To Severus's great relief, Scrimgeour was indeed sitting at Dumbledore's left. Kettleburn was next to Severus. Kettleburn had just managed a quick, "All right so far" when Dumbledore tapped his glass with a spoon and the Hall quieted down. Almost immediately, the great doors swung open and Professor McGonagall entered, crossing half the width of the Hall before turning to walk down the center row, a train of first years following in her wake, eyes wide with wonder.

"Remember your sorting?" Kettleburn asked.

"All too well," Severus replied, and left it at that. This Sorting held no surprises. The house tables erupted in cheers with each new member, and the names Severus expected to enter Slytherin did so with an almost boring predictability. When only three children were left, Severus leaned towards Kettleburn and whispered, "The girl will be in Hufflepuff, as will one of the boys. The other boy will be Ravenclaw."

Kettleburn grinned. "I see you can count. I used to make bets, but the others won't take them anymore."

"Speaking of which, I may have found a beater. If he's as good as he thinks he is."

"Ah, this promises to be a good year."

The last three were sorted into Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw, then Dumbledore rose to introduce the two new professors. Scrimgeour got a polite round of applause; Severus got cheers from Slytherin house, some applause from the other houses, and a general murmur among the older students, especially the seventh years who had more to remember about him. At the Slytherin table, students whose parents staffed the Dark Lord's headquarters were exchanging glances and whispering. _Now we find out if the Dark Lord put the fear into them and their parents._

Part way through the feast, Severus left the dais to speak to his prefects. All of them were students whose faces, if not their names, had been known to him in seventh year. They all seemed genuinely pleased that the new head of house remembered them.

Then the feast was over, Dumbledore gave a few advisory notices, and the prefects escorted the students to their dormitories. The school year was under way. The professors, tired and anxious to get a good night's sleep before orientation began the following morning, wished each other good night, and Severus followed the students of Slytherin house into the dungeons.

He did not, therefore, notice the speculative expression on McGonagall's face as he exited the Great Hall. _So smooth. So polite. So young and innocent,_ McGonagall was thinking. _So tell me, Master Butter-Wouldn't-Melt-In-My-Mouth, whose death did you witness in the last three years that today allows you to see thestrals?_

The next morning at nine o'clock, Severus entered the Slytherin common room to face all seventy of his students. He hadn't exactly memorized his speech, though he had worked on how the different elements would flow together. Before he began, however, Severus realized that a large number of the older students were taller than he was. He had the prefects move a small bench to a position where he could stand on it and be seen and heard by everyone.

First, Severus welcomed the students to Slytherin, spoke briefly of Salazar Slytherin, the founder of the house, and of famous former members. He then outlined the rules, both the 'don'ts – teasing, hexing, fighting, cheating – and the 'do's – studying and living together as a family.

"Currently Slytherin fluctuates between second and fourth place among the houses, depending on the year. We haven't won the House cup in five years, or the Quidditch cup in seven. That's going to change. I'll be monitoring your academic performance, and students having trouble in their classes will have to get tutoring help. Students who lose us points through misbehavior –" without being aware of it, Severus had slipped into a rather good imitation of the Dark Lord "– will be… disciplined. There will be no leniency and no exceptions."

"Not fair!" called out one seventh year boy. "You got into enough trouble when you were a student!"

"And you, Reginald Fenloper, will not repeat my mistakes. Do you happen to remember what happened to Benjamin Osgood?"

The unfortunate Fenloper's eyes widened, and he grew visibly paler. The older students and the Death Eater children nodded knowingly. The new head of house had a reputation for curses and powerful contacts. It would take a brave student to run afoul of him.

"Another area where we can and will improve is Quidditch. I need to appoint a new captain, and as far as I'm concerned, every position on the team is open to the best players. We start tryouts next week. We may not take the Quidditch cup this year, while our new team learns to work together, but if we assemble the right team and we all pull together, Gryffindor's days are numbered."

His speech out of the way, Severus let the prefects conduct the first year orientation while he began his interviews.

The interviews were incredibly tedious. Hour after hour of the same questions, the same answers, the same concerns and problems… It was mind-numbing. Then, on Friday, classes began.

"Don't just dump it in, Carson. Why do you think your parents went to the expense of buying scales?"

"One of you three sent a stinging hex against Pomeroy, and if I don't find out which one, you're all on detention."

"I hope that gesture means you admire Wilkins's taste in music, because if it doesn't I'm taking points from your house."

"Wooden spoon. Do you see here where you stir it with a wooden spoon? Do I have to teach remedial reading as well as Potions?"

"Addison, put that wand away before I take it away."

"Marconi, put that wand away "

"Put that wand..."

A crisis of the soul will send us back to our childhood roots. In Severus's case, it sent him back to Hagrid's hut.

"They are absolute little monsters! They don't care about the material, they will not study, they will not do assignments, they care only for the number of points they will make, they are noisy, they are rude… Nothing is worth this!"

"I thought you taught people before," Hagrid said calmly.

"I did. But I taught people who wanted to learn. They wanted to learn so much, they were paying extra money for it."

"So now you got the ones whose parents are paying the extra money. 'Cept the parents ain't here."

"Fine. What am I supposed to do?"

"They're kids. You got to either entertain them or scare them."

"Entertain them?"

"Then you got to scare them."

Young Professor Snape stalked threateningly into his next Potions class preceded by a nonverbal thunderclap spell that reverberated off the walls and sent students scurrying to their desks with their hands over their ears. "Now that I have your attention," he said in a quiet, menacing voice, "recess is over. The next student who pulls out a wand in this classroom will be fed to Hagrid's grindylows. And I assure you it will be six weeks before your parents even notice that you are missing. Longer before they care. Do I make myself clear?"

He had fewer problems after that.

McGonagall was cornered in the staff room.

"Why me? Why am I the one stuck with the worst combination in every single class! Never, never should you put Slytherin and Gryffindor together, and that's what I get all the time!"

"Don't exaggerate, Severus. You don't have them every class, only half the classes. The other half is Ravenclaw/Hufflepuff. That should be a good combination."

"It doesn't compensate. Nobody else gets that combination, and in hour-and-a-half classes with potentially dangerous chemicals to boot. Most of you have forty-five minutes at a time with only one house. Sprout has Slytherin/Ravenclaw and Gryffindor/Hufflepuff, Sinistra has Slytherin/Hufflepuff. We could at least alternate years. I could have Slytherin/Gryffindor for first, third, and fifth, and Sprout could have them for second and fourth."

"I'm quite content with the way things are," said Sprout. "I think you just have to learn to cope."

"Besides," added McGonagall, "Hooch and Kettleburn get Gryffindor and Slytherin together."

"You are not going to fob me off with distortions and inaccuracies. Flying only lasts a few weeks, and not all the students take Magical Creatures, so the classes are smaller and in any case he doesn't get first and second years. I am still the only one who gets the classes from hell every single day from September to June!"

McGonagall smiled sweetly. "It's tradition, dear. And there's not a thing you can do about it."

It was a measure of how miserable Severus was that the bright spot in his week was Quidditch.

The Slytherin Quidditch tryouts in the second week of school attracted a large crowd, many of them not Slytherin students. The members of the other houses' Quidditch teams were there, as were the heads of houses themselves and several other teachers who were interested in Quidditch. In addition, the stands were full of students of all houses.

Some twenty-five students were trying out for the seven team positions. Partly because Severus preferred the bludgers, and partly for Algie's sake, he decided to start with candidates for the two Beaters. Even Severus with his limited experience could tell after twenty minutes that Algie Colfax and Chris Tobin were far and away his best choices. Both were seventh years, which made the next step easy.

"Remember, I'm also looking for a Quidditch captain. Let's see how you do in the job. Take over the tryouts while I watch how you handle yourselves."

From then until sunset, Algie and Chris were in charge. From the first minute it was clear not only how keen they were on Quidditch, but how long they'd been hoping for this moment. It's a rare day when someone gets the opportunity to live the daydreams and fantasies of six long years, and Algie wasn't going to waste the chance. By the time they were ready to go in to supper, he had his team. Except for himself and Chris, they were all third, fourth, and fifth years, which augured well for the future.

Severus gathered the Slytherin team around him. "I'm making Colfax the captain. Any objections?" There were none, and the team, already beginning to act like a united group, went up to supper together, discussing training schedules and game strategy.

Kettleburn and McGonagall came over to chat for a moment. "A good looking bunch of players," said Kettleburn. "Care to place your first bet, Minerva? I say Slytherin outscores Gryffindor with the Quaffle, and Gryffindor's only chance to win is to catch the Snitch before Slytherin has them down by more than a hundred fifty."

"It's a bet!" exclaimed McGonagall, "and the easiest galleon I ever won. And you, young man. I thought you weren't interested in Quidditch."

"I'm not," said Severus, "but I'm interested in my house."

"Then the gauntlet is down," McGonagall said. "It's you against me now, and may the best house win."

Saturday, October 17, 1981 (three days before the last quarter moon)

After supper on the third Saturday in October, Hagrid stopped Severus on his way down into the dungeons.

"Good you're still here, Professor Snape. Professor Dumbledore's sent for me, and he asked me to bring you along, too."

Upstairs in Dumbledore's office, the news was good. "This evening Hagrid and I are going into the west country to visit James and Lily. Everything is well with them, and they have nearly completed the preparations for the Fidelius Charm. We shall be making the final adjustments. If all goes according to schedule, it should be performed next week. I shall not mention to them that you are here. It is probably best that they not know. Not yet at any rate. There is nothing you can do, but I thought you might like to know for your own peace of mind."

_Saturday, October 24, 1981 (three days before the new moon)_

The fourth Saturday in October was set for the first Hogsmeade excursion. Severus was scheduled to supervise, and at breakfast asked for a review of his duties.

"It isn't hard," said McGonagall. "In fact, generally it's as much fun for the staff as for the students. You just make sure there are no fights and that none of the students troubles the local residents. You remember getting out to Hogsmeade, don't you?"

"Not really," Severus answered. "I didn't use to go." He paused, wondering how much of a response she expected, then volunteered, "I was never interested in candy or in jokes and tricks. Not the kind you buy in shops at any rate."

McGonagall's sudden sympathetic expression told Severus she'd remembered that as a boy he never had enough money. He changed the subject, and they discussed other matters. Dumbledore was not at breakfast that morning, and Severus assumed he'd already left to take care of the business at Lily's home, but said nothing to anyone about it.

Peace of mind was hardly an adequate expression for the way Severus felt that afternoon in Hogsmeade. He was walking on air. Lily would be safe. She had a good place to raise her son, in the clean air of the west country where Mr. Arrogance would have to learn to live quietly and where Lily would feel almost at home. Dumbledore would be secret keeper and Hagrid would be watchdog. Severus could endure any amount of Slytherin-Gryffindor squabbling if Lily was safe.

The next day, without divulging any details, Dumbledore let Severus know that the Fidelius charm had been performed. Lily's home was now protected even from a chance view by a passing stranger. Hagrid was going down that day to visit, but Hagrid's knowing the secret jeopardized nothing.

Severus was happy. Lily was safe and life was good.

_Thursday, October 29, 1981 (Two days after the new moon)_

The following Thursday, late in the afternoon, Severus made his usual trip to London. His weekly reports to the Dark Lord were short and dull. Scrimgeour had not yet gotten Dumbledore's permission to interview students, so he arrived, taught his classes, and returned home every evening. Nothing was discussed in staff meetings that wasn't school business. The sons and daughters of the Dark Lord's Death Eaters were being circumspect and discreet…

This Thursday was different. When Severus finished his report, the Dark Lord said, "And now we have a reward for you, in recognition of what you have done and of the value we set upon your future usefulness to us. Kneel, and uncover your arm." With wand instead of hot iron, the Dark Lord gently touched and altered the mark on Severus's left arm, elaborating and enlarging the design. When he was done, the mark was that of the third level, one of the inner circles. Severus was rising in the Dark Lord's service.

Then the Dark Lord asked, "Has Dumbledore spoken of the child of the prophecy?"

"No, Lord. He never talks of it or of the child."

"He will soon. When he does, note each word, for we are eager to hear what the wise wizard says."

"Yes, Lord."

Once outside on the streets of London, Severus puzzled about his instructions a little, but reasoned that the Dark Lord undoubtedly knew that the Potters had gone into hiding and hoped to get some clue of their whereabouts through a chance remark of Dumbledore's. He made a mental note to tell Dumbledore of the comment.

This evening, however, Severus had decided on something special. He was still exploring the area around Leicester Square, and had finally resolved to see a play. What better place to begin his theater experience than at St. Martin's with Agatha Christie's _The Mousetrap_? That meant an early dinner, since he would have to apparate back to Hogwarts as soon as the play was over.

Severus dined in a little Indian restaurant, another daring experiment that left him fascinated with the foods and spices so different from what he'd grown up with, then wandered around Leicester Square until seven-thirty, when he went to the theater, nearby in West Street. The play didn't start until eight o'clock, but Severus wanted to spend the time observing and learning from the other theatergoers.

The play itself was delightful and enthralling as the little group of strangers at a guest house, snow bound and isolated, tried to identify the murderer in their midst. Severus had the pleasure of being surprised by the ending and, after joining the enthusiastic applause, apparated back north, his head full of footlights, curtain calls, and the joys of being an actor.

Back at Hogwarts, he reported to Dumbledore.

"He expected me to speak about James and Lily? How odd." Dumbledore stared into the fire crackling in the fireplace of his office, its flames casting dancing shadows on the walls.

"Not exactly, sir. He said you would speak of the child. He said he was eager to hear your words, your precise words, and he called you a 'wise wizard,' though I had the impression he was speaking sarcastically."

"Very odd indeed. I shall send a message to the Potters to be cautious, though it is hard to imagine them being more cautious than they are already. Did Moriarty seem to be aware that a Fidelius charm had been cast?"

"No, sir. He made no mention of it, or anything that might have been an allusion. He's just expecting you to have something to say about the child."

"All right. You get to bed. I shall meditate on this puzzle. Good night, Severus."

"Good night, sir."

_Saturday, October 31, 1981_

_(Note that my time sequence here is very different from the norm. I later revised it for another story, but decided to keep my earlier version here.)_

On Friday, after going his rounds in the school to be sure everything was in order, Severus went to bed around eleven o'clock, as usual. Two hours later, he was shocked from his sleep by a stab of pain that pulsed up through his left arm and radiated out from his shoulder. He was out of bed in an instant, but the pain was as suddenly gone as it had come.

First lighting a lamp, Severus pushed up his sleeve and examined the skull and snake mark branded into his arm. It appeared perfectly normal. _What was that? It felt like he was calling all of us urgently, then suddenly changed his mind. Should I go? I'd have to get Filch to let me out, and that would look suspicious. He knows I can only leave on Thursdays, so I have an excuse._

Severus then thought of Dumbledore, debating with himself whether or not to wake the headmaster. Deciding to err on the side of caution, he went up to Dumbledore's office, was admitted, and described what had happened. After verifying that the pain had vanished almost instantly, Dumbledore thanked him and sent him back to bed.


	23. Chapter 23 – The End of All Things

**Severus Snape: The Middle Years – The End of All Things**

_Halloween, Saturday, October 31, 1981 (four days after the new moon)_

Breakfast was normal. Since it was Saturday, both teachers and students filtered into the Great Hall whenever it pleased them to be up and about. Dumbledore came in at about seven-thirty and sat briefly next to Severus, their conversation low so that no one else could hear.

"Any change from last night?"

"No, sir. I don't feel anything at all. No pain, no itching, all perfectly normal."

"Perhaps he sent out a general call, then remembered you had to stay here and canceled your summons. I have already notified some of my contacts to be on the alert for increased Death Eater activity. I shall also contact the Minister, who will want to know how I know, but I have no intention of telling him. It is possible that Moriarty is planning something big to 'celebrate' Halloween."

"What about… you know?"

"I do not want to attract any attention by activity around the area where they live. Sirius Black is planning to join them tonight for a small holiday celebration. I have been attempting to locate him to ask him to go earlier. Since Moriarty will not be able to find Lily, he may attack someone close to her. I shall send someone to check on Lily's sister's family to be sure they are not targeted for anything." Dumbledore rose to leave. "And do not be overly concerned, Severus. So far your experience of last night is the only indication I have received that anything unusual is going on."

Severus watched as Dumbledore made his way out of the hall, stopping for a moment to speak to Professor McGonagall, who had just walked in. She immediately left the Hall with him.

More people came in to breakfast, and then the owls began to arrive. This was quite normal except that every child of a Death Eater in Slytherin got an owl, and they each appeared upset and nervous as they read their separate letters. Several of them moved to the end of the table to confer privately.

As Severus was leaving the Hall, one of them, Julius Prendergast's daughter Anna, came over to him. "Professor," she asked, "has something happened? I got a note from my mother about something strange last night, and everyone's waiting, but no one knows what's happened."

"I'm as much in the dark as everyone else," Severus told her. "Don't worry. We'll find out soon."

Severus advised Dumbledore about the messages to the students. None of the parents had said what exactly had caused their concern, not wanting to commit that information to writing, but he and Dumbledore reasoned that it was probably the same as for Severus, the sudden flaring and receding of pain in the mark on their arms.

As the day wore on, though, it began to look more and more like a false alarm. No Death Eater activity was reported. No disasters occurred. Severus still wanted Dumbledore to contact the Potters directly, but Dumbledore managed to calm him down.

"If Moriarty is planning something, he will be watching me especially to try to find out where they are. Owls can be tracked. Magic can be detected. Hagrid stands out like a signpost. Sirius will be arriving at their house in a couple of hours. If anything is wrong, he will send me a message."

The wizard festival of Samhain was probably Hogwarts' greatest feast, with the possible exceptions of the beginning and ending of the school year. That evening the Great Hall was festooned with skeletons and the representations of ghosts (as well as the real articles) for this commemoration of the mingling of the living with the dead at the witches' New Year. The feast was well under way when there was a sudden disturbance at the entrance to the Great Hall, and Dedalus Diggle and Doris Crockford pushed their way into the festival.

"Albus!" Dedalus yelled above the din of student voices, "Albus, we have great news!" The hall became silent as staff and students nudged each other and turned to look at the emissary. "Albus! We have great news! He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named has been defeated! The Dark Lord is dead!"

Dumbledore rose majestically in the center of the staff table. "Dedalus!" he called in the silence. "This is good news indeed. Are you sure?

"There is no doubt! He has been defeated! He is dead!"

In a fraction of a second of uncertainty, Dumbledore glanced to his right. There, at the end of the table, stood young Professor Snape. And there was on his face a look of radiant joy such as Dumbledore had never expected to see. _All is indeed well. He is free._ "You must join us, Dedalus, Doris! Our feast has begun, but you have brought us even more to celebrate."

"Alas, Albus, there is ill news with the good. He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named is dead, but at the cost of James and Lily Potter. He reached them first, but as they died, so did he."

There was then a moment of sorrowful silence, but the release of exuberance that accompanied the news that the wizarding world was no longer at war could not be contained. Hats flew into the air, and students and staff turned to each other with embraces and congratulations.

Joy turned to dust.

Severus came to his feet with everyone else in the Hall, relief beyond measure swelling in him at Dedalus's news, knowing that the Dark Lord was dead at last. And then the destruction of hope as he learned that the purpose behind all effort had also been defeated. Lily was dead.

The shock of it rolled over him and left him dazed and speechless. _There must be some mistake. They must be talking of someone else._ But they were talking of Lily. And of James. And hats were tossed into the air. And professors and students hugged each other. The incongruity of the joy and the grief cut off his breath, and Severus backed away from the crazed crowd, skirting its fringes to escape the pressure of the Hall.

He needed air. Lily was dead because the Dark Lord feared her. The Dark Lord feared her because of a prophecy. A prophecy that he had overheard and reported. There was no air, and he couldn't breathe. Lily was dead because he had overheard a prophecy. There would be air at the top of the castle, and then he could breathe and think.

Severus struggled up the stairs, trying to reach the clear air where he could breathe. _My fault. All my fault. I had to tell him. I had to set him on them. If I hadn't told he wouldn't have known._ Toby floated at his side and pointed to the future. The empty, bleak future in which each day he would know that Lily was dead, and each day he would know that he'd killed her.

He couldn't face that future. He couldn't face that guilt. Severus began to shut off, to close down, to lock all the parts of his brain that forced him to face the cold, desolate, empty future. No one could live in that future. It couldn't exist. It didn't exist. The air at the top of the tower existed. There he would be able to breathe.

In the midst of the jubilation, Dumbledore glanced around. Then he went to Hagrid. "Where is Professor Snape?" he asked.

"Was here a moment ago. I thought he looked pleased, thought he'd be celebrating."

"Hagrid, we must find him. We must find him at once."

"I'm sure he's just gone somewhere quiet, sir."

"No, Hagrid. We find him now."

They left the cheering crowd in the Great Hall and ran to the entrance hall with its mighty staircases. Even the ghosts were rejoicing, and Dumbledore called to one.

"Baron! Have you seen Professor Snape?"

"Potions master?" intoned the Bloody Baron. "Up, going up. In a hurry."

Dumbledore climbed, too, as fast as he could go with Hagrid right behind him. Staircase after staircase they climbed, and saw no dark robed figure in front of them. Then they were on the seventh floor, with only the towers to search. The staircase to the Astronomy Tower was in front of them, and Dumbledore raced for it as if the world depended on his speed.

Just as they reached the door out onto the top of the tower, Dumbledore slowed and turned to Hagrid. "We must move quietly. If he is out there, we do not want to startle him." They stepped onto the Tower, shadowed in starlight. To their right, facing west, they could make out a smaller shadow – Severus kneeling in the crenellated parapet.

As they watched, he rose and stood, feet at the very edge of stone, eyes fixed on the waxing crescent of the setting moon.

_There is no past. There is no future. There is only now, in the starlight, in the presence of the moon. A perfect launch moon. Halfway between new and first quarter. The moon for every perfect Saturn rocket that ever carried an Apollo capsule into destiny._ Severus steepled his hands in prayer to the beckoning siren moon. The only voice he could hear or wanted to hear spoke softly in welcome: _Seven… six… ignition sequence started… three… two… one… we have ignition…_ and he followed it forward into space.

Hagrid moved first, faster and more quietly than he'd ever moved in his life, and as Severus fell forward, Hagrid's arms wrapped around his waist, dragged him back, and deposited him on the roof of the tower.

"Sorry to be rough, lad, but you just scared the… Whoa!"

Severus was on his feet and scrambling for the parapet again. Hagrid flung both arms wide to block him while Dumbledore tried to restrain him from behind. It would have been faster and easier if they were less concerned about not hurting him, but eventually they wrestled Severus down onto the roof where Hagrid sat pinning his arms as Dumbledore knelt beside them.

Severus buried his face against Hagrid's jacket. "I killed her," he whispered. "I want to die."

"No, no, Severus," Dumbledore insisted. "You did not kill her. You did everything you could…"

Severus wasn't listening. He didn't seem to hear. He repeated over and over, like a litany, "I killed her, I killed her… I want to die…"

Hagrid pulled Severus to his feet and steered him, now unresisting, down the spiral staircase where they met Professor Sprout, who had followed them up on the advice of the Bloody Baron.

"Oh dear," she gasped on seeing them. "Is he all right?"

"He will be fine, Pomona, do not fret. We have had a bit of excitement, but the less said about it, the better. Would you kindly find Madam Pomfrey and ask her to meet us in the hospital wing. We shall need some special arrangements and a sedative."

After a hurried consultation, Dumbledore and Madam Pomfrey agreed that the open ward wasn't the best place for a suicidal young man, so they moved one of the beds into her office where he could be more strictly confined. The hot tea they brought him there contained a powerful sleeping draught.

"Drink it down, lad. It'll do ya a world of good." Hagrid held the cup as Severus drank the tea, then lifted him, already sleeping, onto the bed and covered him with a light blanket. "Reckon he'll be okay 'til we get back?"

"I shall make certain that he is," replied Dumbledore, casting a series of binding and restraining spells. "That should hold him. Madam Pomfrey, if Professor Snape wakes before we return, try to keep him calm. Get Professor Flitwick or Professor Sprout to help you if necessary. Professor McGonagall is away from Hogwarts at the moment assisting me."

More information had come in about the terrible, wonderful events of the day, and it was now clear that though James and Lily Potter were dead, their year-old son Harry may have survived. Professor McGonagall was already keeping watch over the home of the boy's muggle aunt while Hagrid went to assess the damage at the Potters' home and see to the boy's safety.

They did not return to Hogwarts for many hours.

Severus drifted in and out of a narcotic-induced sleep for two days, until he was calm enough on waking that Madam Pomfrey decided he could do with just a tranquilizer. He remembered what happened, but it seemed distant and detached, as if he were wrapped in cotton, all sight, sound, and memory muffled. All he wanted to do was lie on his side staring mindlessly at the wall.

Dumbledore came and sat beside him. "Are you feeling better now?"

"I killed her."

"You did not kill her. You did what you could to save her. We all thought that once the Fidelius Charm was cast…"

Severus turned to look at Dumbledore. "But you were their secret-keeper. How could he find them?"

"Ah, alas. I was not, in the end, the secret-keeper. James, you see, valued his friends dearly, and for friendship's sake gave that privilege to Sirius Black, who was godfather to his son."

Severus's lethargy was gone now, replaced by a growing sense of apprehension. "Sirius betrayed them? Sirius sold them to the Dark Lord? Why? I'll kill him myself. With my bare hands."

"You will not have that chance. He has killed Peter Pettigrew as well, and has been captured and sent to Azkaban Prison. That, I assure you, will be punishment enough."

Dumbledore left, and Severus lay in the hospital bed, staring at the ceiling.

_For friendship's sake? The blind, sentimental fool! To trade certain security on an emotional whim? To sell Lily to the Dark Lord in order to soothe the feelings of an unstable maniac! For friendship's sake? I can no longer touch James, but if Sirius Black is ever released from Azkaban, I'll kill him._

Dumbledore had other problems. Rufus Scrimgeour and Alastor Moody were waiting for him in his office.

"We're starting to round up all known or suspected Death Eaters, Albus," Moody said quietly.

"What has that to do with me?"

"You've been harboring a viper in your midst. We've come to take him off your hands."

"I am certain I do not know who you mean."

Scrimgeour stepped forward impatiently. "Yes, you do. We mean Snape. He's been a Death Eater for three years, and he's going to stand trial with his comrades. We've come to arrest him."

"I fear that will be impossible. Professor Snape is, first of all, quite ill. He is being treated in the hospital wing. Of even more importance, however, is the fact that he is not a Death Eater, and I shall not let you have him."

"Albus," said Moody quietly. "I know you don't like anyone accusing your staff, but Snape is deep into Death Eater business and has been for three years. He's deceived you."

"He has not deceived me, Alastor. He has been quite truthful with me. And he is not a Death Eater."

"Maybe," Scrimgeour snarled, "he hasn't told you that he's been reporting to Voldemort every week, even after you hired him. Maybe he forgot to mention he was spilling his soul to his master as recently as last Thursday. Maybe we should haul his rear end in here and show you his left arm."

"Why Rufus! Have you been spying on my staff?"

"I spy on Death Eaters. We're arresting him, Albus."

"No. You are not. I forbid it. He is a teacher here, and you will not touch him."

Moody shook his head sorrowfully. "I don't hear you telling us why we should trust him, or why we should accept your judgment on the matter. The Ministry wants all Death Eaters in custody. His name is on the list. He's going. If not today, then next month… It's just a matter of time."

"There was a time when its being my judgment would have been enough. As for justification, when the time comes, I shall tell you as much as I can. For now, I am asking you to trust me. If you will not, it changes nothing. You cannot have him."

"Then you tell him," said Scrimgeour, "not to set foot outside Hogwarts. He leaves the grounds, he's mine."

Professor Snape was released from the hospital a week later, though he didn't immediately return to his classes, Professor Slughorn having been brought out of retirement to fill his position temporarily. Instead, Snape asked to speak to Dumbledore. Dumbledore agreed immediately, and watched the thin, austere young man with some concern. There was a new, hard edge to him, as if the last fragile trace of his childhood innocence had finally been excised. Dumbledore wanted to console him, wanted Hagrid to console him, but the shell of bitterness was too recent to want or accept comfort.

"You must look to the future," Dumbledore said gently.

"There is no future."

"You still have a life to live."

"You don't understand, do you?" Snape seemed to struggle with opposing needs to talk and be private. The need for privacy almost won. Almost. "I'm not a normal person."

"Of course you are, Se…"

"Don't patronize me! I know you and Hagrid have been trying to help me be normal. It's been a losing battle, hasn't it?" He didn't wait for Dumbledore's reply. "Not for her, though. For her it was easy."

"What do you mean?" Dumbledore said quietly, knowing this moment would never come again.

"I remember the day I shut my mother out. I don't… I never let anyone else in. I don't… think I can. Except… her. When I looked at… she looked at me… It was… all the doors… opening. It… was water… and air… and sunshine."

"Could she read you?"

"No. She didn't have the talent. But with her it was… I actually felt… like a normal… human being." Snape slumped forward in the chair, and he was crying. After a moment he looked up. "I thought… you were going… to keep her… safe…"

Dumbledore sighed. "She and James put their faith in the wrong person. Rather like you, Severus. Were you not hoping that Lord Voldemort…"

The sharp intake of breath wasn't due just to the mention of the Dark Lord's name, and even as his sentence faded to silence, Dumbledore realized he may have pushed in the wrong direction. "Her boy survives," he finished, changing the subject.

Snape turned his face away. It was clearly not an acceptable trade. Dumbledore pushed again.

"Her son lives. He has her eyes, precisely her eyes." Snape wasn't looking at him, but the tension in his body said he was listening. "You remember the shape and color of Lily Evans's eyes, I am sure?" After three and a half years.

"Don't!" Snape lashed out at him. Then he again turned away. "Gone… dead…"

"Is this remorse, Severus?"

Snape ignored Dumbledore's question. It was meaningless, as life was now meaningless. For one year life had held meaning, and now… "I wish… I wish I were dead…"

Dumbledore's voice changed. No longer gentle and sympathetic, it was now the matter-of-fact tone one uses to pull someone away from wallowing in self pity and make him focus on the task at hand. "And what use would that be to anyone? If you loved Lily Evans, if you truly loved her, then your way forward is clear."

Snape stared at Dumbledore as at a stranger. _Why is he talking about love? I don't… There isn't any…_ "What… what do you mean?"

"You know how and why she died. Make sure it was not in vain. Help me protect Lily's son."

It still seemed meaningless, a gesture, but Snape agreed. Agreed even though he couldn't bear the thought of seeing the boy, seeing his eyes… Agreed knowing that, despite Dumbledore's fears, there was no real danger. The Dark Lord was gone… The reason for caution and fear was gone…

Snape looked up at Dumbledore again, more in control of himself now. With some dignity, he rose to his feet. "There was something else. I've come to tell you, Headmaster, that you'll need a new Potions teacher. I'm resigning. I'll leave as soon as you have a replacement. I'll do what I've promised, but from outside Hogwarts."

"I am sorry that you are not content with us. I fear, however, that leaving is not an option."

"I beg your pardon?"

"The Ministry of Magic is currently rounding up all former followers of Lord Vol… him. Those in custody are being sent to Azkaban for interrogation. You understand, of course, about the Dementors. You are known to have been a Death Eater. The Aurors have asked me to give you to them so that they can 'discuss' your former master and colleagues. I have refused. You are a member of my staff, and as long as you are employed here, they cannot touch you."

"Maybe Azkaban is what I deserve. Have you considered that?"

"My dear Severus, I see that you do not understand Dementors at all. They delight in despair. A person who has lived a life full of love, who has basked in the sunshine of good fortune, and has an abiding sense of innocence can withstand them. One who has suffered cannot. They would feast on you, drawn to your isolation, your sorrow, your guilt… And I am not talking about being a Death Eater. From the moment you turned a wand against your father at the age of nine, you have carried guilt with you like a possessing demon. The Dementors would strip every clean memory from you and force you to relive every pain, every sorrow, every fear, every humiliation, every minute of your life until only a shell of you remained. No one deserves that."

Severus sat down next to Dumbledore's desk again and cradled his head in his hands.

Dumbledore sighed. "I am sorry to be so blunt. I did not want you to make the wrong decision."

They sat together in silence for a few minutes. Then Severus raised his head and looked at Dumbledore with dead eyes. "I mean no offense, Headmaster, but there are few places I'd less like to be than Hogwarts. I have almost no happy memories of this place, and those I had are… gone. And I'm no teacher. I hate it. The only reason I came back was because I was ordered to. Now you tell me I have a choice of prisons – Azkaban or Hogwarts. Forgive me if I am less than overjoyed."

"I understand, and I am not offended. You think about it."

Severus left Dumbledore's office and stood by the tall, narrow windows in the corridor, looking down at the lake. _I'm twenty-one and my life is over. No hopes, no dreams, no future. Locked in a place I hate, in a job I hate. No family, no friends, no one to talk to… No, that's wrong. I can talk to Dumbledore. I can talk to Hagrid. It could be worse…_

_Thursday, November 12, 1981_

Professor Snape went first to Professor Slughorn to advise him that he, Snape, was prepared to resume his teaching duties, and to thank Professor Slughorn for filling in. Professor Slughorn thanked Professor Snape for the information, then expressed his pleasure at having been able to help and his compliments on the remarkably good behavior of Professor Snape's students. It was all very formal.

The next to be informed were the students of Slytherin house, who seemed to be uniformly pleased at his return.

"It's been hell, sir," said Algie Colfax who, though not a prefect, seemed to have been elected spokesman for the whole house. "Everyone's been acting like we're criminals or something. Even the professors are treating us different, especially Scrimgeour."

"Scrimgeour? I'd have thought he'd have gone, right after the news got out."

"We did, too, sir, and he did go for a couple of days. But then he was right back again telling us that he'd been hired for the year, and he'd be side by side with us until June."

"Side by side?" Snape said. "That's an odd way of putting it."

"And he didn't say that to any of the other houses," chimed in Marlie Kingsford. "We checked. He only said that to his Slytherin classes. Like he was threatening us."

"Okay," said Snape, "I'll keep an eye on it. And if Scrimgeour pushes it further, tell me. If he won't listen to me, I'll go to Dumbledore."

The expressions of skepticism that greeted this could not be ignored. Snape explained it in terms any Slytherin could understand. "Dumbledore doesn't like anyone trying to take over his territory. Scrimgeour's been trying to do that, and Dumbledore's been fighting him. You're Dumbledore's territory. If anyone tries to control you, it affects Dumbledore, and he'll fight back. If Scrimgeour says anything, tell me, and I'll tell Dumbledore."

They nodded, relieved to have the big guns back on their side of the battlefield.

It was Algie, a few minutes later, who told Snape that Quidditch in general had been postponed due to the news, and that the Slytherin/Gryffindor Quidditch match in particular had been postponed due to his 'illness.' Gryffindor was playing Ravenclaw in two days, and the Slytherin/Gryffindor match would be in May.

Then there were the other teachers. After supper, Snape joined them in the staff room. His reception was chilly. After a few minutes, Flitwick suggested cribbage, and then said they might go to the Great Hall where it was quieter than in the staff room. Once in the Hall, however, Flitwick had other things to talk about in addition to the cribbage.

"Do you know what he's been saying about you?"

"What?" Snape asked, already growing wary.

"Everyone knows you collapsed on Halloween right after the news. Scrimgeour's been whispering to everyone that it was because you were distraught that You-Know-Who was dead. He's hinting that you were a Death Eater." Flitwick clearly wanted Snape to deny this.

"Rufus Scrimgeour is about as clueless a personality as I have ever met," was Snape's response.

"Then it's not true?"

"No, it's not true." Snape didn't elaborate on which part wasn't true

"Well, thank goodness for that," said Flitwick, and they played cribbage until ten, went on their rounds, and retired for the night.

_Friday, November 13, 1981_

The next morning, Scrimgeour arrived early and made a point of being at breakfast, something he'd not done all term. Passing up the Hall and down the staff table to his seat by Dumbledore, he paused to whisper in Snape's ear, "You and I are going to 'talk,' Death Eater," then smiled evilly and took his seat. For the entire meal, whenever Dumbledore's attention was elsewhere, he would look down the table at Snape. Once he even drew a finger across his throat.

Later that day, right before lunch, Algie Colfax came into the Potions classroom as Snape was clearing up from his last morning class.

"You've got to come, Professor, right away. Anna Prendergast's father was arrested last night, and Professor Scrimgeour just told her she has to stay in his class all lunch hour because she's on detention, but she didn't do anything. The others in her class say he was yelling at her like she was under arrest herself."

Snape was out of his classroom in an instant, heading for the Dark Arts room.

Up the marble staircase to the first floor, then along a corridor, and Snape paused in front of the Dark Arts classroom. He could hear Scrimgeour's voice inside.

"How old are you! I'll tell you. You're fifteen. Fifteen and you don't know the names of the people who come to your parents' house for dinner! You never struck me as stupid before, girl, so maybe you're just a garden variety liar!"

Snape opened the door and entered the room. Both Scrimgeour and Prendergast looked over at him in surprise. The girl was crying. Scrimgeour smiled. "Good morning, Professor Snape."

"Good morning, Professor Scrimgeour. I see you've detained a member of my house. May I ask why?"

"She was insolent to me in class this morning."

"No, Professor, I didn't…"

"Be quiet, please, Miss Prendergast." Anna obeyed. "If a professor says a student has been insolent, it is my experience that the professor is usually right. So, Professor Scrimgeour, what task have you decided to set for Miss Prendergast?"

"Task?"

"Detention generally involves setting a task for the delinquent student to perform. A school-related task. Cleaning desks, or copying out new signs and notices, for example."

Scrimgeour glowered. "Miss Prendergast can start cleaning the desks."

As Anna rose to comply, Snape sat down at one of the desks in question. "Excellent. Since I need to consult with Miss Prendergast on a house-related matter, I'll just wait here and watch until she's finished her assignment. I hope you don't mind."

It looked for a moment as if Scrimgeour were about to explode, then he became suddenly calm again. "I've changed my mind. You're released from detention." He crossed to the door and opened it, gesturing to Anna to leave. "Go. I don't want you here."

An immensely relieved Anna scurried from the room, and Snape also rose to go. Scrimgeour, however, closed the door again and leaned against it, his arms folded across his chest. "I don't want you to go, though," he said quietly. "Sit down."

"I prefer to stand, thank you."

"Suit yourself. I gave Dumbledore fair warning. I'm a sporting man, so I wanted to be sure the warning was passed on." Scrimgeour moved slowly away from the door. "You belong to me. I mean that literally. Your name's been on my case list since I got this assignment. I've lost a lot of friends in the past years, and you and your lot are going to pay. Now that lord of yours is gone, your pals are all singing like canaries, and you'll sing, too. A private little concert at the Ministry just for me. You think you can hide under Dumbledore's skirts like a sniveling little rat, but all I need is one whisker outside that gate, and you've said good-bye to Hogwarts."

Scrimgeour was close to Snape now, forcing Snape to look up at his face. He was taller, stronger, more athletic, and Snape fought a powerful instinct to back away from his menace. Then, like the lion he resembled, Scrimgeour pounced and seized Snape's left wrist in an iron grip, wrenching it down onto the desk.

"Why don't we just roll this sleeve up and prove me right?" he said with a smile, and stared directly into Snape's eyes.

The legilimency contact was strong, but Snape didn't care. He was shut down as tightly as he could be, and he let Scrimgeour know it. After a moment Scrimgeour released both his eyes and his wrist. "Dumbledore was right," he said. "You're good."

"Good?" Snape responded. "That was blatant and heavy-handed. No subtlety at all. I wouldn't waste 'good' on you."

"You think I can't get past those barriers? Have you ever tried Veritaserum, Snape?" When Snape didn't answer, Scrimgeour smiled again and continued. "I have. We all have to. You can fight it, you know. You can concentrate on keeping your mouth shut, and you can fight it. You can't fight what goes on inside your head. Everything starts expanding, pushing, breaking to the surface, like steam in a boiling kettle. Talking releases the pressure, so fighting it is – unpleasant. Painful, even. It isn't too bad for most people, though. Most people have fairly open minds."

Scrimgeour's face was close to Snape's now, grinning again. "There's been speculation on what would happen if you gave Veritaserum to an instinctive occlumens. Imagine your poor little brain struggling to keep all those barriers up, all those doors closed, while the drug in your veins smashes them down. Shatters them. Pressure building until you think your mind is going to explode. Until the wreckage of your defenses lies strewn in pieces in a ruined brain, and you spend the rest of your life in the looney bin at St. Mungo's."

Snape was trembling, his eyes wide with horror, and Scrimgeour stepped away, content with the progress he'd just made. "I wouldn't even ask you any questions. I'd just sit back and watch. Maybe take notes." He turned and walked over to the door. "You've been warned. Don't leave Hogwarts."

The door was open, and Snape was through it, heading down to the dungeons and the safety of his own rooms, fear lodged in the pit of his stomach, a new and now permanent part of his being.

Snape was never sure how he made it through his afternoon classes, with Scrimgeour now a looming threat in the front of his mind. As soon as the last student was out of the last class, he hurried up to the seventh floor with a request to speak to Dumbledore. By the time he was in the office, he was nearly hysterical.

"He threatened me! He detained a student whose father's under arrest so he could interrogate her about her family contacts, and then he threatened me! Look at this! He could have broken my wrist!" Small purple bruises marked the place where Scrimgeour's fingers had pressed into Snape's skin.

"He has left the school for the weekend by now. Why did you not come to me immediately? I should have enjoyed having a word or two with Mr. Scrimgeour." Dumbledore was calm, but his underlying anger was also evident.

"I had classes. No, that's not true. I mean it's true, but it's not the reason. I was afraid. I couldn't think clearly because I was scared. Professor, what happens when you give… Veritaserum to… to someone like me?"

Dumbledore's eyes reflected his concern. He filled a goblet with mead and steered Snape to a chair. "Sit down. Take this, it will do you good, help you calm down. I take it that Veritaserum was part of the threat. I shall be honest with you, Severus. No one knows. A born occlumens is rarer than hens' teeth. Many people do not believe they exist. I am not young, and I have known only one in my whole life." Dumbledore raised his own glass to Snape.

"That does not mean there are not others, of course. I imagine one could be born an occlumens and go through one's whole life without anyone else ever finding out. The occlumens might never realize it himself. But documented cases… So the whole question of what happens when an occlumens meets Veritaserum is more in the realm of philosophical speculation than of scientific experimentation. It is rather like immovable objects and irresistible forces. The currently accepted answer is that the occlumens's natural instincts would battle the drug, resulting in serious, if not irreparable, damage to the brain. Naturally, no one has stepped forward offering to test this hypothesis."

"Scrimgeour wants to test it," said Snape. "He made it sound like he'd enjoy doing it, too."

"Rufus Scrimgeour is an angry, bitter man. Most of the aurors are. They, more than anyone, have been at the forefront of this war, and they have seen the worst. He was a good friend of the whole Bones family, you know, and of Marlene McKinnon and Dorcas Meadows. He is not likely at this point to respond to requests for clemency. The best thing for you is to stay out of his way."

"What if he attacks my students again?"

"I shall make a request to the Ministry to have him removed. Do not count on that working, however. I myself have wondered if his appointment here did not have something to do with internal politics at the Ministry. The whole question of placing an auror at Hogwarts was suspect from the beginning."

"Why didn't you say anything?"

"Oh, I did. Several times. Just not to you or to the other teachers. There is no point in creating discord and conflict when you have no hope of resolving it. I shall, in any case, tell Rufus that if he has need to impose detention on any of the students in the future, he should leave it to Professor McGonagall to decide the proper punishment. Meanwhile, if he goes for you again, come to me at once. And for the time being, I would follow his advice."

"Which advice."

"Do not leave Hogwarts."

The next day was the Gryffindor - Ravenclaw Quidditch match. Scrimgeour wasn't at Hogwarts, so Snape was able to relax a little and pay attention to the game. Instead of sitting in the teachers' stands, he joined Algie and Chris with the Slytherin students and got a personal analysis of everything that happened.

Gryffindor was powerful, as usual, but Ravenclaw was fired with enthusiasm plus two new Chasers and a new Seeker. As Seeker battled Seeker for the Snitch, sometimes crashing into each other in a dive, the score climbed higher and higher until both teams were near one hundred fifty points just scoring with the Quaffle. It was still anybody's game, and the stands were wild with excitement.

"This isn't good for us," mourned Algie. "If we win all our games, we'll get the cup, but if it comes down to two teams with two wins each, the team with the overall highest cumulative score is the cup winner."

Then the Seekers went into a heart-stopping dive that had the whole school on its feet, and the game was over, the Gryffindor Seeker circling the field in triumph, the Snitch raised high in his hand. The score was Gryffindor 290, Ravenclaw 150.

The Slytherin team increased its practice sessions, for they were playing Hufflepuff in December.

For a few weeks, Scrimgeour left Snape alone. Hagrid didn't though. "That," he told Snape at breakfast on Monday morning a week later, "wouldn't keep a sparrow alive, much less a fully growed human being."

"It's perfectly adequate. I prefer a continental breakfast."

"Ya used t' prefer kippers and toast. Much healthier, that. Besides, even in a good year ya never had too much meat on those bones. Ya can't afford t' get any skinnier. I could pick ya up and break ya like a toothpick, I could."

"Hagrid, you could do that with any person here, including Max Kettleburn. If I eat too much I'll get sick."

"If ya don't eat enough, ya'll die. Course, if ya want t' make Rufus Scrimgeour happier than he already is…"

"I am not making Scrimgeour happy!"

"No? Look at ya. Pining away with a nervous stomach. Jumpy as a cat in a roomful of rocking chairs. He's got yer measure, he's pushing all yer buttons, and y're letting him do it."

"I am not!" Snape insisted, helping himself to a kipper and another cup of coffee. "Besides, how would you know?"

"I got eyes, ain't I? Ya should see yerself when he walks into a room. Looking anywhere but at him, melting into the background, escaping as quick as you can… Ya got a classic case of the heebie-jeebies. Not that I blame ya, mind ya. He's a scary customer, especially for someone as naturally timid as you are."

"I am not timid!" Snape retorted in a voice that was a touch too loud, causing students and teachers at the tables nearby to turn and look at him. He lowered his voice immediately. "I am not timid. I've faced his kind before and come out on top." Which was not quite true, since the only time Snape had faced someone specifically out to get him was as a student against James Potter and Sirius Black, and the teenage Potter and Black were not in Scrimgeour's league at all.

"Ya can keep telling yerself that, lad. And ya can keep telling me in any tone ya want what y're not, but 'til I see it…" Hagrid rose and left, his mission accomplished, for Snape had finished the kipper and two pieces of toast, but Snape was left with more to think about.

_Saturday, December 5, 1981 (one day after the first quarter)_

The day of the Slytherin - Hufflepuff Quidditch game dawned frosty and clear. Despite the cold, it seemed the entire school was making its way to the Quidditch field after lunch, for rumor had it that this would be an exciting game. Hufflepuff always had highly competent teams, and the new Slytherin team was expected to show more potential than Slytherin house had exhibited in years. Even Professor Dumbledore came down to watch the match.

They were not disappointed. The Gryffindor - Ravenclaw match had been a high-scoring competition between Chasers and Seekers. The Slytherin - Hufflepuff match was an equally tense bout between Beaters and Keepers. Chasers ran play after play at the hoops, only to be met by save after spectacular save. The Beaters kept up constant interference, forcing the Chasers into injury-defying maneuvers to avoid them, and one incredibly aimed Bludger even knocked the Snitch itself away from the Hufflepuff Seeker's hand. The broom work was superb, the precision of the players breathtaking, and when, in a neck-and-neck race, the Slytherin Seeker emerged victorious with the Snitch, the stands erupted in a deafening roar. The score was 170 to 30.

"Whoever would have thought," said McGonagall as she cheerfully paid Kettleburn his galleon, "that a defensive game would be so exciting."

_Thursday, December 10, 1981 (the day before the full moon)_

The term was almost over. Tests, projects, and last-minute papers were being turned in, and with only Friday left for classes, Snape came to the staff room in the hour before supper feeling rather pleased with the way things had gone. The term was successfully completed, all his students had done reasonably well, there would be one more Hogsmeade excursion on Saturday that he was excused from supervising because of Scrimgeour, and then three blessed weeks of the Christmas break. The general atmosphere was one of good cheer and relaxation.

Filch stuck his head in the door. "Begging your pardon, Professors, but Professor Dumbledore would like to see Professor Snape in his office right away."

Snape excused himself and hurried upstairs, feeling only mild apprehension at the summons. He was relieved to find, as he got to the seventh floor, that Hagrid had been called, too, though he was mystified as to why Dumbledore would want to see both of them.

As Snape stepped into Dumbledore's office, however, all sense of ease vanished, for with Dumbledore were four men – Scrimgeour, the auror named Moody, and two others. "Ah, Severus," said Dumbledore, "come in. You know Mr. Scrimgeour and Mr. Moody. These other gentlemen are Mr. Robards and Mr. Dawlish, also of Law Enforcement. They are here…"

Scrimgeour moved forward, interrupting Dumbledore. "Severus Snape," he said, pulling a piece of parchment from his robes, "you are under arrest for complicity in the attack upon Aurors Frank and Alice Longbottom. You are hereby in my custody, and will accompany me to London at once."

"No," said Snape, completely mystified, "that's not right. He didn't go after the Longbottoms, he went…"

"Severus!" said Dumbledore sharply, and Snape was quiet. "Rufus," Dumbledore continued, "I am still opposed to this, so I do not see how you can take him to London…"

"I am amazed," Scrimgeour said, his voice trembling with emotion, "utterly amazed how you, of all people, can treat this so casually. Frank and Alice are in St. Mungo's and may not live the night. Their attackers remain unidentified and could go after any of us at any time. Do you see this little piece of Death Eater trash?" He took a step toward Snape, but Hagrid came between them. "This piece of dung is holding names and locations in his head, and for four and a half months you haven't allowed us to touch him. If even one of those names belongs to someone who attacked Frank and Alice, I'm holding you personally responsible for their deaths, Albus. You. Personally."

Moody intervened. "I'm sorry, Albus. Rufus is right. If Mr. Snape is a Death Eater, you should have let us question him months ago. Now we've lost two more people, something that might have been prevented. We have to take him in. If you stand in the way, we may have to take you, too. Move aside, Hagrid."

Hagrid wouldn't budge until Dumbledore said, "Do as he says, Hagrid." Moody stepped forward and took Snape's left arm as Snape looked away from his face and his eyes. Turning the arm so the palm of Snape's hand faced up, Moody pushed back the sleeves of robe and shirt to expose the skull and snake brand.

It was Scrimgeour who spoke. "You can't deny it, Albus. He's a Death Eater."

"I can deny it, Rufus, and I do. Severus was a Death Eater. For the past year and more he has been working for me. He ceased being Voldemort's servant long before Voldemort died."

"You still should have let us talk to him," said Moody.

"Not if he was under arrest," replied Dumbledore.

"This is ridiculous!" Scrimgeour shouted. "You don't stop being a Death Eater! You! Trash! How many people have you killed?"

Snape glanced at Dumbledore, then stared at the floor. "I haven't killed anybody," he said.

"LIAR!"

"Rufus," said Dumbledore quietly, "I do not take kindly to others attacking the integrity of my staff. I must ask you to leave now. Professor Snape stays here."

"You dare!" Scrimgeour screamed. "You dare! With Frank and Alice clinging to life in the hospital, you dare! What about us, Albus? What about the people who've had their lives on the line for ten years? I'm not going to do what his friends did. I'm not going to Cruciate him. I'm going to talk to him!"

Robards laid a hand on Scrimgeour's arm. "Easy, Rufus. This is hard for all of us. Thing's have changed, Albus. You haven't seen what they did to Frank and Alice. It must have lasted for hours. Even if they live, they're not coming back to us. There's not an auror in the Ministry who won't move heaven and earth to catch the ones who did it. They'll come after you here in Hogwarts. And Rufus is right. If we find that this young man was holding a scrap of information that could have led to the arrest of these monsters before they attacked Frank and Alice… well, there are few who will forgive you. We're not leaving Hogwarts without him."

"Interrogate him here, Gawain."

"We have a warrant for his arrest signed by the Minister. If you hinder us, we'll arrest you, too. Albus, come to London, talk to Crouch. Arrange to have custody, on your recognizance, before his hearing. Just don't obstruct. Make a good faith effort to show everyone you're just as careful about our welfare as you are about his. This could be all over and him back at Hogwarts before tomorrow morning."

There was silence, then Dumbledore said softly, "Do not drag him out as a criminal before the whole school. Grant him some dignity…"

"Professor!" Snape screamed, jerking backwards in a sudden desperate and futile effort to flee. "Please, Professor! Don't let them…" but the aurors were already moving in, binding his wrists in front of him and taking his wand.

"Severus, listen," said Dumbledore, coming forward and grasping Snape's shoulders, locking their gazes. "They are right. What has happened to the Longbottoms has changed everything. If I do not let you go now, this will never end as long as you are alive. They will hunt you down wherever you are. I will come for you. We shall observe all the rules, and I will come for you. I will not leave you there alone."

The one concession the aurors made was to wait until the school was assembled in the Great Hall for supper before leading their prisoner down the stairs and out of the castle to apparate with him to the Ministry in London. The only one who witnessed Snape's departure in disgrace was, by chance, McGonagall. She watched in silence as the sad little procession passed, Dumbledore and Hagrid in the rear, then went into the Hall, but kept her own counsel about what she had seen.

From the moment they left Hogwarts, Snape was terrified. A large part of it was the physical menace. He was in the power of men who were bigger than he was, stronger than he was, and who hated him, but this had happened before in school with Sirius and James. And yet in school there had always been the knowledge that if authority intervened – a prefect, a professor, the headmaster – that intervention would save him. Now his captors were the authority, and there was nothing outside the pure force of Dumbledore's personality, so recently demonstrated to be weak, that could possibly bring salvation.

Snape was helpless, and they made sure he knew it. Once they entered the Ministry, he was not allowed to simply walk. He was pushed, pulled, dragged, and shoved. To emphasize orders, he was cuffed and slapped. No hand or voice was gentle, and as soon as he was hauled into the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, the sleeve on his left arm was pushed up so that everyone who came into contact with him would know that he was a Death Eater. The hatred in their eyes was palpable.

The first formal stop was a tiny office with a long counter and a hard-eyed clerk. "Name?" she asked.

"Snape, Severus," replied Scrimgeour.

"Offense?"

"Death Eater."

"I've got space on the docket for February tenth. Preliminary hearing on the tenth, judicial review on the fifteenth. Trial on March 9. Can't give you earlier than that. Recommendation for bail?"

"None," said Scrimgeour.

"No bail," said the clerk. "I suppose you'll want to hold him here for a few days. You can have room 3B until a week from tomorrow, the eighteenth. After that he'll have to go to Azkaban, block A, cell nine. There's been a sudden vacancy. Suicide apparently."

"Good," said Scrimgeour. "One other thing. Albus Dumbledore." The clerk looked up, suddenly interested. "Dumbledore'll be coming in about this one. Keep him busy with paperwork as long as you can. I need a few hours."

"You got it."

Room 3B was small and entirely white, with a table and a few chairs. Scrimgeour shoved Snape into it with such force that he slammed side and arm against the table and dropped to the floor. The four aurors hauled him to his feet again and pushed him into one of the chairs. At that moment another clerk came by and whispered something to Scrimgeour and Moody. The aurors conferred.

Scrimgeour pulled out his wand and with a flourish fastened Snape's wrists to the table with a binding spell. "That was about Frank and Alice," he growled. "They're going to live, but they'll be in the psychiatric ward at St. Mungo's for the rest of their lives. That's your fault, Death Eater."

"Ease up!" snapped Moody. "We want names, not a witness with a fried brain. You back off 'til we get what we need."

"Then I fry him."

"Please," Snape stammered, "please, I… don't… know any… names."

Scrimgeour thrust his hand into the hair at the nape at Snape's neck and jerked his head back. "No? The names know you. You want to hear what we have on you? You brewed potions for them. Not just medicines, but forgetfulness potions and Polyjuice. They got to Edgar Bones because they bypassed the dog. And we know who created the spell to get around the dog. And the fighting classes – the drop, roll, and come up shooting. I've faced that myself, and that was you."

Robards laid a hand on Scrimgeour's. "Watch it," he said. "We've got a writ for questioning, not for torture."

"I don't want questioning. I want justice. Justice puts him slobbering mindlessly in the same ward as Frank Longbottom."

A messenger came then, and Robards and Dawlish left. Moody leaned in to murmur to Snape. "Names, all I need is names. Look, he's not rational anymore, and all he wants is to hurt you like his friends have been hurt. But if you give me names, I can help you."

"But I don't… know any… names," Snape whimpered. He was beginning to sob with fear.

"You poor, naive little bastard. Everyone we've had in here has talked about you. You're one of the key people at Voldemort's headquarters. There's not a Death Eater who won't sacrifice you to save himself. When heads start to roll, yours is the first on the chopping block."

Then the messenger came that called Moody away. Before the clerk left, Scrimgeour took his arm. "I want water," he said. "A pitcher and a couple of glasses." The door closed and Scrimgeour struck Snape across the face, backhanded and hard. "Your friends are all gone," he snarled. "It's you and me now."

The clerk returned with the pitcher and the glasses. He left, the door closed, and Scrimgeour slowly poured a glassful of water. "Poor little Death Eater," he crooned. "Couldn't take the strain. They left for just a few minutes, and he cracked." Scrimgeour pulled a small vial out of his pocket. "The dose is three drops," he said, measuring it carefully into the water. "But who cares about doses?" and he upended the entire contents of the vial into the glass.

"I don't know any names!" Snape shrieked, struggling desperately against the bonds, kicking himself from the chair and wrenching wrists and arms in panic.

"I don't want any names," replied Scrimgeour, pulling Snape's head back again, forcing his mouth open to receive the Veritaserum.

Snape broke. "Lestrange!" he screamed, "Rodolphus and Bella Lestrange! Rabastan Lestrange! Walden Macnair! Antonin Dolohov!"

Suddenly the tiny room was full of people, taking notes and pushing him for another name, and another… Scrimgeour had melted into the background, but Snape didn't notice.

"Amycus Carrow! Fenrir Greyback! Igor Karkaroff!" Captured Death Eaters, dead Death Eaters, it didn't matter, as long as he could give them names, any names, all the names. "Alecto Carrow! Barty Crouch! Evan Rosier!"

Moody turned to Scrimgeour and Robards. "That's the third one that's named Barty Crouch. I say we send a squad to pick him up."

Robards looked uneasy. "Do we tell Mr. Crouch first?"

"No," said Scrimgeour. "Get young master Barty first. Then we let his father know."

"But Crouch is head…"

"Not anymore. Not after this. Barty may be our key to the others. Do you want to risk his getting away?"

Robards shook his head and left to organize the arrest squad.

They unbound Snape and let him crawl to one side of the room, to cower in a corner with his arms wrapped around his head. It was forty-five more minutes before they let Dumbledore and Hagrid through, by which time Snape had become quieter.

Dumbledore was furious. "What have you done to him? Have you no decency? No shame? You would treat animals better than this!"

"We didn't hurt him, Albus. I swear." Moody protested. "We just scared him a little."

"A little! I promised him protection, and you betrayed me. Have you any idea how many years I have worked to gain his trust, and now you make a mockery of my word? I swear, too, Alastor. I swear I will never again allow the Ministry to take any of my people out of Hogwarts. Get out of my sight."

"Albus, we've been friends…"

"And maybe with the passage of time we will be again. But not now, Alastor. Not now."

Hagrid had lowered himself to the floor and coaxed Snape away from the corner. "It's all right, lad," he muttered. "It's over now. They ain't touching you again. We're going back home, back to Hogwarts. Ain't nobody touching you anymore."

They got Snape to his feet and, in the shelter of Hagrid's bulk, led him from the Department of Law Enforcement. One more burden remained, however. Gawain Robards came over to Dumbledore, humble and apologetic. "He has a hearing," he said.

"What?" thundered Dumbledore.

"A hearing. February tenth. And a trial date of March ninth."

Dumbledore didn't deign to reply. Gathering Hagrid and Snape, he swept from the Ministry of Magic in a rage and apparated back to Hogwarts. Snape was taken immediately to the hospital wing and put to bed with a sleeping draught. Hagrid spent the entire night at his bedside, keeping watch.

For two full days, Snape lay on the bed in the hospital, refusing to eat, refusing to drink, refusing to respond to anyone. The only reaction they got from him was when Hagrid tried to get him to take a glass of water. Snape became violent, and attacked Hagrid with as much force as could be expected from someone his size against someone Hagrid's size. At that point Dumbledore relented and contacted Moody for full details, finding out about the threat of Veritaserum and the forced drinking of a glass of water.

"What are we going to do?" Dumbledore asked Pomfrey. "If he will not drink anything, he will die."

"If he would eat, we could keep him going for a short time with foods that have a high water content – certain kinds of melons, tomatoes, soup – but he isn't eating either. Muggles stick hollow needles into veins and force fluids into their patients."

"We may have to resort to force. It is not a situation that can extend over a long period of time."

Sunday morning, after most of the students had left Hogwarts on their Christmas break, Dumbledore came to sit with Snape. Even though Snape would pay no attention, Dumbledore talked, constant repetition on essentially the same theme.

"It is my fault, of course. All my fault. I am a foolish, arrogant old man, and I made promises I could not fulfill. I duped you into believing I could protect you, and then without warning I flung you unprepared into the lions' den. I do not believe you have ever before been thrust into a situation without at least a little warning of what was to come. It was unforgivable of me, and I do not expect you to forgive me. I should be punished."

As the litany continued, it emphasized less and less the question of Dumbledore's promises, and more and more the question of Dumbledore's punishment, until around noon, Dumbledore said, "I shall be punished, and it will be now."

He conjured a brazier and set it where Snape would have to see it if his eyes were open. Then Dumbledore filled it with coals and lit them, letting them burn until the air above them shimmered with heat. When the coals were hot, Dumbledore held his hand over them. Within a few seconds, his face beaded with sweat. A few seconds more, and Snape said, "Don't do this."

Dumbledore withdrew his hand immediately. "You are talking to me again. I am pleased."

"I don't… you… You don't have to have to prove that you're brave and I'm a coward. I know that."

"You are not a coward, Severus. Please do not think that I could believe that even for an instant. Just now I faced physical pain over which I had total control. At any moment, when I desired it, I could pull my hand away. You faced insanity, total loss of self, in a situation over which, once begun, no one had control. It would have been unstoppable. Forgive me, but the two situations are not analogous at all."

Snape was silent, but his eyes were open and he was watching Dumbledore. It was an improvement. Then he said, "It would have been better if I'd gone mad or died. I'm no use to anyone."

That, Dumbledore reasoned, was a plea for help and understanding. A corner had been turned. "I do not think Anna Prendergast would agree with you. Or Algie Colfax, or any of the students in Slytherin house. You help more people than you realize. And then there is the pleasure you provide – to Professor Flitwick with his card game, and to Professor Kettleburn with Quidditch. Our lives are made of thousands and thousands of little things. If we lose you, it will diminish us."

"But I surrendered to them. I gave other people to them."

"I will admit, Severus, that that part is hard for me to understand. They have arrested Barty Crouch, and it appears he was indeed involved in the attack on the Longbottoms. They are interrogating him now. But it was a monstrous thing he did, to torture another human being into insanity. I do not understand why you wished to protect him. Or any of them."

"They were my coworkers, my colleagues, my mates. You… you don't peach on your mates."

"Loyalty. You will forgive me if I lament that so pure a motive might be used in support of so foul a reality. So we return to a central issue. If it had not been Lily that Moriarty pursued, would you have come to me?"

"No," said Snape. "I wouldn't have."

"You do recall that you have a hearing on February tenth, and that I shall be called as a witness?"

"I know."

"At least we base our relationship on honesty. It is more than most people could say. Severus, I am hungry and I am going to have lunch and a nice cup of tea. Would you join me?"

"Yes, sir. I think I would like that."

Word came to Dumbledore from the Ministry that Barty Crouch had implicated all three of the Lestranges, Rabastan, Rodolphus, and Bella, in the Longbottom affair. A massive manhunt was under way. Snape was once again plunged into a black depression.

"If they're caught, it's my fault. I gave them to the aurors."

"They will be punished for what they did to Frank and Alice. You are not responsible for that." Dumbledore watched Snape with some concern. They were in Snape's office since once again Snape had not come to lunch.

"Scrimgeour thinks I am. Moody thinks I am. If they'd been able to question me earlier, they might have stopped it. You should have handed me over."

"Knowing you would resist? Knowing the pressure they would apply? Torture is unacceptable, whether physical or psychological."

"Not even as punishment for crimes?"

"Not even then."

"What about dementors? Don't they count? I've given them to the dementors. I don't deserve to live."

_Friday, December 18, 1981 (the last quarter)_

Early Friday morning, Dumbledore received an owl from Alastor Moody telling him that the Lestranges had been captured. He met Snape going in to breakfast and passed the news to him. Snape immediately returned to his own rooms, locked the door, and began to pace.

_My fault, all my fault. She protected me. She defended me from James and Sirius, and I pay her by giving her to dementors. Because they were right. I am a sniveling little coward, no better than pond scum. Look at me. They push me around a little, shove me in a room, it didn't take them half an hour and I told them everything they wanted. They didn't even have to hurt me._

But there had been the Veritaserum. The fear, the overwhelming fear not of dying but of worse than dying. Of losing yourself and never being able to come back. _Coward. I'm a coward. I should have let him do it. Should have taken the drug and betrayed no one._

Snape glanced around the office. _Poisons. I have poisons here. I can finish here what Scrimgeour started. Justice._ He unlocked the cabinet with the poisons and started examining the jars. It had to be the right one. Then he stopped, remembering. Moving a small stool to the cabinet so he could reach the top shelf, Snape shifted tins and bottles until he found the tiny vial he wanted – the school's own strictly controlled supply of Veritaserum.

A small glass, a little water, the preparations took seconds. Snape sat at his desk staring at the glass for a moment, then unstoppered the vial and carefully measured three drops into the water. Scrimgeour had emptied the entire vial into his glass, but the supply belonged to Hogwarts rather than to Snape, and three drops were sufficient. He picked up the glass, looked around the office, then quickly drank the Veritaserum.

Pressure was building in Snape's head as the thoughts pushed their way to the outer edges of his mind, pleading to be released. He fought it, fought to keep his mouth closed, to stay silent. For a moment he lost control, hearing a voice begging, 'Ask me a question, please ask me a question,' and realizing it was his own. He cupped his hands over his face, fearing that the pressure in his head might push his eyes from their sockets, but his hands found no change in eyes or face or head. The pressure was all in his brain, and he knew he could relieve it by talking. He struggled to remain quiet.

And then it was over. The pressure was gone. Snape blinked a few times and shook his head, but the pressure was unquestionably gone. He looked at the clock. A little over an hour had passed from the time he drank the potion.

"Severus! Severus, open this door, please, or you will oblige me to break it down. Severus!" Lunch had started, and a worried Dumbledore was checking on him. Without moving from the desk, Snape pointed his wand at the door and unlocked it.

Dumbledore immediately registered the presence of the glass and vial, and their significance. He bent over Snape, who was sitting hunched and mute, staring at the top of the desk. "What have you done, Severus? Can you hear me? Do you understand what I am saying?"

Snape nodded dumbly, then spoke. "Veritaserum doesn't affect an occlumens any differently from anyone else."

"Thank goodness for that," said Dumbledore. "Please come outside, into the fresh air…"

"Don't you understand?" said Snape, and his voice was toneless and dull. "It never would have hurt me. If I'd been brave for five seconds that night, I'd have discovered that. Brave for five seconds and strong for an hour, and I wouldn't have told them anything. All I needed was a moment of courage, and I didn't have it."


	24. Chapter 24 – Trials

**Severus Snape: The Middle Years – Trials**

_Tuesday, December 22, 1981 (midway between the last quarter and the new moon)_

The depth of Snape's self-loathing was boundless, a black pit into which he sank with no hope of ever climbing back again. He no longer cared what happened, not to his future, not to his freedom, not to his health. He refused to leave his bedroom and, with the terrible passiveness that always accompanied his intense depressions, he lay hour after hour staring at the wall. Hagrid brought food, finding more cause for worry in the fact that, rather than refusing the spoonfuls Hagrid presented to him, Snape ate them mechanically, like a robot.

Dumbledore was in immediate contact with the Ministry, and owls flew back and forth almost hourly for three days. Then, very early in the morning on Tuesday, Dumbledore and Hagrid came to Snape's room.

"On yer feet, lad," Hagrid said cheerfully. "We got to clean ya up and make ya presentable. Y're going to London today."

"No," Snape said, bewildered, "I'm not going anywhere. I can't leave."

"You are going, and you are going this morning," Dumbledore said. "I have moved heaven and earth. What is more difficult, I have moved the Ministry of Magic. Your pretrial hearing and judge's review have been combined and rescheduled for today, and the trial itself for next week."

"No. That's impossible. That's not until February. It can't be today. I can't go today. I don't feel well."

"And ya ain't never going to feel better lying there moping," said Hagrid. "So ya may as well get this over and done with. Now get out o' those things ya been lying in for the past four days and let me wash ya up and get…"

Dumbledore left the rooms to allow Hagrid to work with Snape as he'd been doing since the boy was nearly thirteen. If anyone could put a spark of life back into Snape…

There was the sudden sharp mosquito-like whine of a stinging hex, a yelp from Hagrid, and Snape's voice raised in anger. "Get your hands off of me! I'm not a baby! I'm perfectly capable of washing and dressing myself!"

"Well, then," Hagrid roared, "the rest of us would appreciate ya getting to it! Clear up the atmosphere a bit, I might add."

"I'm not bothering anyone!"

"Oh, no? I got t' come in here three times a day with yer food, and it ain't getting pleasanter. Now ya just clean yerself up and put on some decent clothes or I'm gonna haul ya buck naked down t' the lake and do a proper job!"

"Get out! Get out of my room!" And Hagrid was out, standing in the corridor next to Dumbledore as something heavy made of glass shattered against the inside of the office door.

"I suppose that is one way to do it," said Dumbledore.

Half an hour later, Snape was ready – washed, shaven, his long lank hair still damp – dressed in somber black frock coat and trousers rather than robes. Hagrid inspected him and pronounced him fit to stand trial, then the three went out of the dungeons and to the Great Hall for breakfast.

For a moment, Snape was surprised at the emptiness of the place, then remembered it was the second week of the Christmas break. The other teachers were scattered around in their usual holiday places as Snape followed Hagrid to a table, like a prisoner in the custody of a jailer. Dumbledore went to join McGonagall.

"Here," said Hagrid, sitting him down and filling a plate with Snape's favorite kipper and toast, "ya got to keep yer strength up for the day."

"I'm not hungry."

Hagrid's fist came down on the table like a sledgehammer, sending dishes flying. "Eat!" he shouted, and Snape grabbed a fork and began eating. "There now," Hagrid continued calmly, helping himself to some of the food. "Ain't that better now, us sharing a fine meal, all friendly like?"

Flitwick was the first to come over. "Important day today, we hear. Just wanted to wish you good luck with the Ministry."

"Thank you," Snape said, and smiled. A weak smile, but a smile.

Sprout came, too, and then Kettleburn, and soon all the others, even McGonagall, were wishing him luck for the day. Snape finished breakfast, said goodbye to everyone, then left the castle and walked down the hill with Dumbledore and Hagrid, all three apparating to London as soon as they were outside the gate.

The atmosphere at the Ministry of Magic, chilly to begin with, became positively frosty as the three descended towards the offices and chambers of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. In the corridors, wizards and witches paused as Dumbledore passed, muttering imprecations and following his progress with angry looks. The aurors at Hogwarts had been right. Dumbledore was being blamed for what had happened to the Longbottoms.

Snape's preliminary hearing was held in a moderate sized room with the judge's desk raised slightly above the level of their heads, a clerk's desk to one side, a railed dock for the accused to stand in, and benches for prosecutors, aurors, and observers. Today observers had been banned, as Dumbledore would present evidence supporting a closed hearing.

Scrimgeour and Moody arrived shortly after Dumbledore, Snape, and Hagrid. They nodded curtly to Dumbledore in greeting, then waited in silence for the judge to arrive. Her clerk entered first and, as the little group rose, Judge Bones walked into the chamber. She was a dignified witch with a determined square jaw, graying hair, and glasses. She greeted them in turn.

"Mr. Scrimgeour, Mr. Moody, thank you for coming. I realize this hearing was rescheduled rather abruptly, and it was good of you to make adjustments in your busy schedules. Professor Dumbledore, you see we have made every effort to accommodate your requests. You will provide evidence supporting your claims today, however, or this case moves to a more open venue. Mr. Hagrid, it is pleasant to see you again. And this, I take it, is the accused." She checked the docket. "Mr. …Snape, is it? If you will all take your seats, please, I'll review the case."

They waited in silence for nearly twenty minutes as the Judge checked documents, asked the clerk for files, and took notes. Then she called Snape forward to stand in the dock for the rest of the proceedings.

"Mr. Snape, my name is Amelia Bones, and I am reviewing the charges against you prior to their being presented in court. Are you aware of the nature of these charges?"

Snape looked over at Dumbledore, who nodded and smiled gently, then back at the Judge. "No, ma'am," he said.

"Very well, first you are charged with treason in that you willfully and voluntarily became a participating member of a group actively engaged in the overthrow of the Ministry and the setting up of another government in its place."

"No, ma'am, I didn't…"

"Mr. Snape, I take it you are unfamiliar with the rules. You'll have a chance to respond later. Right now, you just listen."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Next, you are charged with conspiracy to commit treason in that you actively recruited or attempted to recruit others to join this same group. You are charged with using Unforgivable Curses. You are charged with several counts of murder, of inciting to commit murder, of conspiracy to commit murder, and of aiding and abetting others in the commission of murder both before and after the fact. I have a list of similar charges relating to grievous bodily harm, public disorder, and vandalism." She looked over her glasses at the now thoroughly shaken Snape and said, "You seem rather young to have accomplished all of this in… three years, I believe it says."

"Your Honor, if I may…" Dumbledore began, rising.

"Sit down, Albus, and wait your turn. I need to talk to these two gentlemen first. Which of you two is presenting the case, Alastor? You or Rufus?"

"I am, Your Honor," said Moody, stepping forward next to Snape.

"Either I am missing a large number of papers, Alastor, or you're getting sloppy with your homework. Or is this maybe because you weren't expecting me to review the files until a week after the original hearing?"

Moody glanced back at Scrimgeour, who shrugged. Turning back to the Judge, he said, "I may need to check with our office. What are you missing?"

"I've been going through all these papers since I got here this morning, and I can't find a single statement from a single witness placing this young man at the scene of any crime except the murder of Dorcas Meadows, and then only as a witness himself. How can you charge him with commission or inciting to commit if he wasn't there?"

Moody was now beginning to turn red in the face, but it seemed his anger was directed at Scrimgeour. "Permission to discuss this matter with my colleague for five minutes, ma'am?" he asked.

"Granted," the Judge replied, and Moody and Scrimgeour stepped out of the chamber.

A few minutes later, the two returned. "Your Honor," Moody said, "our office would like to withdraw all charges relating to commission or inciting to commit on the murder, bodily harm, public disorder, and vandalism counts."

"Noted," said the Judge. "Now, the Unforgivable Curses. I see no eyewitness testimony to the acts, nor any firsthand report of statements made by the accused. Everything is hearsay. What do you want to do with those?"

Moody turned to Scrimgeour and mouthed the words 'not one?' then addressed the Judge. "We'd like to withdraw those charges, Your Honor, as they're still under investigation. We thought to have them done by February, but with the case moved forward… If we collect enough evidence, we will be revisiting the charges."

"Are there any other changes you'd like to make, as long as we've gotten this far?"

"No, Your Honor." Moody didn't look happy.

"All right, Mr. Snape. Now we've gotten to the point where you hear the specific charges and enter a plea of either guilty or not guilty. If you want to tell the court that you did one of these things, you say 'guilty'. If not, you say 'not guilty.' Do you understand?"

"I think so, ma'am… Your Honor."

"First the treason charge. The group you're accused of being a member of is the organization known as the Death Eaters, who followed the orders of the wizard who called himself Lord Voldemort."

Snape winced at the name, but didn't say anything. He looked around the court, then back at the Judge. "Do you mean that if I was a member of that… group, I'm supposed to say, guilty?"

Dumbledore was on his feet, but the Judge stopped him with a gesture. "You have to be very careful about this, Mr. Snape. If you say 'guilty,' it doesn't go to a trial. You just get sentenced. If you want the chance to defend or explain your actions to the court, you say 'not guilty.' Do you have a lawyer? Is Professor Dumbledore your lawyer?"

"I don't know."

"Albus Dumbledore, front and center."

"Yes, Your Honor?"

"What do you mean bringing this young man here without briefing him first on what's going to happen?"

"I am very sorry, Your Honor. Unfortunately Mr. Snape has been suffering from acute clinical depression, and we were not certain he would make it to February. I believe Your Honor has transcripts of the correspondence."

"Did we get those?" the Judge asked the clerk, who sorted through a stack of files and brought one over. "Give me a moment, Albus. You may sit down."

Dumbledore sat, and when the Judge had scanned the papers, she called him back together with Moody. "I'd like you both to approach the bench." She handed Moody a paper and said quietly, "Did you know about this?"

Moody read it quickly, then looked at Dumbledore. "You're sure he drank it?"

"Yes. It turned out to be reasonably harmless, but he did not anticipate that."

"He certainly didn't think so on the tenth. Your Honor, we were not aware of this."

The Judge looked grim. "Can you guarantee to me, Albus, that neither of these actions of apparent desperation was connected with the charges before us? The timing of the first in particular bothers me."

"I assure you, Your Honor, that the charges are so far from being the source of his depression that I believe focusing on them will help him recover. This is why I requested they be moved up."

"And is he really that naive?"

"About some things, Your Honor. About others, alas, the depth of his experience is heartbreaking."

Sending Dumbledore and Moody back to their places, the Judge addressed Snape again. "Mr. Snape, it is my opinion that you would be well advised to have a lawyer. If you wish, Professor Dumbledore could fill that position, or you could choose someone else, or the court could appoint someone."

"I'd like Professor Dumbledore, ma'am."

"Do you need to confer?" Snape shook his head. "Very well, Albus, we'll proceed with the charges, beginning with treason."

"Thank you, Your Honor. Mr. Snape pleads not guilty to the charge." One by one the Judge read each individual charge, and Dumbledore responded, "Not guilty" to each.

When they had finished, the Judge reached for another folder. "Now," she said, "about your petition to have the trial conducted behind closed doors…"

"Thank you, Your Honor. First, since we are no longer discussing charges, would it be acceptable for Severus to sit with Hagrid?" The Judge nodded and waved Snape from the dock. "Thank you. And now, Severus, as I am your lawyer, you must let me do the talking. If you wish to add or change anything, say 'Your Honor' and ask to confer with me."

"Yes, sir," Snape said.

"Good. Your Honor, we have requested that the trial be held behind closed doors because we, well I actually, believe that Mr. Snape's life would be in danger if certain aspects of it were to become public. In danger from those who were also Death Eaters and former colleagues of his."

"Albus, I've just noticed that you've admitted your client's guilt on the first charge. Watch your step here."

"I realize that. We will argue extenuating circumstances. However, understanding that he was once a Death Eater is vital to understanding why his trial must be kept secret. About a year and two months ago, Mr. Snape came to me clandestinely at Hogwarts to divulge to me Voldemort's plans to attack two of his enemies. These two people were known to Mr. Snape from his school days, and he did not wish them harmed. I was skeptical of his motives and questioned him extensively. The information he gave me that day proved very useful to us later. I offered him asylum, but he feared Voldemort's wrath if he deserted the Death Eaters. I was mercenary enough to give him instructions on how to contact me if he wished to give me more information."

Everyone in the room, the Judge, Moody, Scrimgeour, and the clerk, were listening attentively.

"I was both surprised and pleased to receive from him some time later information that saved the life of yet another of my people. Then something happened, particulars of which I will reserve for the trial if you do not mind, that turned Mr. Snape against Voldemort completely. We began to receive information that enabled us to eliminate many Death Eaters and foil their plans. Many of our successes of the past year were, in fact, due to him. Since this is information that must be used in his defense at his trial, the trial cannot be public. Any Death Eaters still at large who learned of it might mark him for execution."

"Your Honor," exclaimed Scrimgeour, "we'd like to point out on the other side that as late as twelve days ago Mr. Snape was still withholding information from the Ministry in order to protect some of these same Death Eaters. Four of those he was protecting were responsible for the brutal attack on Frank and Alice Longbottom."

"Your Honor…" Dumbledore began, but the Judge raised her hand.

"This dispute can be argued at the trial. I've heard enough to reach a decision. This case is hereby covered by a gag order and secrecy provisions. Except for client/lawyer privilege, it may only be discussed in secure areas of the Ministry. Any violation will result in both contempt and criminal charges. Anything else, gentlemen? No? You are dismissed." The Judge rose and left the chamber, accompanied by the clerk.

Scrimgeour followed her out, clearly angry at the outcome of the proceedings.

Moody came over to Dumbledore, not looking at Snape at all. "That was a nice little surprise you threw at us there, Albus. I don't deny it's going to change the mood at the trial. It makes it harder to explain his silence in the last month and a half, though. They're going to hit you hard on that."

"They are? Should you not be saying 'we are?'"

"I'm torn. I will admit I'm torn. Well, I'm back off to work. Enough lazing around for one morning. Catch you later."

"Good-bye, Alastor."

It was lunchtime when they returned to Hogwarts. The teachers came over for news only to be told sternly by Dumbledore that the case could not be discussed outside the Ministry.

"Are you that important now?" cried McGonagall with a laugh. "Whoever would have thought."

Before leaving the Ministry, Dumbledore had checked the docket; Snape's trial was firmly set to begin on Wednesday the thirtieth. Since the Council of Magical Law did not involve anything so mundane as juries, and members of the Council were free to ask questions during the trial, it was not expected to last more than a day, two at most.

One of the best things about the hearing was that it restored Snape's appetite and general interest in life. He was always at his best when focusing on a well-defined problem, and at his weakest when dealing with the vague or formless. The charges, while detailed and complex, were nonetheless direct and specific. Snape sat down first to a hearty lunch, and then to trying to organize his memories of his activities at the time of the events mentioned in the charges.

_Wednesday, December 30, 1981 (four days after the new moon)_

On the day of Snape's trial, he, Dumbledore, and Hagrid returned to London and entered the Ministry of Magic. Their progress through the building was about as it had been the previous week, except this time Hagrid was not allowed into the chamber. That alone made Snape feel uneasy, but nowhere near as uneasy as he felt when he entered the chamber itself.

Banks of benches for the council members rose like the bleachers in a stadium around a central circular area. In the middle of the circle was a chair. A heavy chair with straight arms, and with chains to bind its occupant in place. Snape shrank against Dumbledore, for being bound, unable to move, was one of the things that frightened him most.

The members of the Council of Magical Law had been moving around, greeting each other and conversing in small groups, but when Dumbledore and Snape entered, they moved quickly to their places in the stadium-like chambers. A few greeted Dumbledore in a friendly manner, but most did not. Two clerks came up to Dumbledore.

"Is this the defendant?" one said.

"It is," Dumbledore replied.

"Come with us."

Dumbledore laid his hand on Snape's shoulder. "Do not be afraid. No one is ever harmed in this chamber. These are not aurors, but council members, and they have seen far worse than you."

Snape followed the two clerks meekly and sat when he was told. The chains were enchanted and wrapped around his arms like snakes (very odd under the circumstances, he thought) binding Snape to the chair. The chamber became quiet.

The clerk then unrolled a parchment and read: "Ladies and gentlemen, you have before you the case of one Severus Snape, wizard, accused of various crimes against our world which are detailed in the docket books in front of you. They are one count of treason, one count of conspiracy to commit treason, six counts of conspiracy to commit murder, and fifty-two counts of aiding and abetting others before the fact in commissions of felonies, including murder, attacks causing or intending to cause grievous bodily harm, incidents of civil disorder, and vandalism or other damage to property. Counsel for the prosecution may proceed."

"Objection," said Dumbledore, rising. "The defendant was not informed of fifty-two counts of aiding and abetting. Only of ten. We request that the others not be laid before this council until we have had time to research them and prepare a defense."

The head of the council, an old wizened wizard with curiously long ears, made a note. "We'll keep your objection under advisement, Albus. Prosecution may continue."

The auror leading the prosecution was Gawain Robards. He approached Snape in a very businesslike way.

"State your full name."

"Severus Snape."

"Date and county of birth."

"Nine January 1960, Lancashire."

"Names and blood status of parents."

"My father was a muggle, Tobias Snape, my mother a pureblood witch, Eileen Prince."

"The council will note that we intend to return to this matter of blood status. Occupation, Mr. Snape, and for how long?"

"Instructor at Hogwarts school, in Potions, since this last August."

"And before then?"

"I was a private tutor."

"Anything else?"

Snape didn't answer.

"Note that the defendant did not respond to the question. Now Mr. Snape, let's get right to the meat of the first charge. Were you at any time a member of the organization known as the Death Eaters under the control of the self-styled Lord Voldemort?"

"Yes. I became a…"

"Just answer the question, Mr. Snape. In this case a simple 'yes' suffices."

"Yes, sir."

"When did you become a Death Eater?" Robards continued.

"The twentieth of July, 1978."

"Describe your initiation."

"I was invited to London by one of my sponsors…"

"You had sponsors? Please give their surnames."

"The Lestranges, Rosier, Wilkes, Avery."

"All three Lestranges? Rabastan, Rodolphus, and Bella?"

"Yes, sir."

"I ask the council to note that three of the defendant's sponsors were among those who attacked and tortured Frank and…"

"Objection!" cried Dumbledore. "The defendant has not been charged in connection with the attack on the Longbottoms."

"On the contrary, Professor Dumbledore, that is count number fifty-two of the aiding and abetting charge…"

"Of which the defendant was not informed until this moment, and which should therefore not be considered at this session…"

The head of the council banged his gavel. "That matter is still under advisement. The prosecution may proceed." Dumbledore resumed his seat.

Robards returned to his questions. "Now, Mr. Snape, how did you come to be acquainted with these sponsors?"

"I knew them from Hogwarts. Rosier and Wilkes were two of my dormitory mates, and the others were in classes ahead of mine."

"Were you all in the same house?"

"Yes, Slytherin." The answer caused a little ripple of murmurs.

"How did you become familiar with these older classmates?"

"They hired me to tutor them in their Potions work."

"Come, Mr. Snape, you can be more honest than that. This is a court, after all."

"Objection! Counsel is badgering the defendant." Dumbledore had risen again.

The gavel banged. "Overruled, Albus. We want to see where this is going."

Snape watched Robards, wary and apprehensive. "I don't know what you mean."

"With the council's permission, I'll refresh your memory. Isn't it true that you became involved with these upper level students when you became part of a conspiracy to hex and jinx members of Gryffindor house in retaliation for a harmless prank they pulled at the 1973 Welcoming Feast?"

"No, they attacked us first…"

"First? Then you did hex them?"

"Yes, but only because…"

"Wasn't your nickname in Slytherin house 'Cursemaster?'"

"Objection!"

"Counsel for the defense has a point, Mr. Robards. How does this relate to the charge?" The old wizard looked a bit impatient.

"I'm getting to that right now, sir, if the defendant will answer the question." Robards turned back to Snape. "Was it 'Cursemaster?'"

There was no advantage in denying it. "Yes," Snape said.

"Ladies and gentlemen, the organization of Death Eaters was well known for its value of blood purity. Every one of the defendant's sponsors was a pureblood witch or wizard of impeccable ancestry. And yet they united in sponsoring into their midst a younger half-blood wizard of no social background. I submit that the reason for this sponsorship was the defendant's well-known, I might call it notorious, expertise in the Dark Arts, in hexes, jinxes, and yes curses, which by the time he was thirteen, thirteen, had earned him the name 'Cursemaster.' Mr. Snape, is this not true?"

The silence stretched as Snape stared at the floor. "Let it be noted," continued Robards, "that the defendant refuses to answer the question."

There was no trace of triumph or malice in Robards's manner or voice. He continued to be very businesslike. "Let's return to your initiation. You met with your sponsors. What then?"

Snape tried to collect his thoughts. "I was blindfolded and taken to their headquarters."

"How?"

"Side by side apparation. They took me into a chamber and had me kneel, then they removed the blindfold. I was face to face with the Dark Lord…"

"Lord? You still call him Lord?"

"No!" Snape cried. "It's just habit!" Robards didn't pursue the issue. "He examined me with legilimency, welcomed me to the group, and gave me the mark."

"Legilimency. So if you'd had any reservations, he would have known." Robards waited. "The defendant does not answer. Do you still bear the mark? May we see it?"

"Yes, sir."

Robards stepped forward and gently unbuttoned and pushed up the sleeve of Snape's jacket, showing the council members the skull and snake brand. "Now, Mr. Snape, did you enter into this association with 'Lord' Voldemort freely and of your own will."

"Yes, sir."

"Thank you. The prosecution yields for the moment to the defense."

Robards sat and Dumbledore rose. Gently he asked, "Severus, what happens when someone says the name Voldemort in your presence?"

"It hurts. The mark hurts. It's like a jolt of electricity."

"Is this why Death Eaters employ the phrase 'Dark Lord?'"

"Yes."

"Thank you. I shall try not to cause you further pain. Now, are you a talented spell caster?"

"Sir?"

"Does the casting of spells come easy to you? Have you been using a wide range of spells from childhood?"

"Yes, sir."

"Who taught you those spells?"

"My mother."

"Are you able to create new, previously unknown spells?"

"Yes, sir." The answer caused another murmur, this time of surprise.

"Describe your first encounters with the other members of Slytherin house, including your dormitory mates."

"They teased me and insulted me. They called me a mongrel and a cur. They bullied me…"

"How did you respond?"

"I hexed them. Spiders and lice. I made Rabastan Lestrange smell like a wet dog."

"What is the most powerful spell you used against them?"

"I created a small earthquake." More murmurs, louder now.

"How old were you?"

"Twelve." The head of the council had to use his gavel for silence.

"And this was against your own housemates, other Slytherins, who were teasing and tormenting you?"

"Yes, sir."

"And what did Bella Lestrange do?"

"She offered to help me. She said if I stayed with her, she'd make the others leave me alone."

"So you went with her for protection?"

"Yes, sir."

Dumbledore continued, quiet and gentle. "Did you become a Death Eater of your own free will?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"I was afraid. Wizards were being attacked by muggles, and no one seemed to be doing anything about it."

"Did this affect you personally?"

"My grandmother, a witch, was attacked and killed by a muggle mob."

"I see. Who of your family remained after this attack?"

"No one. She was my last living relative."

"How old were you when this happened?"

"Seventeen."

"An adult by wizard law, but how many of us could say we endured such great loss at such a tender age?"

"Objection," said Robards. "Counsel is editorializing."

"Sustained."

"Very well," said Dumbledore, "I shall summarize this point. The defendant has admitted to becoming a Death Eater of his own free will, out of fear of muggle violence and the desire for protection, something he had been seeking since entering Hogwarts. Now, Severus, what did you subsequently discover about the death of your grandmother?"

"By chance I overheard a conversation between two other wizards in which one told the other that my grandmother had been murdered by Death Eaters. They had placed muggles under an Imperius curse to attack my grandmother, and the reason for the attack was to recruit me, to push me into becoming a Death Eater."

"When did you overhear this conversation?"

"After the beginning of December of 1980."

"When did your grandmother die?"

"October 1977."

"So for three years, from October 1977 to December 1980, you believed your grandmother to have been the victim of random muggle violence, and your fear of this violence was a major factor in your becoming a Death Eater?"

"Objection!" cried Robards. "Counsel is leading the witness."

"I believe," said Dumbledore, "that my summary can be supported by the defendant's previous testimony and is therefore not leading."

"Overruled," said the head of the council.

"Answer the question, Severus."

"Yes, sir. I mean that's my answer. Yes. Sir."

"Good. Now Severus, when did you first come to me with information against this 'Dark Lord?'"

"The thirteenth of November, 1980."

"Before you discovered the truth about the attack on your grandmother?"

"Yes, sir."

"Why did you decide to turn against your master?"

The answer to this question was the only one that had been prepared and rehearsed, since Snape adamantly refused to compromise Lily's memory through any connection to him. It was a masterpiece of precise truths and careful omissions.

"By the end of the summer, the Dark Lord – excuse me, I don't know what else to say – he'd gotten it into his head that some newborn baby was a threat to him. The baby and his parents. He had us all looking for them, James and Lily Potter and their son. I didn't like James, but we'd patched up the worst of our differences before we graduated, and besides it wasn't him, it was the baby. You don't go after a baby. I couldn't think of where else to go for help, so I went to Professor Dumbledore and told him what was happening."

"Thank you. We will return to this later. Now, Severus, what kind of work were you given to do as a Death Eater?"

"I was asked to create spells. To mix potions and to create spells. He would give me a message telling me what he wanted the spell to do, and my job was to create the spell."

"What kinds of spells? Combat spells? Interrogation spells?"

"No, sir. I've always had a… kind of talent for sound spells and other sensory spells. He wanted things like covering conversations, hearing conversations at a distance, muffling movement, avoiding detection."

"Were you ever sent out as part of a group that attacked a person or a home or anything else?"

"No, sir."

"Were you ever involved in planning such an attack?"

"No, sir."

"Were you ever invited to join such an attack?"

"Yes, sir, on a couple of occasions by members of the squads, but the squad leaders always told me I couldn't go."

"Why was that?"

"They wouldn't tell me. But the last time, in December 1980, I overheard them say that they didn't want me to find out that my grandmother's death had been arranged in order to recruit me."

Dumbledore then addressed the council. "What we have here, ladies and gentlemen, is a young wizard of extraordinary talent in the invention of spells. This talent was noticed quite early by students associated with the Death Eaters. Please note that the Avery and Rosier mentioned by the defendant, were the sons of men who were among the original Death Eater cadre. This group over a period of several years carefully manipulated the defendant into believing that he was threatened, looking to them for protection, and finding among them respect and appreciation for his talents. Once recruited, he was carefully prevented from discovering the true nature of Death Eater operations. When he did learn of an operation that crossed a moral boundary – the hunt for a baby – even before learning about operations that affected him personally, he took steps to leave the Death Eater organization by coming to me. I now yield to counsel for the prosecution."

Dumbledore sat down, and Robards stepped into the center. "You've forgotten one or two things, haven't you, Mr. Snape?"

"Sir?"

"In August 1978, weren't you a frequent visitor to Fortescue's ice cream parlor in Diagon Alley?"

"Yes."

"What was your assignment there?"

"Make contacts, arrange future contacts through tutoring connections, gather information…" Snape could not move, bound by the chains, but his fingers were beginning to twitch uncontrollably.

"Talk to students about becoming Death Eaters?"

"Yes."

"Do you recognize the name Marcus Abernathy? Did you talk to him about joining the Death Eaters? And did he join?"

"Yes."

"For the information of the council," Robards stated, "Marcus Abernathy has confessed to being a member of the squads that attacked and killed Edgar Bones and his family, killed Gideon and Fabian Prewett, and kidnapped Dorcas Meadows. Mr. Snape, did you create a spell that would allow a person to walk across dead leaves in silence, and another that would prevent a dog from noticing an intruder, and another that would locate and turn off burglar alarms?"

"Yes." The answer was mechanical. Snape was wrestling with the thought that Marcus had killed, that he had brought a killer to the Dark Lord, that he had recruited a killer.

"Would you say you were a reasonably intelligent person? At least at the same level as any average person?"

"I suppose so."

"As a reasonably intelligent person, Mr. Snape, what did you consider that these spells were being used for?"

Snape closed his eyes, his heart had begun pounding in his ears. "I… didn't think about it."

"Didn't think about it. Let me show you a picture, Mr. Snape."

Snape opened his eyes. The picture was of a room in a house, and there were five people in the room, a man, a woman, two young boys, and a little girl. It was a wizard photograph but the people weren't moving. They weren't moving because they couldn't move. They were dead, and there was blood everywhere. And the little girl was staring up at the ceiling with wide, frightened eyes, unseeing eyes for her throat was cut. Staring at him with wide, unseeing, accusing eyes…

Robards was talking. "This is the family of Edgar Bones, Mr. Snape. The members of the squad that attacked them, we have been told, were Abernathy, Rosier, Wilkes, Dolohov, Lestrange and his wife… Curious thing, that Edgar seems to have been taken completely by surprise. You see, he had a dog that he expected to warn him of intruders…"

Snape closed his eyes again, his body rigid, his face drained of all color, the image of the little girl floating in the front of his brain – closing down, locking, shutting all the doors, all the barriers…

Somewhere in the distance Dumbledore was speaking, his voice muffled but urgent. "May I call a recess? A recess, please. My client is not well." The chains unwound, and Snape rose and was led to a small antechamber where he sat staring at the wall while Dumbledore got water.

"I don't want to do this anymore," Snape said quietly.

"I am afraid you have no choice," Dumbledore replied.

"Can't we just tell them I'm guilty? I mean, they're right, aren't they? I did all those things. I was stupid and blind, and I gave them the tools to kill people. Why don't we just say so, and stop this?"

"Are you sure?"

Snape nodded, and Dumbledore left the room to fetch Robards and the head of the council. When they were assembled, Dumbledore explained, "Mr. Snape wishes to change his plea to guilty."

"On all counts?" asked Robards.

"Yes," said Snape.

"No," said Dumbledore. "Not the conspiracy charges. He was never involved in any planning, and if he insists on pleading guilty to those, I'll request a hearing to find him psychologically incompetent to make his own legal decisions."

"All right. The evidence was circumstantial on those anyway. What about his giving evidence in other cases?"

"No," Snape said suddenly. "No more names."

"I believe he gave you a large number of names on the tenth, and I doubt he has more definite information than that. Could we not leave it there?"

Robards looked at Dumbledore for a moment. "All right. We'll amend the charges."

"Good." Dumbledore turned to the head of the council. "Faustinus, I should like to address the council on the defendant's behalf, but I think it best that he remain here. Could Hagrid come in and sit with him?"

"I'm afraid not, Albus. Hagrid's general public. No exceptions."

"Rufus is outside," said Robards. "He could…"

"Absolutely not! That man will not come within…"

"Calm down, Albus. What about Alastor? He won't speak, won't move, just make sure Mr. Snape…"

They left and Moody entered, to sit unmoving and unspeaking in a corner while in the chamber Dumbledore's voice could be heard. "I should like to take a few minutes to speak on behalf of the defendant, especially concerning events that occurred between November thirteenth, nineteen eighty, and August first, nineteen eighty-one which I believe should be taken into account…"

Over an hour later, Snape again entered the council chamber, this time to stand before the assembled wizards. The clerk read from a roll of parchment: "Severus Snape, hear the decision of the Council of Magical Law concerning the charges brought against you. In the matter of treason – guilty. In the matter of conspiracy to commit treason – guilty. In the matter of aiding and abetting the murder of Marlene McKinnon – guilty. In the matter of aiding and abetting the murder of Benjy Fenwick – guilty. In the matter of aiding and abetting the murder of Edgar Bones and his family – guilty. In the matter…"

Snape hung his head and stared at the floor as the list droned on and on.

"...and in the matter of aiding and abetting the felonious assault against Frank and Alice Longbottom – guilty. This completes the charges. And for these crimes for which you have been found guilty, Severus Snape, this Council sentences you to a term of fifty-five years in Azkaban prison with opportunity for parole following a period of good behavior of twenty years. The Council of Magical Law has spoken."

The head of the council then rose in the ensuing silence. "Mr. Snape," he said, and when there was no reply, he repeated, "Mr. Snape? Please look at me." Snape looked up, his eyes vacant. "Mr. Snape, I am Faustinus Oglethorpe and I am pro tempore head of this council in the temporary absence of Bartemius Crouch. There are several things we still have to cover, but I first need to ask you. Have you heard the verdict and sentence, and do you have anything to say at this time?"

"I heard, sir. I have nothing to say."

"Very well. You are clearly unfamiliar with this type of proceeding, so I would like you to notice that you are standing freely in front of this council rather than sitting bound in the accused's chair. This is highly unusual for a person who has just been found guilty on all counts, and you should take it as a favorable sign. You are not going to Azkaban, at least not yet."

Snape looked at him in earnest then, and glanced over at Dumbledore, who appeared hopeful. A glance in the other direction showed him that Rufus Scrimgeour was not happy, and that both Robards and Moody seemed displeased.

"Professor Dumbledore," continued Oglethorpe, "has given this council detailed information about your activities over the last year and two months which I won't go into in detail, but let me highlight a couple of points. First, of your own initiative and volition, you approached Professor Dumbledore with information that thwarted the plans of Lord Voldemort, even though you were one of his servants. You then returned to your position with Voldemort, placing yourself in considerable danger, and continued to supply Dumbledore with information that was instrumental in saving the lives of our people and even resulted in the capture or death of Voldemort's people. Most impressively, you've never asked for any kind of reward for these actions, not even now at your trial and sentencing."

Oglethorpe paused and glanced through his papers. "This would speak most highly in your favor were it not for some very disturbing aspects of your behavior. We have also been informed, and Dumbledore admits to the truth of the accusations, that you continue to show support, if not for Voldemort, then for Death Eaters who were Voldemort's operatives. This support extends to Death Eaters whom you know to have committed crimes, serious crimes. Not an hour and a half ago, in my presence, you continued to refuse to cooperate with our law enforcement people, even though your own freedom was at stake.

"Because of your service to us, this council is inclined to be lenient. Because of your contradictory and ambiguous behavior, we hesitate. Hear now the decision of the council. You have been found guilty and sentenced. Your service to us does not earn you a pardon, but we will grant you a suspension of that sentence. You are hereby remanded into the custody of Albus Dumbledore during the time of your good behavior. So long as your record remains clear, you will be free to come and go as long as you remain under Dumbledore's authority. Should you ever be found guilty of a future offense, however, the sentence here and now passed on you will be put into effect. Do you understand?"

"Yes, sir."

"Do you have anything to say?"

"No, sir. Thank you, sir."

"Then you are free to go. Albus Dumbledore, I remit Severus Snape into your custody. You may take him back to Hogwarts. See that he doesn't get into any more trouble."

The council began to break up into groups that filtered out the doors. Robards came over to shake Dumbledore's hand and offer congratulations. He didn't speak to Snape, which was probably just as well since Snape didn't want to speak to him. Scrimgeour stomped off, but Moody hung around to exchange a few words with Dumbledore.

"Guess that was about as good as you could expect, all told," Moody said. "You have a happy New Year, Albus." Then he looked at Snape and said, not unkindly, "Good behavior. You remember that. We'd hate to see the clemency of the court wasted." And then he left.

Outside, Hagrid was on pins and needles. When he saw Dumbledore and Snape together, he beamed. "Figured it had t' be pretty good 'cause of the scowl on old Scrimgeour's face when he come out, and if ya was going to Azkaban, ya wouldn't be standing here now. But it did take a long time, didn't it? So they found ya innocent?"

"Guilty with extenuating circumstances, I fear," said Dumbledore, "but that should be kept between the three of us. As far as anyone else knows, he is free. Now, shall we get back to Hogwarts?"

The reception at Hogwarts was gratifying, for the other teachers had prepared a small party, in the event that Snape came back to them, and they ended up laughing and joking, and playing silly parlor games like charades. Snape got tipsy enough to justify Hagrid's seeing him to bed, which gave Hagrid the opportunity to be sure his door was left unlocked during the night – just in case.

_Thursday, December 31, 1981_

It was dark and snowing the next morning when Snape awoke, and the dungeon rooms felt icy and damp. Snape lay in bed for a while, fighting a desire to simply roll onto his side and sleep again – sleep for hours – sleep forever. He couldn't see the future. It was as if there were no future. Just today, and the struggle to get out of bed.

Lying there was easy. It was warm and dark and quiet. He didn't have to think because there was nothing to think about. Nothing important in the world ever again, with the warm blankets wrapped around him like a cocoon. Like a shroud. Nothing at all…

Except Hagrid.

Snape's eyes snapped open. _What time is it? It's winter. It's always dark in the morning. Hagrid might be coming soon to haul me out of bed, force me into some clothes, and drag me to breakfast. And tell me how lazy I am, and how disgusting and careless._

He didn't want that. He wanted to show Hagrid how wrong he was, how mistaken in his opinions. Snape checked the clock. Six-thirty. Half an hour before the house-elves would start putting food on the table. Full of resentment against Hagrid and his bullying, Snape threw back the blankets and stepped onto the cold stone floor.

For some reason, as he poured water into a basin for his morning ablutions, Snape thought of the magnificent teachers' bathroom on the third floor. His mouth tightened in scorn. Decadence and luxury were for those still under the illusion that life was good, life could be pleasant. At that moment, Snape was quite proud of the uncomfortable, Spartan arrangements of his own life.

In his wardrobe, all the clothes were black. As a boy he'd worn whatever muggle clothes his parents could get for him, but he'd loved the black of Hogwarts's uniforms and the contrast with his own, spectral features. It had been dramatic. Now the black had other meanings – mourning, death, and funerals. Black was also the color of priests and Dominican monks, of Jesuits, people bound within a life of physical austerity and dedication, finding a measure of freedom only in the mind and the world of the intellect.

Dressed and ready, Snape caught a glimpse of himself in the small mirror. Never handsome, his mother's lank, dark hair and long thin face highlighted by his father's aquiline nose and strong chin, the youth of skin and flesh contrasting sharply with the cold, hostile, intelligent eyes, eyes so dark they looked black. A face that eminently suited the way he felt.

Seven o'clock. He would show Hagrid. He was no weak baby to be coddled and coaxed. He'd go right into the Great Hall and eat his breakfast of kipper, toast, and coffee, and maybe even play a game of cribbage with Flitwick, so no one could say he was cowed by the events of yesterday, that he was weak or beaten.

Erect and defiant, Snape stepped into the corridor.

The problem, of course, was that no one expected him to be cowed by the events of the previous day. Since the only one who'd actually witnessed his ordeal was Dumbledore, everyone else thought he should be pleased and relieved by the outcome. It's particularly hard to be solemn, somber, and aggrieved when others insist on congratulating you on your good fortune.

Dumbledore understood. He rescued Snape from the heartiness of Kettleburn and the maternal clucking of Sprout to eat with him undisturbed in a corner of the hall. "I am pleased to see that you have the fortitude to face the world today," Dumbledore said after they'd sat down. "You have been through quite a lot."

"Truth? I couldn't bear the thought of Hagrid banging on the door to get me up. Coming myself was easier than facing him."

"Hagrid does serve some amazingly useful purposes. I shall have to remember that one. Do you mind if we talk here and now, or would you rather go later to my office?"

"Here and now is fine, sir."

"Excellent. I should first like to hear from you your impression of what is required of you from this point."

"I belong to you, don't I? I stay at Hogwarts teaching, and if I ever do anything wrong again in my whole life, I spend the rest of it in Azkaban."

"You do not belong to me, I do not own people. The phrase about being under my authority does seem to imply that you are expected to remain here, at least for the time being. I hope that you might come to enjoy it, or at least to accept it. I fear I must warn you, however, that your tribulations are not entirely over."

Snape raised his eyebrows. "What else is going to happen?"

"I have been in contact with the Ministry, trying to cancel Rufus Scrimgeour's contract to teach Dark Arts here. I have not been successful. It would seem that the Department of Magical Law Enforcement is sufficiently discontent with me that they will not give up an opportunity to keep me under surveillance."

"Or me either," said Snape with a sigh.

Dumbledore left the Great Hall to attend to business, but Snape decided to stay. He conjured parchment, ink, and quill, and poured himself another cup of coffee. Instead of writing, however, he sat in thought.

"What are you doing?" Sprout asked as she came to sit opposite him.

"It's New Year's Eve," Snape responded.

Sprout regarded him for a moment. "That seems to be the answer to a whole different question. Let's try this again. What are you doing?"

"Sorry. Muggle tradition. My dad used to do it all the time. New Year's Day is a time of new beginnings, clean slates. So you make yourself promises of what you're going to do and not going to do in the coming year to make your life better. They're called resolutions. New Year's resolutions."

"Did they make his life better?"

"Not really. He could never keep them longer than a day or two, then he slipped right back into the old habits. Still, it's a time to review your life and see if you approve of the direction it's going in."

They sat for a moment, Snape neither writing nor elaborating. Sprout began to fidget. "Right," she said, "I take it this is a personal and private ritual, so I'll be talking to you later. Do you expect it to take the whole day?"

"I don't know yet."

Snape sat thinking for a long time, then gathered his parchment and quill and, as the morning progressed, moved from place to place in the castle seeking inspiration. His father's resolutions had always been very specific, very drastic, and very easy to break. Resolutions like, 'only one drink at the pub on the way home from work.' Impossible for a man like Toby to keep, and bound to be broken the first time he set foot in a boozer. Resolutions needed to be broad principles of life, not specific behavior modifiers.

In the end, Snape came up with three.

First: Be Prepared. He had walked into that trial knowing nothing about the wizard legal system, nothing about his opponents, and unready for the questions they would ask. Once in his life he'd truly prepared for something, and that was his interview after the Dark Lord realized there was a spy at headquarters. Then he'd known his life was on the line. Now he knew that his life was on the line every day. Every chance question, every casual observation, might hide a potential threat.

Second: Trust No One. He'd trusted Bella, who hadn't really wanted to protect him, just use him. He'd trusted appearances in the death of his grandmother, when it was part of a plot to trap him. He'd trusted Dumbledore to get him through the trial, not realizing there were some things Dumbledore couldn't do. Nothing is what it pretends to be. Everyone is looking out for his own interests first. No one takes care of you but yourself.

Third: Reveal Nothing. How many comments made lightheartedly to how many people in passing could be dragged up later to use against him? Even this morning, talking to Sprout. There were people who hated muggle-borns and half-bloods, and he'd let slip that his family had followed muggle New Year's traditions. Sprout would probably never use the information against him, but what guarantee did he have that she wouldn't casually pass it to someone else until it fell into the hands of the wrong person?

Three New Year's Resolutions

1. Be Prepared.

2. Trust No One.

3. Reveal Nothing.

Snape wrote them carefully on a fresh piece of parchment and tucked it into a pocket of his jacket. He would think about them all day, and look at them again at midnight.

Most of the staff stayed up that night waiting for the New Year, because after all it was a new year – 1982. There were refreshments and conversation, and games as well. Snape didn't talk much, though the fact that he was playing cribbage with Flitwick was taken as sufficient reason, and the others saw nothing odd about it.

Sprout came over just before midnight with a glass of mead for him. Snape looked at it, thought about how talkative he got if he'd had a glass or two, and said, "I think I'll have pumpkin juice, thank you."

At midnight they toasted the New Year, then went to bed. Before going to sleep, Snape looked at his resolutions again, guideposts for the rest of his life: Be prepared, trust no one, reveal nothing.

The students began arriving at school on the second of January, and by the evening of Sunday the third, they had all returned. Snape made a brief appearance in the Slytherin common room to welcome everyone back and wish them a happy new year and a successful term before they went to the Great Hall for supper.

There Snape had a most unpleasant shock, for Professor Scrimgeour was sitting next to Professor Dumbledore, and Alastor Moody was in a chair next to the place where Snape usually sat.

His first instinct was to turn and leave, but that course of action was already too late, for Moody had been watching for him and half rose from his chair to beckon. Snape steeled himself for this new ordeal and walked across the Hall with apparent calm to take his seat at the high table.

"Hope you don't mind my dropping in and disrupting your seating arrangements. Rufus wanted to come down early and check his room and all the plans for tomorrow. I thought I'd pop along and make sure Albus knew we didn't harbor any unnecessary grudges."

"What would you consider a necessary grudge?" Snape asked, knowing Moody was playing with him, a little cat and mouse game.

Moody grinned. "Right to the chase. Spirit coming back now that the worst is over? I'm sure Dumbledore's pleased. Don't you fret. I'm only here for dinner, then I'm going home. It's just Rufus who's staying the night."

"I'm devastated."

"Thought you would be. You won't believe what I've been doing the last couple of days. Checking up on old, old laws. Things that've been on the books for ages, nobody remembers them, but they've never been repealed. Did you know, for example, that after Cyprian Youdle was killed by a curse during a Quidditch match, a law was passed making it illegal to move widdershins around a Quidditch pitch?"

An open, undisguised threat. "Are you planning to observe our next Quidditch game?"

"I might. And I've presented you with a puzzle. Do you dance to my tune and carefully walk clockwise the whole afternoon, or defy me and risk being arrested for breaking a six hundred twenty-four year old law?"

"I see you've thought this out very carefully." Snape was now beginning to imagine all the other laws he didn't know about that could trap him.

"It's the ones that get away that keep you awake at night."

A very large chair banged against the stones between them. "Sorry 'bout that," Hagrid said genially. "I just noticed ya was occupying all Mr. Moody's attention, and I thought I'd come down and socialize a mite. Shove over there, Professor, so 's I can get me chair in."

Snape moved quickly to his left to allow room for Hagrid between him and Moody. _That's another one I owe you, Hagrid. Maybe getting dragged out of bed from time to time is a small price to pay._

Hagrid proceeded to entertain Moody with tales of famous dragons, the disadvantages of trying to control gnomes with jarveys, and methods for removing chizpurfles from the fur of crups, which led to a heated discussion about the need for licensing crups and docking their tails, a practice Hagrid considered cruel.

Dinner over, Moody took his leave of Dumbledore and Scrimgeour, saving his parting shot for Snape. "I'm looking forward to being able to welcome you back to London. Got a reception all planned. Don't be a stranger, now." Then he was down the hill and gone.

Snape didn't go to the staffroom that evening after supper, preferring to stay in his rooms trying to calm down and prepare for classes.

Things got worse in Potions the following day, for after Snape spent fifteen minutes explaining and demonstrating to a fourth year class the proper way to decant armadillo bile for a Wit-Sharpening potion so as not to injure skin or damage furniture, a Gryffindor student named Miss Kestrel did exactly the opposite, causing second-degree burns on her partner's hands and leaving a turnip-shaped mark etched into the tabletop.

For the first time in a long time, Toby's demon flared, and Snape's hand was halfway to Miss Kestrel's face before he realized what he was doing. He jerked the hand back with an almost superhuman effort, shaking with fury and a pent-up anger that found release through his tongue.

"Do you take notes so that you can study how to do things wrong, Miss Kestrel? Because an error so glaring and counter-intelligent could hardly occur by accident."

Miss Kestrel returned to her Potion, contrite and frightened, while Snape went to his desk to try to still the pulsing rage. _I almost hit a student. Thank goodness I was able to control it. Striking a student – it's the worst thing you could do. Never touch a student. Never. Never. At least I was able to control it. Dumbledore knows about the time I hit Lily. I need to tell him about this. Thank goodness I was able to stop myself._

"I want to be certain I understand this correctly. You wished to strike her, raised your hand to strike her, and then did not?" Dumbledore sat at his desk, calmly observing Snape's tense figure as he stood by the fireplace staring into the flames.

"That's right."

"Why did you wish to do that?"

"I was nervous. I was upset. I'd just spent all that time showing them what to do. It was like she was mocking all my efforts. Students are supposed to listen and follow instructions."

"Fist or open hand?"

That got a surprised reaction, then Snape relaxed. "You asked that question the first time, with Lily. Open hand."

"How did your father used to hit your mother?"

"Does it matter?"

"It might."

"Back of the hand. Fist if he was really drunk."

"And you?"

"I never hit my mother."

"I mean how did your father hit you?"

"Backhanded. Or he used something, like a belt."

"Why?"

"We would make him angry. There were things we were supposed to do, and… how we were supposed to talk to him… We never seemed to get it right."

"Like Miss Kestrel."

"You're trying to tell me that I'm like my father. I know that. I've known it for a long time."

"What made you stop?"

Snape stared into the flames again. "There are things you don't do. You don't use magic against muggles. You don't hit students."

"Did you have any of these impulses before the… events… of the Christmas break?"

"No."

"Let us hope, then, that this was an isolated incident. I would not dwell on it excessively if I were you. Should there be a recurrence, you will, of course, inform me."

"Yes, headmaster."

On his way downstairs for a quick bite of lunch before the afternoon classes started, Snape was surprised by the sudden appearance of Rufus Scrimgeour just leaving the Dark Arts classroom, apparently heading in the same direction. _Does he watch me? Has he been waiting for me?_ Snape hurried past as if he hadn't seen the auror, slipped quickly into the Hall for a small plate of food, and went to his own rooms.

_They're controlling my life. They control where I eat. They control where I relax. They affect my relations with the other teachers and the students… How can I allow them to do this?_

For the rest of the lunch hour, and during his free time over the next few days, Snape pondered what he could do to escape from the tyranny, real or apparent, of Rufus Scrimgeour and Alastor Moody.

Thursday night was clear and cold, and Snape slipped out of the school after ten o'clock to finish his rounds and look at the sky. The moon was nearly full. _In fact, if I were a werewolf, the metamorphosis would start tomorrow. Saturday night it will be at its peak. _Which was the precise moment that he realized that tomorrow night at midnight would begin his twenty-second birthday.

_Another new beginning? Another clean slate? Or will the coming year be as horrible as the last year was? If tomorrow night is as clear as tonight, maybe I'll come out at midnight to greet my birthday with the full moon. At least I'll be reasonably sure not to meet Scrimgeour._

_Saturday, January 9, 1982 (the full moon)_

Late the following night, Snape threw his cloak over his robes and went out into the dazzling midnight world of full moon and white snow. It was beautiful, silent and serene, cold, pristine, and peaceful. Snape drew the frosty air into his lungs, aware only now that for the past few weeks he'd not been able to breathe in the castle.

The light snow on the lawn was marked with paths trodden by students during the day, and Snape followed the widest of them to the edge of the hill where the road led down to the Hogsmeade gate, the Quidditch pitch, and Hagrid's hut. There was a light in Hagrid's window, and Snape could see him moving around inside the hut. _I wonder what he's doing up? Probably helping some creature hatch, or caring for the sick and injured. It would be wonderful to have a life so relatively uncomplicated._

Turning back, Snape retraced his steps, but instead of going into the castle, he veered left toward the cliff face. There was a path here that led down to the lake, the light of the moon making it clear and easy to follow. Snape wound his way down to the narrow lake shore and the rock where Lily used to sit and talk to him.

And bring him cake on his birthday. Little cakes, just right for two people, cajoled out of the elves in the kitchens. There had been three people in his life who remembered his birthday – his mother, his father when he was sober, and Lily. All three were dead, but tonight under the full moon he could feel their presence as if they were still with him.

Snape walked to the edge of the frozen lake. The ice was crossed and swirled with the tracks of skates, moonlight glinting from crystals strewn up when the students raced and glided over its surface in their free periods during the day.

It was very cold, but Snape didn't want to leave. He wanted to hold the sparkling magical moment forever. Glancing around, he focused on the rock. _I'll sit by Lily's rock for a few minutes and pretend it's nine years ago, and Lily's just brought me cake for my thirteenth birthday._

He brushed the snow away from a patch of dead grass so that it wouldn't grow damp under him, and sat huddled next to the rock, his cloak pulled around him, his fingers tucked under his arms to protect them from the biting cold. Then he thought, _This is crazy. I could at least make a little fire and be more comfortable._ A wave of his wand, a spoken word, and the fire glowed near his feet, very brightly at first, then subsiding into soft flickers. Flickering. Dancing against the backdrop of white and moonlight, entrancing in its constantly changing changelessness. Severus dozed, and eventually the fire died.

_He was warm, warm and comfortable, his limbs relaxed in pleasant drowsiness and the comfort of knowing he didn't have to wake up, not today. 'Come on, Russ,' his mother called, 'you can't stay there forever, sleepyhead.' – 'It's all right, mum,' he answered. 'It's Saturday, and it's my birthday. On your birthday you can stay forever anywhere you want.'_

'_Do you miss me?' Lily asked. 'I'm sorry I didn't miss you as much as I should have, but husbands and babies keep you very busy, you know.'_

'_Yes,' he answered. 'That's what I heard. I thought about you a lot, especially that last year. I wanted to do so much.'_

'_There's still so much to do. Don't let them beat you down. You're a fighter. You've always been a fighter. I told James. He wouldn't believe me, but he found out.' She laughed, then she touched his arm. 'Don't let this make you stop fighting.'_

'_I'm scared, Lily, and I'm tired.'_

'_I know. Lovely, dark, and deep. Promises. Miles to go…'_

'_Before you sleep, Russ,' his mother called. 'Chores to do before you sleep. You can't lie there forever, even if it is your birthday.'_

_And then Toby was yelling at him. 'What're you doing here, lad? You can't sit out here all night! Wake up!'_ He threw his hand up to protect his head from his father's blow, but the blow never landed. Instead, Toby was shaking him, rubbing his wrists and hands, pulling him up out of the warmth into the cold, frosty night…

"What the blame-all are ya doing out here?" Hagrid roared. "You start moving around, now, get that blood pumping!" Then Hagrid pulled off his own great coat and wrapped it around Snape's shoulders, its warmth battling the biting cold that weighed Snape's hands and feet. "Now move! Walk! I'm right beside ya. We're just going t' my place where there's a good fire and hot tea. I thought I saw ya up there on the hill a bit ago, then the flash when ya lit yer fire. Then when the fire died, I says, 'Well, he's gone back inside t' bed', but something nagged at me and I says, 'It won't hurt checking. No, ya can't sit down. Not yet. Ya just keep moving there."

Then Snape was staggering up the steps into Hagrid's hut, and was set before the fire, wrapped in warm blankets with a cup of hot tea in his hands while Hagrid pulled off his shoes to check his feet for frostbite.

"I was not trying to kill myself! I swear, I went out just to look at the moon, and it was so… beautiful… that I just wanted to stay awhile. I even made a fire. Ask Hagrid."

"That there is true, Professor. He did make a fire. That's what let me know he was out there to begin with. Well, that and seeing him on the hill."

"You saw me there?"

"It were a dandy silhouette 'gainst the moon, lad. No mistaking who it was neither."

"Still," said Dumbledore, "it is the third time in fewer months. Many would find a sinister meaning in the sequence of events. Do you promise me, Severus, that this time it was not deliberate?"

Snape looked directly into Dumbledore's eyes. "I swear, this time I was not trying to kill myself."

"I am content," said Dumbledore. "Now perhaps we should discuss the foolishness of falling asleep outside on a night as cold as this one."

"I didn't mean to do that either," said Snape ruefully, then added, "I saw Lily."

That attracted the instant attention of both Dumbledore and Hagrid. "Saw Lily?" Dumbledore asked, "Actually saw her?"

"Not actually. It was more like a dream. I saw my mother and father, too. Lily told me not to stop fighting, not to let them beat me down." Snape touched his left arm, the cloth of his robes under which lurked the skull and snake. "She said not to let this make me stop fighting. And she said something I didn't understand."

"Which was?"

"She said, 'Lovely, dark, deep. Promises. Miles to go.' I don't know what it meant."

Dumbledore smiled. "It is the intrusion of the inexplicable into an otherwise easily explained occurrence that promotes in us the belief in the supernatural."

"Sir?"

"Last night's experience, Severus. You dozed off and, as you were succumbing to the cold, you had a dream. That dream expressed certain desires of your heart – that you would see your parents and Lily again, and that you would find some way to fight back against the forces that are trying to push you down. All of them the simple wishes of your subconscious mind expressing itself in a dream – until we get to the inexplicable. Are you certain you do not recognize the words?"

"I don't think so."

"They are from a poem about a man who also stops to contemplate the beauty of snow falling at night. The last lines are thought by many to expressing a longing similar to Hamlet's – "The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep."

"I'm sorry, sir. I don't understand about Hamlet either."

"Ah! One of Shakespeare's most famous. '…to sleep, – no more; and by a sleep to say we end the heartache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to, – 'tis a consummation devoutly to be wished. To die, – to sleep…'"

"I didn't realize you knew so much about Shakespeare."

"I do not. I am merely intrigued by this muggle attitude toward death and dying, the acceptance of it as a natural, gentle, and even desirable thing. Something Moriarty would not have understood."

Snape thought for a moment. "If this dream came from my own mind, how could it tell me part of a poem I don't remember reading? Could that be proof it was really Lily speaking to me?"

Dumbledore reached forward to lay a finger over Snape's heart. "Part of Lily lives right in here," he said, "and will continue to live here as long as you yourself are alive. As long as you do not force that part to change into something she was not, she will continue to speak to you. The Lily of your dream, is that how she would have talked to you?"

"Yes, very much so."

"Then do not be distressed if you find that at some time in the past you read or heard that poem. It was still Lily talking to you. Perhaps at this point it would be well to think of your school days and remember that you had a reputation for refusing to be cowed."

"Thank you, sir. I'll do that, sir." Snape left Dumbledore's office somewhat more optimistic than he'd been for several weeks.

The first problem, of course, was defining the problem. _Who is my enemy? Is the Ministry of Magic my enemy? I would say not, because Judge Bones didn't act like an enemy, and Faustinus Oglethorpe didn't really act like an enemy. So far the only people who've acted like enemies are the aurors. And that's because of the Longbottoms._

_The Longbottoms. Pureblood aurors. They were the real threat to the Dark Lord. When their son was born as the seventh month died, the Dark Lord should have recognized the true chosen one of the prophecy, and not gone after Lily._ It was the Dark Lord's error, his blindness, that had killed Lily, and Snape wasn't going to let any more aurors push him into feeling guilty about the Longbottoms. Their fate had been prophesied. It wasn't Snape's fault.

It then occurred to Snape that the family whose picture he'd seen at the trial had been named Bones. Edgar Bones and his family. Remembering the picture made him feel sick again, but he had to think about it because the judge's name was Bones, and he wondered if they were related. She knew whose deaths he'd been accused of, yet she'd been kind and fair. No, it was just the aurors. Maybe their job made them cruel and suspicious, but they were the ones who wanted people to be guilty, wanted them to be punished. Not the whole Ministry, just the aurors. Like Scrimgeour and Moody. And Robards.

_They're going to keep pushing, trying to make me crack. What are some of the things they might bring up? If they do, what can I say that will show them I'm not afraid and at the same time not get me into more trouble?_ Snape began to think of sentences, lines, remarks, and commit them to memory.

_Friday, January 15, 1982_

Defense against the Dark Arts classes were canceled the following Friday because Scrimgeour was not coming up from London. Something was happening, something special enough that Dumbledore was going down to London to observe.

"Normally, I am part of the Council that conducted your trial. I could not sit with them that day, since I was acting as your lawyer. Today I go as myself. If anything happens that you need to know about, I shall tell you on my return."

It was a very pleasant day at Hogwarts for Snape, knowing he would not have to see Scrimgeour until the following Monday, but Dumbledore had given him something else to think about.

_Maybe it wasn't so smart letting Professor Dumbledore act as my lawyer. He's wise, and he knows the law, and he was on my side, but what I needed then was someone who knew all the twists and turns and tricks. Someone who understood how they can lead you from question to question until you're in the trap before you see it. Not someone wise, or even clever, but someone just as sneaky as they are._

Dumbledore returned from London late in the afternoon and sent a message to Snape to come to his office after the last Potions class. When he got there, Dumbledore offered him a glass of elf wine, but Snape turned it down, preferring tea or pumpkin juice. Dumbledore eyed him quizzically.

"Are you embarking on a change of diet. I was under the impression that you enjoyed an occasional glass of wine."

"I did. But if I drink it, I start talking too much. I have to watch what I say."

"Loose lips sink ships. Muggles used to put that on signs. I think it was during one of their wars. By the way, have you been taking your evenings off?"

"No. I don't think it's wise to leave Hogwarts."

"I hate to have to say it, but that is probably an excellent idea. They're bringing people out of Azkaban to give further evidence in exchange for lightening their sentences. One of the ones they questioned today was Igor Karkaroff. He named you."

"Karkaroff knew me. Not well, but he knew who I was."

"I was glad I was there. I spoke for you and reminded the council that you had been released because of your actions against Moriarty, but you could tell by the faces that not all of them were convinced. Scrimgeour and Moody were particularly skeptical."

"I think I could have guessed that."

"There was something else. They have statements from the Lestranges and Master Crouch about the attack on the Longbottoms. The four of them were trying to extract information about the whereabouts of Moriarty. They want to locate him."

"Whereabouts? He's dead!"

"That was my impression, but it is not the opinion of Bellatrix Lestrange. She, it would appear, is firmly convinced that Moriarty survives, and that the aurors somehow know where he is. More than that, she believes that he will return and be restored to power. It is a disturbing thought."


	25. Chapter 25 – Fortress Slytherin

**Severus Snape: The Middle Years – Fortress Slytherin**

_Monday, January 25, 1982_

Unpleasantness hit the fan on the twenty-fifth of January, and it took everyone by surprise. Morning was normal, breakfast was normal, and then as first hour classes were about to begin, it was announced that the Dark Arts students should stay in the Great Hall for a study period.

That, at first, was all anyone knew – that Scrimgeour would not be arriving at Hogwarts on time to teach his morning classes. Fifteen minutes into the second session, however, the Potions class was interrupted by Dumbledore coming in himself.

"Excuse me, Severus, but I really must see you in my office at once. Students, if you will quickly clean up your potions work and go either to the library or to the Great Hall to study… You may check with Professor Snape tomorrow about assignments that will be due next week. Very good… that is right… quickly now… Lock the door, Severus. It would be wise to hurry."

They did hurry, through the dungeon corridor, into the entrance hall, and up the marble staircase, but they didn't hurry quite fast enough. Scrimgeour burst through the great oaken doors, Hagrid at his heels.

"You can't hide him this time, Albus! This time he goes down!"

Dumbledore came down three steps so that he stood between Snape and Scrimgeour. "Rufus, we have been expecting you. I trust you bring news, though mine is fairly recent. Let me suggest, however, that we discuss it in my office, for while you and I know what this is about, Professor Snape and Hagrid are ignorant, and there is no need to gossip before the entire school. If you would follow Hagrid up…"

Dumbledore turned, pushing Snape upwards so that he remained between. Scrimgeour sprang for the stairs and was stopped by Hagrid. "The professor asked you to follow me," Hagrid said, "That means me first, and you second." Hagrid then made his way leisurely up the stairs, ensuring that Snape and Dumbledore were well ahead, and Scrimgeour well behind.

As soon as they were in the office, Snape crossed to the far side, wanting as much substantial furniture as possible between himself and Scrimgeour. He still had no idea what the problem was, but considered that of secondary importance. Scrimgeour stormed in behind Hagrid, though the groundskeeper prevented him from going far into the room.

"This has gone too far, Albus!" Scrimgeour shouted. "You can't protect him anymore. I'm taking him back to London."

"Do you happen to have a warrant, Rufus? I fear without a warrant I would be in violation of the law if I were to force Severus to accompany you. No? Then let us take this a step at a time. Would you care to sit down?"

"I'll stand!"

"Suit yourself. Severus, you need to know that last night Alastor Moody was involved in a fight with several Death Eaters and is currently in St. Mungo's hospital. My latest information, Rufus, is that he has regained consciousness, and that his prognosis for recovery is excellent."

"Right. Except that the blasting spell hit him in the face and he'll never see again."

Snape had long since closed himself down, but now a knot tightened in his stomach. Another victim who'd be laid to his blame, even though he'd known nothing of the attack. Part of him felt he should say something, but he couldn't think of anything to say. It struck him that Scrimgeour, with his irrational accusations, and the violence of his actions and emotions, was remarkably similar to Sirius Black.

Dumbledore continued. "Do they have in custody the people he was fighting?"

"Yeah. Yeah, they do. A couple from Lincoln and her cousin. You know anyone named Folkenstone, Death Eater?"

"No," replied Snape quietly. "I don't."

"Liar."

"Rufus!"

"Albus, you know what he can do! Alastor's good, and Alastor said he couldn't read this one. Can you stand here, look me in the face, and tell me honestly that he's never lied to you?"

"That is not the point under discussion."

"It's exactly the point under discussion. He could lie, and lie, and lie, and none of us would even know it."

"He has not lied to me about this."

"Albus, you have no way of knowing."

They stood, staring at each other across the room. "Do you have a suggestion?" Dumbledore asked. "Because if you do not, I shall be forced to ask you to leave. I believe that although I cannot fire you while under contract, I can suspend you from your teaching duties for the rest of the year. We would continue to pay you, of course."

"I don't want your pay!" Scrimgeour's face was red now. "For God's sake, Albus, why won't you listen? We don't want vengeance, we want justice. Frank and Alice are lost. Alastor's lost, too. You don't care what happens to us. When did we become expendable? Why are you wasting this time on a proven Death Eater who won't even repent?"

"This is a very good question, Rufus. Perhaps we should ask Severus." Dumbledore turned to Snape. "Rufus accuses you of being unrepentant. What have you to say?"

Snape flipped through all the responses he'd been preparing, and the answer to 'Why are you still shielding Death Eaters?' seemed to fit best. "I didn't know what they did. All I know is that they came to me for potions, and for spells, and for lessons on how to protect themselves. I was tricked into becoming a Death Eater. I don't know how many of them were tricked as well. Why should I let you punish them for having been tricked into a lie?"

"So you think they're just going to innocently crawl under rocks and hide? Your record hasn't been good so far."

"As a total percentage? It's been very good. I can't help that there are a few."

It was the wrong thing to say. Scrimgeour jumped on it immediately. "Total percentage? You mean that the number of attacks are small compared to the number of names you know? Who else is going to ambush us, Death Eater? Who else?"

"No one that I know of."

"Yeah, but that's what you said before Alastor was attacked. And the Longbottoms."

"I can't give you names of people I think are innocent."

"You think the Lestranges and Crouch are innocent? You think the Folkenstones are innocent?"

"I didn't know the Folkenstones."

Turning to Dumbledore, Scrimgeour demanded, "Let me talk to him, Albus!"

"You are talking to him, Rufus."

Scrimgeour stiffened and became suddenly quite cold. "Then we have nothing more to discuss, have we? Perhaps you'd better suspend me, Albus. I see no more reason for me to come to Hogwarts."

"I shall be sorry to lose you, Rufus. You were a good teacher. But this is probably for the best."

With that, Scrimgeour strode from Dumbledore's office. He neither looked at nor spoke to any of them on the way, but hastened from the castle and apparated back to London.

Dumbledore went to a cabinet and took a cloak. "You will excuse me, now, gentlemen," he said to Hagrid and Snape, "but I, too, must be going to London. I shall be at St. Mungo's visiting Alastor. If you would remain in the castle this afternoon, Hagrid, near the dungeon area, I should appreciate it. I expect to be back before supper time." Dumbledore left the office and followed Scrimgeour's route out of the castle and down the hill.

"It'll be lunch time, now," said Hagrid. "We'd best go down and have a bite t' eat."

"I'm not hungry," Snape replied.

Hagrid took him by the arm. "Well, I am. And if I'm to look out for ya this afternoon, y're just going t' have t' come t' the Hall with me and watch me eat, then. Now, we can walk down side by side, or I can put ya over my shoulder like a stack of wood."

"Hagrid, are you angry with me?"

Hagrid took Snape by the shoulders and turned him so they faced each other. "I don't have much fondness for Rufus Scrimgeour, lad, and Professor Dumbledore, he wants ya safe up here. But Frank and Alice, and Alastor, too, they're friends of mine. I ain't sure yet what's t' become of Alastor, but it's beginning t' look like Frank and Alice are as good as dead. Don't get me wrong. I got a fondness for ya, and I'll do what it takes t' protect ya, but I got other friends, and there's still a lot of Death Eaters out there. So you'll excuse me if I'm having a bit of trouble understanding this blamed stubbornness of yers. Now, let's go t' lunch."

Dumbledore was back at Hogwarts before the end of the afternoon classes. Hagrid stood outside Snape's classroom as the last lesson of the day ended, with a message to come to Dumbledore's office whenever convenient. Snape and Hagrid went up together.

It was something of a shock that Dumbledore looked so tired. He motioned them to sit, then poured mead, hesitating a moment with Snape's goblet still in his hand. "That's all right," Snape said, "I'll take it."

After a moment, Dumbledore began. "It is hard, very hard, to witness. Frank and Alice have no awareness of anything around them. Their eyes follow the light, they flinch slightly at loud noises, but that is all. The healers believe it to be a combination of physical damage and psychological trauma, so the long-term prognosis is not good. They may be institutionalized for the rest of their lives. Alastor is a little better than we originally feared. He has, indeed, lost one eye, but they may be able to save the other. They have apprehended Berengaria Folkenstone, and she has implicated two additional Death Eaters, Rudy Carstairs and Horatio Gamp. Severus?"

Snape's grip had tightened on his glass, sloshing some of the mead onto his hand. He set the goblet down and rose, walking over to the windows where he stood looking down at the lake.

"I take it," said Dumbledore quietly, "that these names are not unknown to you?"

"They took lessons from me."

"So we are two for two. Two attacks, both involving people you know."

"Headmaster, I don't know what to do."

Dumbledore didn't try to hide his concern. "Is there some criterion you could use to distinguish the potentially dangerous ones? The lessons, perhaps?"

"Those who took lessons were generally those who went out on raids, but the Lestranges and Crouch never took lessons. Neither did the Folkenstones. And most of those who did haven't been involved in any dangerous activity."

"So there is no benchmark you could use."

"None."

"Then we must defend ourselves as best we may. Crouch has ordered that any group involved in a roundup of former Death Eaters be prepared to use deadly force at the slightest hint of resistance."

"They can't do that. There are healers, and cooks, and supply personnel, and clerks."

"Give us the names of the inoffensive, then."

"The ones who never hurt anyone, who might otherwise escape them entirely? No."

"We are at an impasse, and each must look out for his own as he can."

Snape turned back to the window and the lake, while Dumbledore and Hagrid were silent. Minutes ticked by, but by this time the outcome was inevitable, and Dumbledore was willing to wait as long as it took. Finally Snape returned his attention to the room. "Let them know I'll give them some of the names. But only the ones I think may still be dangerous. Only not in London. If I'm seen going into the Ministry again, and then roundups resume…"

"It shall be somewhere else. Not Hogwarts either. That would be traced back to you. Somewhere else." Dumbledore left the office to contact the Ministry.

The inquisitor was Gawain Robards, all business and practicality. The venue was a house in Newcastle, not normally a place for any kind of Ministerial or Death Eater activity. Snape apparated in with Dumbledore, and Robards with a clerk.

They sat at a table in a large kitchen, where Dumbledore brewed coffee for everyone. Snape and Robards sat opposite each other with the clerk at a nearby desk and Dumbledore standing behind Snape. The first thing was a piece of parchment with a statement for Snape to sign.

"What's this?" Snape asked.

"A standard statement that you are doing this of your own free will," Robards replied. "Just sign there."

"I'd like to read it first." Snape read for a moment, then looked up at Robards. "This says that since I agreed to give you information, once I start talking if I withhold anything, I'm liable for criminal penalties."

"I believe that's just standard language."

"Gawain…" Dumbledore warned.

Robards sighed. "I can reword it, but they want a statement. What about 'withhold information about a person I know to be dangerous'?"

"And add, 'who thereafter initiates violent action,'" suggested Dumbledore.

Between them, Robards and Dumbledore worked out language that would satisfy the aurors and yet be specific enough that Snape would be protected from arbitrary action, after which, having little other choice, Snape signed the paper.

"Now," said Robards, "in December, you gave us a list of names which I have here." He handed another piece of parchment to Snape. "All of the names on that list were of Death Eaters who were dead, had already been captured, or who have since been captured, the most important being the Lestranges and Crouch. They were also fairly high-ranking, what we would consider the inner circle. We're now looking for lower level operatives who engaged in violent actions against the wizarding world or the muggle world. First, is there any name you feel that you left off the first list?"

Snape looked over the names. "No," he answered.

"Are you sure?" The hostile note was clear in Robard's voice. "What of Lucius Malfoy?"

Narcissa's husband. Snape glanced away, toward the window. "He became a Death Eater late, not until after his father died of dragon pox. I never had anything but social contact with him. I never heard of him going on raids. I think they recruited him for his money."

"Wasn't he involved in high level planning?"

"I wouldn't know. I didn't have that kind of access." Snape paused. "If you already know about him, why do you need me?"

"Just curious how you would respond." Robards then began the slow, careful search for names and data, trying to obtain as much detail as possible while Snape took his time with each person, trying to decide whether or not that one might be a threat. From time to time he had trouble remembering names, but adamantly refused to put his memories into a pensieve for fear that the 'innocent' might be revealed along with the 'guilty.' All four of them were exhausted and irritable when, several hours later, Robards packed up his papers and returned to London. He had a list of twenty-seven new names.

They had results by Friday. Dumbledore called Snape into his office and had him sit down. "Lemuel Lufkin and Dickon Varney are dead," he said quietly, pouring Snape a small glass of firewhisky.

Snape's eyes grew wide with shock. "What happened?" he whispered.

"There was a raid. They fought back. I hope it is a consolation to you to learn that inside the house were detailed plans for attacks on Mr. Crouch, the head of Law Enforcement, and on Judge Bones. The information you provided has foiled those plans, and both are being given extra protection. The aurors also found the names of seven more Death Eaters from the west of England that they are checking out." Dumbledore handed Snape the firewhisky. "You do not look pleased."

"I feel like a traitor." Snape looked at the drink, then quickly consumed half of it.

"How would you feel if the news I was giving you today was of the assassination of Judge Bones by people you knew?"

Snape thought about this for a moment. "I'd feel worse," he said at last.

"Then we may derive a measure of contentment knowing that we have been given the better of two evil situations."

"I suppose so."

"Stay here for a while, Severus. Think about all the things that might have happened. There is some good to be found in the thought that of all the bad choices we have, we made the one that was least bad."

It was a comfort, as Dumbledore said, for while Snape knew little about Mr. Crouch beyond his being Barty's father, Judge Bones had been kind. And Snape acknowledged that he would have been devastated to learn of her death knowing that he'd held the information that might have saved her. That was guilt that he'd been spared.

Much later, returning to the dungeons, Snape ran into Algie Colfax.

"Professor Snape," Algie called from beside the Slytherin wall. "I was wondering if I might have a word with you."

"What's on your mind, Algie."

"Next week's the Gryffindor-Hufflepuff game, and then in March we play Ravenclaw. Wanted to talk about it with you if you don't mind."

Snape invited the Quidditch team into his office rather than meeting in the common room. They all seemed a bit apologetic, as if they knew that Snape had other problems, bigger problems, to deal with.

Algie plunged right into Quidditch talk. "The thing is, the Gryffindor-Ravenclaw game was high-scoring. Can we score high against Ravenclaw, too?"

"You're going to have to explain this to me," Snape said. "I don't usually bother with Quidditch, and I haven't been thinking about it at all for a while."

"There are three rounds of play in which each team plays a game against one of the other teams. The team that wins the most games, wins the Quidditch Cup. If two teams win the same number of games, the team that accumulated the highest number of points wins the Cup. Right now, Slytherin and Gryffindor have won, Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff have lost. But Gryffindor made one hundred twenty more points than Slytherin did, so in a way, they're ahead."

"Do we have a chance of beating Gryffindor?"

"Not really. They've had the best teams for years, and we've been at the bottom. We'd love to win, but a respectable year would be good, too. That game against Hufflepuff was our first win in more than two years. Even if we don't get anything else, we have that. We won a game, and it was a good game, too. Not a Seeker fluke."

Snape thought for a moment. "I know everyone hates Gryffindor for being so overbearing and cocky about Quidditch, and we're the underdog. So now it's to our advantage to have exciting games, whether we win or lose."

"Come again, Professor?"

"Look, it wasn't planned, but I was 'sick' and our first game was canceled. So this year we play Gryffindor last, the final game of the season. Let's take a worst-case scenario. Let's say Gryffindor beats Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw beats us. We get down to that last game, we want the whole school to be cheering for us, not for Gryffindor. Doesn't it help you play if everyone is cheering for you?"

"Sure it does, but why would they want to?"

"Let's say Ravenclaw beats Hufflepuff. Hufflepuff would have no chance of winning, but they'd cheer the underdog, especially since our game against them was a good one with no hard feelings between the houses. Ravenclaw would cheer for us, especially if they scored high against us and Hufflepuff, because if we won, they'd be in contention for the Cup in a three-way draw."

"What if we beat Ravenclaw, Professor?"

"Then it would be straightforward us against Gryffindor for the winner, but we could still get the underdog support if we've played good, exciting games. Wouldn't you like to play well against Gryffindor, even if we don't win the Cup?" They nodded emphatically, and Snape continued. "In addition, the longer the game lasts, the more practice our team gets for next year. That won't affect Algie and Chris because they won't be here, but the rest of you are next year's team, too, if you all continue playing well."

The rest of the meeting was tactical on drawing the game out by scoring without catching the Snitch too soon. Ravenclaw had good Chasers and a weak Keeper, the opposite of Hufflepuff. Slytherin's Keeper was good. Now it was the Chasers who needed more work. The team went out to practice with a clearer idea of what they were working towards.

The question came up of what to do with Scrimgeour's classes, since Dark Arts could not be canceled for the rest of the year, especially for the fifth and seventh years who were preparing for OWLs and NEWTs. The only way it could be handled was to redo the master schedule.

First, the number of Dark Arts classes was cut in half by lumping two houses in the same hour, Slytherin with Ravenclaw, Gryffindor with Hufflepuff, and sixth together with seventh year. Then the classes were dealt out to the teachers, with the least experienced instructors getting the lowest level classes, and the more experienced the higher levels. Dumbledore himself took the sixth and seventh years. Some of the other lessons in other courses were also merged to give the professors the time to take the new class.

Snape was not given a Dark Arts class because all his Potions classes already contained two houses, and they were all two-hour sessions. His classes were, in fact, the ones that the schedule had to accommodate since they were impossible to shift. Dumbledore did admit privately that the schedule alone was not the whole reason for Snape's being kept out of Dark Arts.

"What would the Ministry think, or worse – do, if I put you into Dark Arts when your relationship to the dark powers has been a bone of contention between us since the school year began? No, no, Severus. We give them no excuses to interfere."

With all his other problems and irritations, Snape actually found himself looking forward to the Gryffindor-Hufflepuff Quidditch match.

_Saturday, February 6, 1982_

Most of the week was clear and cold, but Saturday was overcast and therefore warmer. It was good Quidditch weather, since the players wouldn't have to worry about the glare from the sun as they flew. As it turned out, there would be other things to worry about. Snape had hardly walked into the Great Hall and sat down to breakfast when it hit him.

"Have you seen this?" McGonagall asked, laying a copy of _The Daily Prophet_ on Snape's as yet empty plate. "Page three."

Snape opened the paper to page three and felt as if someone had punched him in the chest. There was an article on the efforts of the Ministry to round up the last of the Death Eaters, and his list of twenty-seven names was prominently displayed together with the names of all of those arrested since Halloween. Snape's own name was never mentioned, but several of the students in Slytherin house, a couple in Ravenclaw, and one girl in Hufflepuff had family members listed.

A glance around the hall showed that students at every table were reading a larger than usual number of _Prophets_.

"Does Professor Dumbledore know about this?" Snape asked McGonagall.

"He does. There isn't much we can do, however."

"We can protect our students."

"You'll have the biggest job," she responded. "You have more of them in your house than the others do."

Something in McGonagall's tone made Snape turn to look her in the face. "I hope we have the same understanding of who the likely victims are," he said.

Shouting from the entrance hall had every professor at the breakfast table up and heading out of the Great Hall. At this early hour on a Saturday morning, that meant Snape, McGonagall, Sprout, and Flitwick, since most of the other teachers stayed home on weekends, and the few left in the school were late risers.

A crowd of students was beginning to form in the entrance hall around a little group of boys. Three of them were Slytherins – Algie Colfax, Chris Tobin, and a third year named Richie Gamp. The other boys, five of them, were Gryffindors. All of them but Gamp had their wands out.

"What is the meaning of this!" McGonagall cried out in her most authoritarian voice. Algie and Chris put their wands away at once. "Peterson! Maddock! Explain yourselves!"

Peterson pointed at Gamp. "He's a Death Eater. It's in _The Prophet_. My cousin Oscar and his family had their house destroyed by Death Eaters and lost everything. He shouldn't be here at Hogwarts."

Snape had moved to the same side of the hall as his three students, watching warily now for what McGonagall, as deputy headmistress, would do.

"That is ridiculous, Peterson. _The Prophet_ has not named Master Gamp. It may have listed someone with the same last name, but that is irrelevant. You are both students here, and you will obey the rules. There will be no fighting, no teasing, no harassment. Put your wand away."

Peterson didn't obey. Instead he pointed at Snape. "What about him. Tiberius's father says he's the biggest Death Eater still at large. How come he's teaching here?"

"Peterson!" snapped McGonagall. "You will close your mouth, put your wand away, and go to my office at once!"

"But it's true!" exclaimed Tiberius Diggle. "My uncle works in the Improper Use of Magic Office, and he says Professor Snape should be in Azkaban, but Professor Dumbledore is shielding him!"

Everything happened at once. McGonagall cried, "Silence!" as Peterson raised his wand at Snape and screamed, _"Stupefy!"_ Unable to use a shield because of the crowd of students, Snape dove to his right, dodging the bolt of red light and rolling smoothly to a standing position, wand in hand, sending Peterson's wand into the air with a finely aimed, nonverbal Expelliarmus.

"Enough!" bellowed Dumbledore from the stairs, and the students in front of him parted to let him through. "Miss Thackery, you will kindly bring me Master Peterson's wand. Master Peterson, you have attacked a Hogwarts teacher and are suspended from all classes and activities. Go to my office at once. We shall have to contact your parents about expelling you. Professor Snape, I hope you are not injured."

"No, sir. I'm fine."

"Good. The rest of you get in to breakfast. Heads, please sit with your houses. Attacks, wild accusations, teasing, none of this behavior will be tolerated. A Quidditch game is scheduled for this afternoon, but if the school is disrupted it may have to be canceled. Professor McGonagall, I shall be in conference with Master Peterson."

Hagrid arrived as the professors were shepherding the students into the Great Hall, trying to maintain a strict silence as witches and wizards from different houses brushed shoulders going through the great doors. Sprout filled Hagrid in on what had happened, and the groundskeeper found himself nearly alone at the high table because the heads were with their houses. Hagrid didn't want to join any particular house for fear of appearing to take sides.

One thing that Snape noticed immediately was that his own students were watching him closely. At first he wondered if they were afraid of him, then slowly realized that their faces reflected a mixture of awe and pride. Algie looked positively proprietorial, as if he'd been trying for ages to convince the others that their head of house was more than just a bookish potions brewer. _O Lord, now they think I can fight. They'd better not ask for lessons._

Dumbledore returned in about forty minutes, followed by an obviously contrite Peterson, who went to join his friends at the Gryffindor table. Beckoning to the heads of houses, Dumbledore informed them quietly that Master Peterson was suspended from classes for a week and on detention until after the Easter break. "I hope this is sufficient, Professor Snape. I am certain that Professor McGonagall will find appropriate work for the young man."

"I certainly will! Behaving like that, and in front of the whole school!"

A spark of mischief rose in Snape, a reaction to the tension of the morning perhaps. "Foolish child. If he'd attacked me in private, it would have been acceptable. When will they learn?"

McGonagall spun on him. "Now listen to me, youngster!" she began, then caught the tilt of his head and the glint in his eyes and began to laugh. "You got me there, Professor. Dear, dear, you did." The rest of the school saw them at ease with each other and relaxed as well.

Dumbledore stepped onto the dais and addressed the assembled school. "All students will, after breakfast, return to their common rooms to discuss the proper way to deal with the difficulties we face as a school over the next few weeks and months. I know that all of you realize that we as a community must work together to keep Hogwarts a place of safety and of dedication to the future that we all will share. Your maturity, your wisdom, will carry us through rough places. I am sure that enough progress will have been made before the lunch hour that we shall be able to devote the afternoon to the friendly competition of a well-played Quidditch game. I hope to see you all there."

The meeting in the Slytherin common room didn't start well. The majority of the students carefully avoided the group of Death Eater children. When Snape entered the common room, their attitude was more ambivalent, as if they wanted to be able to trust him, but weren't sure if they could.

_There are things I can tell them, and things I can't. Help me distinguish which is which and say the right things. But I can't hide things – they all know what's been going on._

Marlene Kingsford stepped forward. "The first thing we want to know, sir, is – is it true? Are you a Death Eater?"

It was a question that had to be answered. "I was." It was an answer that raised more questions.

"Why?"

"Marlie, do you remember when you were in third year that I had to leave school for a while? It was in the autumn term. Do you remember why?"

"Yes," Marlie said, and Chris added, "Your grandmother was killed. They burned her house down with her in it. Muggles. We were all talking about it." The majority of the students looked shocked, but the fifth, sixth, and seventh years nodded. They all had some memory of the occasion.

"I was afraid. I believed muggles were instituting witch hunts again, and I believed that… You-Know-Who was the only one who could help. So I became a Death Eater. It was three years before I found out that You-Know-Who had ordered the attack, putting muggles under Imperius curses, to trick me, to recruit me. By then it was too late."

"Why did they want you?" asked a fourth year girl.

Algie spoke up. "Do you know what we used to call him? Cursemaster. Any curse, any hex, any jinx, any potion you wanted, he could do it."

"Did you ever kill anyone?"

Snape didn't look for the questioner. "No. I worked in a potions room. I watched people die, though. I watched him kill people. By the time it ended, most of us were more afraid of him than anything. Now he's gone, we just want to stay away from trouble."

"Why aren't you in prison if they know this?"

"I work for Dumbledore. I told you, he takes care of his own. You're his, too. He'll take care of you if you give him a chance."

After that, others whose family members had been Death Eaters, but whose names had not been in _The Prophet_, also came forward. Some of them were from families Snape had not known were servants of the Dark Lord. Fortunately, not a single one came from an important Death Eater family, and most of their families had long since been disillusioned. At one point a debate started as to the relative worth of blood status, but then Snape mentioned that he himself was a half-blood, and the discussion was halted. The general consensus of Slytherin house boiled down to five points:

First, the Dark Lord was gone, and whether your family had followed, opposed, or been neutral, the question was now moot and, in any case, a problem for the older generation.

Second, there were more Death Eater families represented in Slytherin house than in the others, and there was therefore some actual logic to their house being targeted for reprisal more than the others. The students resolved to check with Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff to be sure the other students named in _The Prophet_ were not being harassed, but otherwise to treat each incident as separate and unique, to be dealt with on a case by case basis.

Third, any future harassment was to be responded to in defensive mode only, and to be reported as quickly as possible to a staff member. Offensive or retaliatory strikes were counterproductive. In order to reduce the number of incidents, each Death Eater student was to have a constant bodyguard of non-Death Eater housemates so that the targeted students would never have to face harassment alone.

Fourth, any statement made in the common room as a committee of the whole was to be regarded as confidential, and never to be revealed to anyone outside the common room, as long as it did not involve criminal activity.

Fifth, Dumbledore was to be given the opportunity to show that he protected his own, and Slytherin students were at all times to show the utmost respect for the Headmaster and his directives so as not to jeopardize the relationship.

Leadership had been taken by the non-Death Eater upper classes of Slytherin house, the sixth and seventh years, and Severus was immensely impressed at the seriousness with which the whole house debated the issues and reached resolutions. It occurred to him that these students had been living together for years knowing who was 'dark' and who was not, and that what they were doing now was bringing into the open a system of mutual coexistence that they'd been practicing ever since they entered Hogwarts.

It was with great pride that Snape made his report to Dumbledore and the other heads on the discussions in the Slytherin common room.

Flitwick and Sprout also reported relatively serious debate in their houses. A most encouraging sign was that the two houses had decided that their reported Death Eaters were their Death Eaters, and that no other house was to be allowed to touch them. Ravenclaw's business was Ravenclaw's business, and Gryffindor had better keep its nose out.

McGonagall's report was of a far more emotional meeting. Plea after plea for logical, rational debate was met with anecdotal challenges of relatives who'd suffered, and calls for justice on a higher plane that had nothing to do with practicality or the general well-being. Every time a general resolution was passed, someone would announce with an almost religious fervor that it might be well and good for the house as a whole, "but if you think I'm going to sit quietly by and not get the people who hurt my aunt Susan, you are sorely mistaken." The degree of insistence on the absolute moral right of individual action was discouraging.

Snape, Sprout, and Flitwick mutually agreed that they were very lucky that all the crazy students got funneled to McGonagall.

It was determined that due to the maturity shown by the student body of Hogwarts as a whole, the Quidditch game between Gryffindor and Hufflepuff would take place as scheduled. The school was informed at lunch to tumultuous cheers, and by one o'clock long lines of students were wending their way down the hill to the Quidditch pitch and their house stands.

Members of the staff who usually weekended away from the school were apparating into Hogsmeade for the game as well, and Severus was heartily greeted by Kettleburn, and exchanged greetings with Futhark and Vector as well. The centers of attention, of course, were McGonagall and Sprout, and though the staff had agreed to show solidarity by sitting all together in the same booth, Flitwick and Snape were careful to sit between McGonagall and Sprout, just in case tempers might flare.

Dumbledore accompanied Madam Hooch to the pitch, then waved cheerfully at the assembled students and took his place. Madam Hooch gave what was becoming her classic "I want a good, clean game" speech, and the two teams were off the ground and fighting.

It was disappointingly quick. Gryffindor pushed past Hufflepuff's sterling defense only once to score ten points. Then there was a defensive battle for all of fifteen minutes before the Hufflepuff Seeker spied the Snitch and went into a nosedive. And then it was over. Hufflepuff emerged victorious over Gryffindor, 150 to 10.

Happier by far than the Gryffindor players were the Slytherin and Ravenclaw teams, for not only had Gryffindor lost, their massive point lead had been slashed to modest proportions by their modest score. It was anyone's Cup.

As students poured onto the field to congratulate or commiserate with the players, Dumbledore approached the heads of houses. "No urgency," he said, "but when you are back in the castle, could you all come up to my office?"

That, naturally, injected precisely a note of urgency into the whole proceeding, and the four heads tried to urge the students up the hill as quickly as possible, leaving in Hagrid's hands the question of order in the entrance hall as the four of them made their way upstairs.

"So pleasant we could all get together," Dumbledore said as he passed around mead, wine, and firewhisky. The words "Sit, Severus, I have a new brandy I'd like you to try…" were a clue that whatever it was had to do with Professor Snape, and the other three relaxed a bit. Still, an afternoon summons and glasses of spirits boded no good for any of them.

"I wanted to let you know," said Dumbledore as they settled into chairs with goblets in their hands, "that your classes will be a bit smaller on Monday."

"Smaller?" McGonagall exclaimed. "Whatever for?"

"We have," continued Dumbledore calmly, "a few families who have expressed a desire to have their children educated elsewhere. The students in question will be departing this evening or tomorrow, and will therefore not be in your Monday classes or any classes thereafter."

McGonagall was once again the spokesperson for all of them. "Pulling out in February? Why would they pull the children out in February?" They all knew the answer, but somehow it seemed right to make Dumbledore say it.

Dumbledore hesitated. "It seems… Well, to put it in a nutshell, they do not want their children taught by a former Death Eater, and Potions is a required course."

"How many?" asked Flitwick.

"Eleven from Gryffindor, five from Ravenclaw, and two from Hufflepuff. None from Slytherin so far."

Snape, having begun to shut down from the moment Dumbledore offered him a brandy, was now completely closed, his eyes distant and cold. "Would you like me to resign, sir?" he said.

"You forget. That is not an option." Dumbledore looked over at the three other professors. "It is a type of probation imposed by the Ministry. Severus must remain here under my authority."

"How small do you think the school will get?" McGonagall asked.

"Word has gotten out very quickly since this morning. Two of the students in question have already approached me and asked if I might intercede with their parents to allow them to stay at Hogwarts, so I do not think they were motivated by a desire to get out of school."

"They want me fired," said Snape dully.

"I shall admit, that was the initial request made by all the parents. I was instructed to get you out of the school. I informed them that I had the utmost confidence in you, and that under no circumstances would I ask you to leave. That was when they told me they were withdrawing their children."

"Well, there it is," Sprout said. "This is all very recent news, and people are overreacting. When they all find out that Hogwarts can't be swayed by their prejudices, they'll back down and send the children here again. We just have to give them time for all this to sink in and be digested."

"Pomona's right," chimed in Flitwick. "Something unexpected comes up and they respond without thinking. It will sort itself out given a little time. Like the Slytherin parents."

"What do you mean?" Snape was suspicious and defensive.

"Correct me if I'm wrong," Flitwick answered, "but haven't the Slytherin students known from the beginning of last term that there was a Death Eater on staff? Even before You-Know-Who fell, and you might really have been dangerous? I mean, we were all wondering about you and what you'd been doing for three years, but some of them knew for certain."

"I am curious," said Dumbledore. "What made you wonder?"

McGonagall raised her chin and glared at the headmaster in defiance. "You can't honestly think we're such dunderheads as that, Albus. You bring in a child to teach, a boy who tells us he's had no regular employment since he graduated, and yet he's clearly had the experience of setting up a large potions workshop and has been 'tutoring' people older than himself, and who comes close to panicking at the thought of an auror on staff… What were we to think? And then the other things."

"Such as?"

"He saw the thestrals and it surprised him, so he's watched people die since he graduated. He collapsed at the news that You-Know-Who was destroyed. You think you're so devious, Albus, but really it was as clear as the nose on your face that Severus was a Death Eater, even before they arrested him in December."

McGonagall's words flowed around Snape like water around the pilings of a bridge, hardly affecting him at all for, locked down as tightly as he was, they couldn't reach the inner core of feeling. Nothing could. He watched her as calmly as if he were watching a performance, then turned to Dumbledore, whose duty it was to respond.

"I am properly contrite, Minerva," said Dumbledore. "I am not as clever as I thought I was. We may then accept as probable that there will be no defections from Slytherin house because this is not news to them. A few of those leaving may change their minds and return. Others may ask to leave as word leaks out. It is a mutable situation. Well! Now that you know the worst, what do you all say to supper? The elves should be laying out the meal shortly, and I for one am famished. Severus, would you walk with me, please? I wanted to ask you about the situation in Poland, and I have only recently discovered that people are playing with these strange little cubes, nine faces to a side…"

The majority of the student body, released earlier than expected by the quick end to the Quidditch game, was already in the Great Hall when Dumbledore and the professors arrived. At once, the glances and whispers began. Dumbledore laid his right hand on Snape's right shoulder, seeming engrossed in their conversation, his encircling arm guaranteeing protection, both psychological and physical as the staff made their way to the high table.

Snape could tell immediately which were the students who were leaving. All of them seemed either downcast or angry, and were surrounded by commiserating housemates. It suddenly occurred to him that among the nearly three hundred students, there must be a few who were naturally skilled in legilimency. _I can't let them see how much this situation affects me, how much it hurts. They can't see._ And he left his defenses up, as strong as he could make them.

The professors chatted amicably during dinner, and as the meal was ending, Flitwick suggested a game of cribbage in the Hall. Snape didn't want to stay there, under the eyes of the whole school like a fish in a tank, but he realized what Flitwick was trying to do and stayed long enough for two games, by which time most of the students had filtered out of the Hall for the library or their dormitories, it still being far too cold to go strolling outside at night.

McGonagall suggested the staffroom for the teachers, but Snape offered his excuses, saying he was tired and preferred to rest a bit before he had to make his rounds. They wished him a pleasant night.

"I see what you meant about him," said Sprout as she accepted another butterbeer from the staffroom stores. "It gave me the shivers just looking at him. I had no idea his eyes were so dark, like pieces of jet. And nothing behind them, nothing at all."

McGonagall had an 'I-told-you-so' smirk on her face. "Now, my dear, you just imagine standing out there with the first years preparing for sorting and seeing those identical eyes on an eleven-year-old only about this tall. Shifty little boy who never would look anybody in the face. I wouldn't be surprised if all this butter-wouldn't-melt-in-my-mouth politeness wasn't just an act, and the real Severus Snape was reappearing. Tonight was more the way I remember him from school.

"I don't know, Minerva," Flitwick mused, "he's been through a lot in the last few months. It would put a strain on anyone."

"On probation, Albus said. The Ministry wouldn't do that unless there was something he was guilty of. Now that we know he was one of them, I won't feel comfortable until I have some answers. Like what was he teaching to people older than himself? Not potions. Curses, probably, or dark magic. And who did he watch die? How many? Under what circumstances? And why did he come to Hogwarts looking for a teaching position before You-Know-Who died? Answer me that one! His presence here was for some dark purpose."

Sprout was thoughtful. "He did react rather strongly to news of You-Know-Who's death. You don't usually have a nervous breakdown over the death of someone you hate and fear."

"Nervous breakdown! Rumor says he tried to kill himself."

"Maybe that's nothing more than a rumor," said Flitwick. "Maybe he was distraught over the death of the Potters."

"Come now, Filius! He hated James Potter. I wouldn't be surprised to learn he was pleased at Potter's death. I'll bet he collapsed because he knew the jig was up, he knew he'd be called to account. He was sent to Hogwarts for no good, and he was about to be arrested and tried, and he couldn't face it."

"Be logical, Minerva. If he's really that bad, why is Albus going to such lengths to take care of him?" Flitwick sat back in his chair with the air of a man who'd just scotched an opponent.

McGonagall glared at Flitwick as she paused to think. "I don't know," she said finally. "He never showed any fondness for Master Snape while he was a student. The boy never visited Hogwarts after he graduated. If Trelawney's telling the truth, he showed up over two years ago looking for a job and was tossed on his ear for eavesdropping. That was probably on You-Know-Who's orders, too. Then last year he's sent back to try again, and Albus gives him everything he wants. It's a mystery."

"It's ten o'clock," said Sprout. "Time to see the children are all in bed." The three professors wished each other good night and left for their rounds and a good night's sleep.

Snape rested that evening by sitting in front of a small fire staring at the flames until it was time to make his rounds. As much as possible, he emptied his mind by forcing unwanted thoughts down into the sealed areas of his brain. Red, yellow, orange, and blue danced before his eyes, and he let it mesmerize him, the semiconscious state being at the moment preferable to most others.

At ten o'clock, Snape rose and left the dungeon for his outside rounds. It was still bitterly cold at night, one of the coldest winters on record. He paused at the cliff edge to look down at the lake, but had no intention of going down. It did remind him of his dream the month before, and the admonition not to stop fighting.

_It would be so much easier if I knew where it would end, but it seems it's never going to end. Just when I've gotten through one trial, a new one rises up and the battle goes on. I don't know if I have enough strength to keep fighting. I'm just so tired and it's all so discouraging._

Sunday brought empty seats at the Gryffindor table, Peterson among the missing. "Too bad none of their Quidditch players are going," said Algie when Snape paused by the Slytherin table on his way out of the Hall.

"What are you planning?"

"Well, Professor, whoever wins the next one is at least neck and neck with Gryffindor, and maybe even way ahead depending on the score. If we win, then Ravenclaw's out of the running, and Hufflepuff's only hope is a tremendously high scoring win against Ravenclaw plus a Gryffindor win against us. But if we win the last game, it's us all alone in first place with the Cup. If we lose, it could be a three-way point decision for the Cup. On the other hand, if Ravenclaw wins, it'll be a point decision between whoever wins the Ravenclaw-Hufflepuff game and whoever wins our game against Gryffindor. So we have to work on scoring and scoring high. A quick, low-scoring Seeker win could scuttle our Cup chances."

"So it's a Chasers' game?"

"If we can do it. Problem is, they're good on offense, and we're good on defense. It's going to be hard for us to rack up the points."

"Won't they be trying for a high-scoring game as well?"

"That's right, sir," Algie grinned. "At least we shouldn't have to worry about a fluke Seeker win fifteen minutes into the game. Ravenclaw needs the points, too."

Snape spent most of the day alone in his rooms. There really wasn't anything to do there, but he wanted primarily to avoid people's eyes. He hadn't been able to leave Hogwarts since Halloween except for the trips to the Ministry for interrogation, arraignment, and trial, and he was beginning to hate the castle intensely. It might not have been so bad if he could spend more time outside, but it was too cold. He looked through his books and noticed the cookbooks he'd bought when the world still seemed good – they held no interest for him now. Finally, Snape lay down on the bed facing the wall, locked inside himself, trying to think of absolutely nothing. After a while, he slept.

Dumbledore left early in the afternoon to visit Moody and the Longbottoms in the hospital. He returned around supper time and went to his office to meditate.

McGonagall cornered Hagrid at supper. "How well did you know Professor Snape when he was a student here?"

"'Bout as well as most, which is t' say not well at all. Has he been in the Hall today, had somewhat t' eat?"

"I saw him earlier, he was fine."

"Was he eating?"

"I believe so. Now, tell me what you know."

"Ain't much to tell. Quiet boy, but deep. Calm on the surface, but a lot going on underneath. Never liked to give hisself away, that one."

"I don't recall his having many friends."

"He weren't the type. Didn't have the knack. I never knew of any but the one… Well, that's not my business. His feeding now, that were my business 'cause he weren't never in the best of health – nervous and all. Are you sure he was eating?"

McGonagall assured Hagrid that she'd seen Professor Snape consume food earlier that day, and then Hagrid returned to his hut for the evening, leaving McGonagall dissatisfied with the paucity of information she'd received and wondering who 'the one' was that Hagrid had mentioned.

_Monday, February 8, 1982_

Snape dragged himself out of bed shortly before seven o'clock on Monday morning, not wanting to face the day but seeing no way out of it. Throwing on his robes and not bothering even to run a comb through his hair, he slouched to the Great Hall. There he found the one thing powerful enough to lure him so far from his own rooms that day – coffee. He poured a cup and returned to the dungeons, just managing to avoid Hagrid, who came into the castle a moment later.

"Professor Snape been to breakfast yet?" Hagrid asked Flitwick.

"He was just here. Came in and left right away, I imagine."

"Did he eat?"

"I think he took a plate back with him. He may be working on something."

Hagrid grunted and sat down to his own breakfast, reasonably content that his charge was obeying the rules.

The first morning class was hell. Three Gryffindor students had departed over the weekend, and the cauldron groups had to be rearranged, with one student lacking a partner. The Gryffindors as a whole glared and muttered at Snape, too low for him to chastise them as they mixed their potions, but too loud to completely ignore. He was certain that everything they did wrong was done on purpose to stretch his patience to the breaking point. _They're hoping I'll strike one of them so they can get me fired._

"Don't tell me you didn't burn something in this cauldron. I smell smoke. I see soot. You may think I'm an idiot, but this idiot determines your grade."

"What possible resemblance could you see between Iceland moss and centipede scales? Perhaps that _Centraria Islandica_ begins with the same three letters? Because I assure you, the resemblance stops there."

"Put that damned wand down and read the instructions! You do know how to read?"

Then, in the second class, a fourth year Ravenclaw student poured octopus ink into yak bile, a combination they were taught to avoid in second year. No one reacted as putrid green smoke billowed through the classroom, until Snape slammed a Potions text against a desk with a resounding thud that caused students on the far side of the room to cover their ears and yelled, "Everyone with at least half a brain into the corridor! The rest of you can stay and raise the average intelligence of the class!"

They poured out of the room then, while Snape battled the fumes, ending up with a clean classroom and a hacking cough that continued for three weeks. "And what did you do to get into Ravenclaw," he asked the offender, "bribe the Hat?"

Hagrid came by as the class was ending, sniffing the air with a sensitive nose. "Go away!" Snape snapped. "This is none of your business!"

"I weren't going t' say nothing about the class. I'm here on official business seeing as I can't find no one's seen ya eat nothing since breakfast yesterday."

"Leave me alone!"

"I hear the grub in Azkaban is right tasty. Maybe ya should be eating it."

"Maybe I should! It would be an improvement!"

Hagrid grew suddenly timid. "Ya ought not t' let the house-elves hear ya say that. They can be a mite sensitive…"

"Bugger the house-elves!" And Snape stomped off down the corridor to his office, slamming the door behind him.

There was blessed silence for all of fifteen minutes, and then Hagrid lifted the door off its hinges. He'd brought a plate of food from the Great Hall which he placed on Snape's desk before he turned to fix the door. "You eat at least half of that, now," he said.

"Why? What's the point? What good will it do?"

"It might keep ya from giving up out of sheer weakness."

"And how is that a good thing! Did it ever occur to you how much happier I'd be now if I'd given up two months ago?"

"I ain't having the selfsame argument with ya every few weeks! Ya got any idea how boring that is?"

"Then why do you do it, you big oaf?"

"'Cause strange as it seems I might happen t' like you!"

"Well that just goes to show how much of an idiot you are, doesn't it!" Snape shouted at Hagrid.

"An' you ain't talking me out of it while y're sick."

"I'm not sick!"

"Now you sit down…"

"Get out of…"

"…and eat your lunch."

"…my office!"

"PUT THAT DOWN!"

Glass shattered against the inside of the door as Snape flung a jar at Hagrid, who sidestepped neatly. Another jar followed, and a beaker, shards of glass flying as each hit, though it was clear that the door rather than Hagrid was now the target. Hagrid watched calmly as item after item was sacrificed to the storm, interfering at last only when Snape turned to the desk to seize and throw the plate of food.

"No. No, lad. Give me that. Y're eating that, not throwing it."

Snape attacked Hagrid then, his fists doing no damage whatsoever, though after a moment Hagrid held his wrists to keep the younger man from hurting himself while Snape kicked and struggled. When he began to weaken, Hagrid steered him to the desk and sat him down in the chair. Snape laid his head on the desk, cushioned on his arms, panting from the exertion.

"Feel better?" Hagrid asked.

"I hate you."

"That's a step in the right direction. Now eat yer lunch."

Snape sat up and stared at the food for the space of several heartbeats. "I don't know why you waste your time on me when I treat you so badly," he said at last.

"I been watching this coming for some time. Ya were gonna blow. Better against me than against Professor McGonagall or a student 'cause ya can't hurt me."

Picking up the fork, Snape began to play with the food. When he finally put some of it into his mouth, Hagrid sat in one of the chairs and leaned back against the counter. "I don't think this is ever going to stop," Snape said. "It just keeps getting worse and worse."

"Ya been through bad times before. Ya got to weather it."

"But always before when things got bad I could at least say there was still something good and clean in the world. Something untouched by trouble. I can't do that anymore. She's gone. It's a cold, dark world, Hagrid."

"Thought she told ya not to stop fighting."

"Do you think that really was her?"

"Don' know. Tell me, what's the worst thing that's happening right now."

"The students. I hate the students. They're all out to make me miserable. They want me fired. I'd leave if I had anywhere to go."

"D' ya hate all of them?"

"Every single one."

"Colfax?"

"Algie? Well, no. Not Algie. He's pretty decent, and besides, he's wrapped up in Quidditch."

"What about the other Slytherin students?"

"On the whole, they're a good group."

"Any Hufflepuffs or Ravenclaws that just mind their own business and do their work?"

"You're right. It isn't all the students. It just feels like all the students."

"Yer problem is, ya got t' get out of here for a bit. I'm goin' t' ask Professor Dumbledore t' cancel yer classes for the afternoon, and me and you 're going somewhere."

"Where?"

"You think about it."

Hagrid left, and In the short time it took for him to return, Snape had changed into more muggle-friendly attire, but reality had also raised its ugly head. "I can't go anywhere," Snape said. when Hagrid walked into the office.

"Why not?"

"The moment I set foot outside Hogwarts, the Ministry types will be after me."

"Doubt it. I'm acting in the capacity of what ya might call a bodyguard. Ain't nobody going t' interfere. Now, where do ya want t' go?"

"I can't. I was warned not to leave Hogwarts. They'll come for me. They'll say I did something wrong while I was outside, and they'll come…" He was locking down again as his sense of danger rose.

Hagrid gripped Snape's arms and peered into his eyes. "Don't do that, lad. Don't shut everyone out. We won't go anywhere, and you just open up again."

"You can't read me."

"Don't have to. I can see the look on yer face. We won't leave Hogwarts, but we'll get out of this castle. Come on down to my place where it's friendlier like."

Snape bundled himself in a warm, hooded cloak and, after checking the door to be sure Hagrid had replaced it properly, went with him into the cold, white world outside. Snow hadn't fallen for a while, but it lay heavily around them, and the cold was like a vise clamping Snape's head. It was good that Hagrid's hut wasn't far. "It wasn't this cold Saturday for the Quidditch match," he commented.

"I suspect Professor Dumbledore had somewhat t' do with that," replied Hagrid, ushering Snape into the hut and then poking at the fire, laying on more wood and getting it blazing. "Yer rooms are mighty cold, too, ya know."

"I'm used to it."

"I think it's a drain, ya know, physically, t' have t' fight the cold when y're feeling poorly. A lot of what ails a man's brain comes from not taking care of the body. Ya ought t' have a good fire in there, and eat proper, and take care of yer appearance…"

That got a derisive snort from Snape. "Me? Appearance? I thought you were supposed to cheer me up."

"You ain't bad looking. Got an interesting face. Roman nose."

"Roman! Don't mock the afflicted. And my poor little head trembling under the weight of it."

Hagrid forged ahead. "Y're not tall, but y're not that short, and y're what they call slender…"

"Skinny. Look at me. Face and hair from my mother, nose and chin from my father, stature and teeth from poor nutrition – the worst of all possible worlds."

"Ever thought of cutting yer hair?"

A trace of sadness flitted across Snape's face. "No. Not now, for certain."

"I give up. Here, make yerself useful." Hagrid pulled out a huge tub of peas. "Help me shell these. The thestrals love the pods. I chop 'em up for winter feed."

They sat in comfortable silence for a while, shelling the peas. The simple, domestic task had a calming effect, and Snape felt some of the locks unfastening, the doors opening, releasing memories that hadn't surfaced in more than a year, overshadowed in recent months by more urgent things. Voices that reflected and expressed his feelings better than he ever could. _Everywhere people stare, each and every day. I can see them laugh at me… How can I even try? I can never win. Hearing them – seeing them – in the state I'm in… Why do the people I care about have to die?_

Hagrid was talking about thestrals and their winter habits, and Snape was listening, at least with half his mind. The other half was free floating, sorting through the mystery of sudden, unexpected death – of cars in ditches, strokes and heart attacks, burning buildings, guns on city streets, and curses on the lips of madmen. _Here I stand, head in hand, turn my face to the wall. If she's gone, I can't go on… But I have to go on. That's what she said. It is a consummation devoutly to be wished, but I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep._

The meditation did not, could not, ease the bitterness, but it gave Snape order, context, and lifted some of the depression. As Hagrid's soothing voice flowed around him, Snape began to feel he could go on, could face his enemies and detractors and show them he wasn't cowed. Maybe he could never win, but he would give them a fight for their money.

In sudden shock and realization, Snape looked at the pea pod in his hands. "Hagrid," he asked, "how do you get fresh peas in February?"

Peas in February were a trade secret, one that Hagrid steadfastly refused to divulge. "Y're feeling a bit more chipper, though," he said. "Didn't really have t' do anything, just get out of those stone walls."

The two trudged back up the hill shortly before supper, and Hagrid sent Snape to his rooms to tidy up before coming to the Hall. Hagrid went directly into the Hall, which was still mostly empty, the tables not yet laid for the meal. Dumbledore was already at the high table, waiting.

"How is he doing?" Dumbledore asked, "And where did you go?"

"No place. He got the heebie jeebies again and wouldn't leave the grounds. I meet that Scrimgeour fellow in Knockturn Alley, and I'm goin' t' spread him all over the walls. All my hard work falling to pieces. We went t' my place and shelled peas for the thestrals."

"A total change of atmosphere and occupation in an accepting environment. It might have done him good. What did you talk about?"

"I talked about thestrals. He didn't hardly do no talking at all. Didn't seem to be half listening. I sort o' got the feeling he was thinking things through. Kind o' melancholy, but not so brittle, if ya know what I mean."

"Open or closed?"

"Fair open, I think. I could see a ways past his eyes, bit like a normal person for once and…" McGonagall came into the Hall and to her seat next to Dumbledore, effectively changing the conversation.

A few minutes later Snape came into the Hall as well, looking much neater and more presentable than he had that morning. He spoke to several of the Slytherin students, ignored the looks from the other houses, and greeted his fellow teachers at the high table, paying particular attention to McGonagall.

"Excuse me, Professor, but are you by any chance going off grounds this evening? Maybe to town?"

"If by 'town' you mean London, no, I'm not. I'm going home to my family. But I'll be in a town if that can help you."

"Perhaps. The larger towns have bookstores open into the evening. I'd like to get a book, but I wouldn't want you to go out of your way."

"And what book would that be?"

"The complete works of William Shakespeare. I imagine it's kind of a standard thing that most book shops carry. It doesn't have to be anything fancy." Snape pulled a twenty-pound note from a pocket. "It wouldn't cost this much, I don't think"

McGonagall scrutinized the note. "Muggle money? How quaint. Well, if I'm near a shop, I'll check."

"Thank you."

The rest of the evening was peaceful. The students went off to the library or their dormitories, the commuting teachers left for home, and the onsite staff retired to the staffroom, where Flitwick eagerly requested – almost demanded – a game of cribbage.

"I think I've created a monster," Snape told him as he went to his own rooms for the board and cards. They played several games, after which Snape suggested leaving the board in the staffroom, which Flitwick considered an excellent idea.

Back in his own rooms for the rest of the evening, Snape first lit a fire in the fireplace and opened the door to his bedroom so that the heat could penetrate there as well. _Hagrid's right. It's one thing to forego a fire on a chilly night, and totally different when it gets this cold. I'm just helping defeat myself._

He rearranged the furniture in the bedroom as well, placing the bed with the headboard against the wall and extending into the room. It was awkward for moving around the room, but at least when he lay on his side he wouldn't be staring at a wall. _They're not going to crush me. I won't let them beat me down. I'm going to fight._

At ten he made his usual rounds, taking his time, and just before eleven he contrived to be outside under the moon and the stars. A voice, low but carrying in the cold, dry air, called his name. "Severus, are you waiting for me?" It was McGonagall, wrapped in a heavy cloak, coming up the hill from her weekly evening off.

"Should I be?" Snape asked.

It was the third day of the full moon, and there was plenty of light to see the little package that McGonagall held out to him. "I believe so," she said. "It was most interesting, seeing the inside of a muggle shop and counting muggle money. Here's what's left."

Snape thanked her profusely, took the money and the book, and hurried to his rooms. He already knew where he was going to start. He opened the book to Act I, Scene I of _Hamlet_.

It was hard reading, as Snape struggled through the archaic language trying to decipher the meanings of words like 'moiety', 'joint-labourer', and 'romage'. _I thought I was reasonably intelligent, but I'll need a dictionary to read this play._ Then he came to Hamlet's first soliloquy.

"O, that this too, too solid flesh would melt, thaw, and resolve itself into a dew! Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd his canon 'gainst self-slaughter… How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world… 'tis an unweeded garden that grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature possess it merely. That it should come to this… It is not, nor it cannot come to good; but break, my heart – for I must hold my tongue!"

_Weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable, and he wants to die – that's exactly how I feel right now. The world seems so empty and ugly. And I can't say what I want to say, even if my heart is breaking… How does this man who lived four hundred years ago know what I'm feeling right now?_

Even though it was quite late, Snape continued until the end of the first act, where he made another discovery. _This is a murder mystery! Is that really his father's ghost? Was his father really murdered by his uncle?_ It was late, and Snape had to go to bed to be able to teach his classes the next day, but he now had something to pull his thoughts out of black depression – a murder mystery with a character who understood how he felt.

The next morning, Snape took his book to breakfast, where he reread Act I. This was important, since in a murder mystery you needed to catch all the clues, and the language was so hard to understand. That was when he began to notice other things, the first being that people didn't seem to trust Hamlet. Polonius thought Hamlet was trying to seduce his daughter Ophelia, and so did her brother Laertes. And Hamlet talked too much, a strange, almost babbling way of talking when he was trying to hide something. _Is it possible that he's crazy, and there isn't really a ghost? The others saw it too, but it didn't talk to them. What if Hamlet goes after his uncle, but the uncle is really innocent?_

Potions classes were as bad as ever, and Snape had to snap at and admonish students in every session, but he felt no desire to strike anyone because somehow his priorities had shifted and the students had diminished in importance. The material was important, student understanding and performance were important, but their opinions were not. They irritated him, but not enough to wake the demon, and during the whole morning his voice never rose above a conversational tone.

At lunch he was once again deep into the mystery of Hamlet. _Is he really going crazy, or just pretending? And what kind of father is Polonius, to send spies to check on his son?_ Then, suddenly, another line touched Severus.

"-Denmark's a prison.

-Then is the world one.

-A goodly one, in which there are many confines, wards, and dungeons, Denmark being one o' the worst.

-We think not so, my lord.

-Why, then, 'tis none to you; for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so; to me it is a prison."

_All I have to do is substitute Hogwarts for Denmark, and I could say the same thing._

Then, Hamlet's plan – to have the players reenact the murder described by the ghost and watch his uncle's reaction. _Now maybe we'll find out if Claudius is really a murderer!_

"I take it," Dumbledore said to McGonagall, "that you got him the book he asked for?"

"It turned out to be quite easy. The girl in the shop knew exactly what it was and got it for me in a minute. I don't think I was five minutes in the shop."

"It certainly seems to be doing good. It has taken him completely out of himself. Such a complete transformation in twenty-four hours! I wonder which one he is reading."

"You could ask."

"Not yet. I do not wish to disturb the process by making him aware that he is being observed. Much better if he considers it a completely private experience. Maybe in a day or two."

Then of course, at supper, Snape hit the speech, Dumbledore's speech, the 'sleep of death' speech. 'Conscience does make cowards of us all. Dread makes us rather bear those ills we have than fly to others that we know not of.' _I can bear Hogwarts. It's that undiscovered country, the aurors and Azkaban, that keeps me a prisoner here._ It was by no means a new thought. He'd understood that since the day of his trial, but miraculously Shakespeare understood it, too. Understood it and expressed it in words far better than Snape's own.

Momentarily abandoning Hamlet, Snape skimmed the sonnets and found one – his sonnet: "When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast state, and trouble deaf Heaven with my bootless cries, and look upon myself, and curse my fate… Haply I think on thee… For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings, that then I scorn to change my state with kings."

Shakespeare was right. If Lily had thought him good enough to be her friend, he could hold that memory, like a shield, against the whole world.

Then, suddenly, Snape hated Hamlet. He didn't hate the play, he hated the character, and sought out Hagrid to explain to him why.

"He's not content with killing the man he thinks murdered his father, he wants to send him to hell. He has an opportunity, while his uncle's praying, but he won't do it because then his uncle might go to heaven, and Hamlet wants him damned. Do you understand the concept of damned, Hagrid?"

"Can't rightly say as I do."

"Well it's forever, it's for eternity. It's until the end of time. It's horrible. And then, he goes right to his mother's room, hears someone behind a curtain, thinks it's his uncle, and kills him without checking to see if he's right. He just saw his uncle praying – why did he think he was behind the curtain? And he doesn't care that he killed Polonius. Do you know what he says about this man he's just killed? He says, 'I'll lug the guts into the neighbour room.' The guts! He doesn't even remember he's human!"

"You goin' t' stop reading it, then?"

"Are you kidding! I want to find out if Hamlet gets what he deserves!"

The next morning at breakfast, Snape was so engrossed in Act IV that he scarcely heard the other teachers as they came into the Hall and said good morning. Hagrid, however, wouldn't let the rest of them bother Snape, for next to him was a plate of food, and though his eating was absent-minded, he was eating.

Hagrid moved away from the table as Snape stood, on his way now to his morning classes. "How's it going with that young rapscallion?"

"It's getting a lot more complex. The king really did kill Hamlet's father, but he seems sorry for it and trying to do good, but now that Polonius is dead he's plotting different ways to kill Hamlet. Ophelia's gone mad and drowned, and her brother's come back secretly from France to kill Hamlet. He and the king are working together. Hamlet's decided he has to stop fooling around, get down to business and kill the king. The only nice person is the queen, except Hamlet keeps saying such funny things that it's hard not to like him."

"What's he say?"

"That worms eat dead people, then we use the worms to catch fish, and we eat the fish, and thus a king may progress through the guts of a beggar. Then he tells the king that when a man and a woman get married they become one flesh, so now Hamlet says the king is his mother. The poor king doesn't know what to say when Hamlet tells him 'Goodbye, mother' in front of everybody. I'm beginning to like him again."

"I'll be interested in knowing how this one ends. You be sure t' tell me."

Two more Gryffindor students were gone from Wednesday's first session, which contained sixth years from all houses. As Snape moved their former cauldron partners, another Gryffindor student said to a housemate, "I guess they couldn't stand the stench of eating death anymore."

Snape turned slowly and quietly, his anger and bitterness now tightly controlled, his voice soft and caressing. "Have you ever considered, Gregson, the proper function of a maggot?" He stopped by the boy's station, leaning forward slightly, one hand on the desk, the other on the back of Gregson's chair. "We fat all creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots. Your body becomes a very busy place in the grave." His voice now just audible in the silent room, Snape whispered, "We don't eat death, Gregson. Death eats us."

Gregson was white as a sheet as Snape, rigidly calm, moved to the front of the class to begin the lesson. He noted that while the Slytherin students seemed highly amused, the Ravenclaw students were jotting down what he'd said. Hufflepuff students were checking their indexes for potions containing maggots, and the Gryffindors seemed shaken and angry. _Interesting how the personalities of the houses are reflected._ Snape never referred to the incident throughout the rest of the lesson, but it was the best behaved class he'd had all year.


	26. Chapter 26 – Snares

**Severus Snape: The Middle Years – Snares**

The ending of the play came so quickly that it took Snape by surprise. _All dead? They're all dead?_ Snape closed the book and stared at it, forgetting his lunch completely. _How many people died in this play? We're told about old king Hamlet, Ophelia, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern. We watch Polonius, Queen Gertrude, Laertes, King Claudius, and Hamlet die. And in the end, we never really know if Hamlet was crazy or not. But the whole play is about death, about murder, and maggots, and skulls dug out of graves, and ghosts, and committing suicide…_

Snape flipped back through the pages looking for one speech. He found it in scene two of the first act. _King Claudius tells Hamlet that his father's death is part of the natural order of things, that his father's father also died, and his father before that. It's just natural, so why grieve beyond the normal amount of time? And Hamlet says death is like sleeping. And the gravedigger jokes and sings while he's digging a grave because this is so normal to him. The soldiers go off to die for a worthless piece of land, and they consider it their duty. The only one who is really troubled by it is Claudius because he killed his brother for personal gain, and he still has the power, wealth, and woman that he killed for. Professor Dumbledore is fascinated by muggle attitudes toward death, and this play is full of it._

His afternoon classes were quiet, maybe because the students had heard about the morning session. It gave Snape time to think, and what he was thinking most about was Lily.

There were, Snape reasoned, two basic categories of death. Timely death of natural causes after a full life, and untimely death where life was cut short either by early natural causes or by artificial causes. Snape knew three people who'd died the first kind of death – both his grandfathers, and his muggle grandmother, Gra. Grieving for them had been gentle, with a sense of the circle of life turning as it should.

All the others, and there were so many others, had gone by violence. _How do you reconcile yourself to loss through malice?_ Hamlet and Laertes had sought revenge, and Snape could see how vengeance might close the wound and allow grief to heal. But what if all chance of vengeance were snatched away?

No vengeance was needed for his parents. His mother's death was tragic misjudgment, and his father had atoned by suicide. Nor did he any longer need vengeance for Nana – he already had it. It was his information that had sent Rosier and Wilkes to their deaths, a particularly satisfying piece of work.

What about Lily? The Dark Lord had killed her, Sirius Black had betrayed her, and James Potter had bartered her safety for sentiment. All had been punished, two with death and one with Azkaban, but the punishment had nothing to do with Snape and so the wound remained open. At no point had Snape been allowed vengeance, and so there was no justice.

Dumbledore, of course, was absolved of blame. He could not have forced James to make him secret-keeper. That fault rested with James, and James alone. Snape knew, too, that he himself was not at fault because he'd realized that the prophecy he'd heard referred to the pureblood auror's child, not to Lily's part-blood baby, and only the arrogant stupidity of the Dark Lord had led to her tragedy.

What then of Lily, the pain of whose death could never fully heal if vengeance was denied? _It's a pity after all that Black's in Azkaban. I might otherwise have gone after him._ It was a canker, an ulcer, a wound that could never heal.

What of Lily? She was no ghost, of that Snape was sure. Hamlet's father was a ghost because he was doomed to daily punishment and allowed to wander at night. Lily, naturally, would never be punished because she was a saint, an angel…

The second afternoon lesson ended, and Snape locked up quickly. He needed to find a ghost. The Baron spoke in monosyllables, and most of the others were unknowns to him. The only one he could recall being at all talkative was the Gryffindor ghost, Nearly Headless Nick. The question was, where to find him.

Students were heading in different directions, to the common room, to the entrance hall… Snape let them pass and then turned into the more labyrinthine passages of the dungeons, places where classes were no longer held. Out of sight, and hopefully out of hearing, of the stream of Slytherin students, Snape quietly called, "Baron? Baron, I was wondering if I might talk with you."

It was several minutes before the Baron appeared. He hovered before Snape, grim and gaunt, his clothing stained with silver gore. The air grew colder; Snape's breath hung in a misty cloud before him. "Baron, I don't mean to disturb you, but I have some questions about the spectral existence." The Baron nodded, so Snape continued. "May I ask you, or if that isn't convenient, would you know who I could ask?"

The Baron held up a hand to stop Snape from speaking or moving, and dissipated into the cold dungeon gloom. A moment later the Gryffindor ghost appeared. "The Baron said you needed me, what? I don't believe I've ever been summoned by the head of Slytherin house before."

"Summoned?" Snape wasn't sure what to say, but he certainly didn't want to offend a ghost. "I would never summon you – it's not my place. I asked the Baron for advice, and he thought you might be the best…"

"Well, that all right then, isn't it? You're the new one, aren't you? I'll say you're different from old Slughorn. What did you need? "

"I… well, sir, I… Excuse me, but I've only ever heard a nickname for you, and I don't know if it's respectful to use it."

The ghost beamed. "You always did have that aura of being partly in the other world. I am Sir Nicholas de Mimsy-Porpington. You may call me Sir Nicholas."

"Thank you. Sir Nicholas, why do some people become ghosts when they die?"

Sir Nicholas froze, as if he'd been ambushed. "That is a rather personal question," he said. "I'd hardly call it asking for advice."

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to pry."

The ghost relented. "Most witches and wizards are willing to accept death when it happens. They go on. Others choose not to go, usually because… well, because they're afraid. They cling to a shadow existence that stops short of death."

Snape's voice dropped to a nervous whisper. "Does that mean the Baron was afraid of dying, too?"

Sir Nicholas stared at him in surprise, then slowly began to smile. "I guess it does," he said.

That resolved the question of Lily's ghost. Lily would never be afraid to die. She was gone, and would never come back except in dreams. _She never knew I was thinking of her, never knew I was helping. For all I know, she died thinking I was her enemy. And now I'll never be able to explain it to her._ It was another bitter thought.

_What happens when people die? Is it different for wizards and muggles? Are we all the same when we die, or do we go each somewhere different? Is my muggle father with my witch mother? And what of Lily, who was both muggle and witch together? Or me, who am both and neither at the same time?_

Dumbledore studied death, so perhaps, probably, he would know. Snape made his way to the Great Hall for supper, and headed for Scrimgeour's vacant seat rather than his own. "May I?" he asked, and Dumbledore responded, "Of course."

The food was served, supper started, and Snape plunged in. "I've been reading Hamlet."

"A most excellent play. Not my favorite to watch, nor my favorite to read, but unequaled for its depth and philosophy."

"It's about death. You said you were interested in it because you were interested in muggle ideas about death."

"I did, because I am."

"What happens to us when we die?"

"I do not know. I have never been there myself to check. It is an undiscovered country…"

"From whose bourn no traveler returns. But after all these centuries, surely we know something."

"You did not ask me this question when your parents died."

"I was too young to realize its importance."

"Well, I fear I have no answer for you. There are many who believe this world is all there is, and that when we die, we are simply gone. Others believe that we remain as a spirit world, guiding and protecting those who are left. Still others believe that there is an all-encompassing cosmic force from which we have been separated, and that it is our goal to re-submerge ourselves into that force, our success and failure depending on how well we have lived our lives, so that if we are not successful, we may return in a new body to try again. Did your parents give you no religious upbringing?"

"Dad didn't believe in it. Neither did Mum."

"It is a pity. Many muggles go to great lengths to inculcate these ideas into their young children. In any case, another group believes that we have only one chance to do well in this world, after which we are sent on to the next stage. If we have performed correctly, the next stage is happiness. If we have performed ill, the next stage is punishment."

"Heaven and hell."

"Those names have been used."

"Which of all these views is right?"

"I do not know. I have never made the journey, and none who has, has ever returned to advise me. It is, empirically, an entirely open question. I did once speak to a woman whom the muggle healers believed to have died, but who was then revived."

"What did she say?"

"She described a contraption called, if I remember correctly, a roller-coaster. She said it was exactly the same feeling you have just as the car reaches the highest point and you know you are about to plunge down. She said to herself, 'Here we go…' and then there was nothing. She woke up to find the healers reviving her."

"That doesn't tell us anything."

"I believe that it tells us a great deal, but that it does not answer all of the question."

"You mean it doesn't address the question of what happens after death, only the moment of dying."

"Precisely. I find it comforting to think that the moment of death is devoid of fear. It is like riding a children's amusement ride – Here we go!"

"What leads up to it can be pretty terrible, though."

"Very true. Often when we think we are afraid of death, we are really afraid of its preamble, of all that comes before dying. The shorter the preamble is, the easier death is."

"You still haven't answered my question."

"It is because I do not know the answer."

And there it was. No answer to Snape's most pressing question because the answer didn't exist. _Where is Lily? Has she been reabsorbed into some cosmic force, or is she a distinct entity that can still communicate with me, or something else entirely?_

The Library turned out to be no help at all, since it had no works on religious philosophy. It was maddening. _No Shakespeare and no religion. What kind of a library is this?_

The next day was Thursday, and now Snape had a problem. Books. He desperately wanted books. But unlike the Shakespeare, these were books no one else could pick out for him because he himself didn't know what they were. He had to go to that great bookstore on Charing Cross road, climb to the proper floor, and browse.

"Would it be all right," Snape asked Dumbledore at lunch. "If I went to town this evening?"

"You do not need to ask. It is your night off."

Snape hesitated. "I was rather hoping that Hagrid might come with me."

"If you are going where I think you are going, Hagrid may create something of a stir. Still, it is good for people to have to adjust their preconceptions from time to time. I shall speak with Hagrid."

"London? Monday he was shaking like a leaf at the thought of going to London. What'd y' do?"

"I? I did nothing, Hagrid. He is doing what he did the day he left Voldemort and came here to you for help. He is letting an all-consuming priority override everything else, including fear. That boy's ability to focus is stunning. Then, it was concern for a friend. Now it is concern for the same friend from a somewhat different angle. When his parents died, he never opened up enough to be able to resolve these questions. It is good that he can do so now. So you will go with him?"

"Course I will. I ain't never been in a muggle bookstore. Might be interesting."

"I may make a small trip this evening as well," said Dumbledore with a gentle smile. "I have a sudden overwhelming urge to visit Stratford on Avon and lay flowers on the grave of William Shakespeare."

Snape and Hagrid went first to the Leaky Cauldron. Or rather, they passed outside the Leaky Cauldron, since Snape wanted to show Hagrid the route between it and the bookstore, apparating not always being possible where there were crowds of muggles. The two then made their way up Charing Cross Road, across Shaftesbury Avenue and into the bookstore.

Hagrid had some trouble maneuvering between the tables of books on the ground floor, and Snape wouldn't let him get into the lift. "That's all we need, to have the lift get stuck with you in it," so they took the stairs. Snape wanted history as well as religion, and spent a minute or two studying the board that told what was on each floor.

Hagrid wandered through rooms filled with thousands upon thousands of books while Snape browsed, and by the time Snape was ready to go, Hagrid had found a book on animal anatomy – one intended for veterinarians – and held it out to Snape. "D' ya think ya could get this one, too?"

The price of Hagrid's book was more than Snape's put together. Snape checked his money and stifled a sigh. "Yes, of course. Just let me decide which of these I want to buy right now." He settled on a volume entitled _Views of the Afterworld_ and a history of medieval England, and reshelved the others. He could get them later, after he'd had a chance to go to the bank.

They queued up to pay. "What's that little card?" Hagrid asked in something more than a whisper.

"It's a credit card. You use that to pay so that you don't have to carry money with you. Then you reimburse the credit card company."

"Why ain't you got one o' those?"

"You have to qualify for them. Have a job and income."

"You got a job."

"A job that pays you in pounds. Banks don't understand our currency."

"Oh," said Hagrid, but Snape could see he still didn't understand.

"Next time I come, I'll have to visit a bank and get more money. You can come, too, if you like."

"That'd be right interesting," said Hagrid.

As they left the bookstore, Snape was considering a completely new problem. His muggle money wasn't going to last forever, not if he kept buying books. Where was he going to get more?

"They said you'd left Hogwarts,"

Snape and Hagrid had gone into the Leaky Cauldron so that Hagrid could visit with some of his friends. Snape reasoned that since Hagrid had waited for him, it was only fair now that he wait for Hagrid, and a little butterbeer while he read at a corner table would be nice. And it would have been nice had not Alastor Moody made his presence known.

"Is it a crime now to leave Hogwarts?" Snape said without turning around.

"Just hit the statute book. Decree four-seven-eight-seven-dash-three. Concerns known felons on parole attempting to defeat justice by trying to live a normal life. You might look at me while we're talking, you know."

Snape turned to Moody and instantly looked away. The auror's face was more ravaged by scars than Snape could have imagined possible, and it was now dominated by a false eye, a rotating blue orb that darted its gaze haphazardly around the pub, seemingly independent of both its normal mate and the will of its owner. It was hideous.

"It's even worse from my side," Moody laughed hoarsely. "Come sit with me, Death Eater."

"I would prefer not," Snape replied, but Moody sprang to his feet and took Snape's arm before the words were finished.

"Can't look at your own handiwork? I thought Death Eaters had stronger stomachs than that. Sit with me."

Steered to an out-of-the-way table, Snape sat while Moody ordered two firewhiskies, but he would not look at Moody's face. Even the glimpse he'd had was too much.

"They just let me out of the hospital this morning, and what do I get as a welcome back gift?" Moody continued as the firewhiskies were placed in front of them. "The chance to express my appreciation to the little dungball that gave me my new eye. I hurried right over, hoping you'd drop in before slithering back north to hide behind Dumbledore." He paused. "That whisky's from me to you. Are you going to insult me by not drinking it?"

Reluctantly, Snape took the glass and raised it to his lips. Just as he took the first sip, Moody raised his own and said, "Death to Death Eaters!" tipping the glass back and taking the firewhisky in two gulps. "Two more," he signaled to the barkeep.

"I don't want any more," said Snape.

"You drink my whisky, or I'm going to describe in loving detail what it feels like to have a blasting spell hit you in the face, and to hold your own eye in your palm…"

Snape choked the rest of the whisky down and allowed Moody to put the second glass in his hand.

"Good boy. Now we get to discuss the vital matter of your breaking parole and the direness of the consequences."

"I'm not breaking parole. I have to stay under Dumbledore's authority. I still am. I still work for him. It didn't say I had to spend every minute at Hogwarts."

"That's a matter of opinion. Normally when they weigh a rat's opinion against a human being's, the rat loses. My opinion is you owe me an eye, several chunks of flesh, and a load of skin and blood."

"I didn't do it."

"Accessory before the fact. That's a crime, and it occurred after your sentencing. Pure justice would allow me to feed you to the dementors personally." He tapped Snape's glass. You'd better drink this quick, you've got a lot more coming, and we wouldn't want this to take all night."

"Why are you trying to get me drunk?"

Moody laughed again. "I want to watch you try to apparate when you're snockered. I've got a bet I can push you to a three-way splinch."

Snape set his glass down at once, but Moody covered his hand with a great paw. "It's not considered polite to refuse to drink with someone you nearly got killed."

A great bulk obscured the lantern light as Hagrid's shadow darkened the table. "Hullo there, Alastor," Hagrid said jovially. "Sorry t' interrupt yer fun, but I promised t' get this youngster back in time t' do his rounds. Ya put that drink down now, lad, and come with me."

Snape obeyed quickly, not glancing at Moody to see his reaction. Together he and Hagrid hurried out of the pub and into a little side street where, unobserved, they apparated back to Hogwarts.

"Do me a favor," Snape said to Hagrid after they were inside the gates and about to separate. "Don't tell Professor Dumbledore about Mr. Moody. There's already enough trouble."

"Suit yourself," said Hagrid, and went to his hut.

Friday was normal. Snape closed off all memory of the evening before and didn't think about Moody, the Leaky Cauldron, books, or bookstores all day. As he cleared up his classroom just before supper, however, he wondered which of his two books he should take to the Great Hall to read. He went to his office, took the books from the bag that he'd left on the desk and stood, one in each hand, contemplating the titles on the spines.

"Neither," said Dumbledore from the doorway.

"Why not, sir?" Snape asked, looking up and across the room towards him.

"One of the great benefits of a community meal is the opportunity to treat each other as a community. The staff spends its days isolated in little cubicles, cut off from one another, deprived of contact with their peers – supper is time to reconnect and socialize. Not to seek more isolation."

"I don't feel comfortable with them all, and I don't think they feel comfortable with me."

"You are relatively new. You had a different relationship with them a few years ago and are finding it hard to adjust. There have been distractions and unpleasantnesses that have interfered with the progress of forming collegial bonds, but that is not sufficient reason to abandon the attempt. It has been a stressful week. Come, join us at supper and leave these for later."

Snape put the books back on the desk and followed Dumbledore to the Great Hall. "How was London?" Dumbledore asked as they walked.

"It was all right. I didn't see much more than a bookstore, a street, and a tavern."

"No problems?"

After weighing the pros and cons of his options, Snape asked, "Have you been talking to Hagrid?"

"Hagrid was singularly reluctant to talk. This is usually not a good sign. I thought I might hear about it from you. Good evening, Minerva."

They'd reached the high table, and Dumbledore took his place, motioning Snape to the chair on his right while he greeted McGonagall on the left. Snape murmured, "Good evening, Professor McGonagall," but didn't really want to talk about what had happened in London where she would overhear, or Flitwick on his other side either.

The food appeared, and they filled their plates, then Dumbledore asked, "Did you find any books you wanted? Hagrid showed me the one you bought him. I was quite impressed."

"Hagrid got a book?" chimed in McGonagall. "Whatever for?"

"It is a medical book, Minerva, meant for animal healers. The language is highly technical, but the anatomical drawings and discussion of ailments are of great value. I will not describe them in detail as we are eating, but perhaps later."

"I got a history book and a book on the philosophy of death," said Snape. "I thought the history might give me some background on more of Shakespeare's plays. He writes about things I'm not familiar with."

"An excellent idea. It is always valuable to prepare oneself to understand as much as possible."

"There were other books I was interested in, but I need to go to the bank first."

"I trust Hagrid was not too much trouble in the bookstore."

"He did attract a lot of attention, but since he was looking for things in other parts of the store, it didn't bother me much. Then we went back to the Cauldron so he could see some of his friends." Snape had by now resolved how to handle this part, so he continued. "Alastor Moody was there."

"He is out of the hospital! That is wonderful news. I trust he is well on the way to complete recovery?"

"He seemed fit. He said he'd hoped to meet me there, and bought me a couple of drinks. I only had one of them, though, because we had to come back to Hogwarts."

"It sounds like he was expecting you."

"Well, it was my night off, and it was the area of town where I normally go."

Dumbledore then turned his attention to McGonagall while Snape discussed a levitation charm with Flitwick, but the important information had been passed in the guise of ordinary conversation – the aurors were watching Snape and knew when he left Hogwarts and where he was going.

I don't have to attract attention by going up to Dumbledore's office to tell him things. We could talk right in front of everyone else, and if we do it right, no one will even suspect. It was a useful tidbit of information, and Severus stored it in the back of his mind for later retrieval.

That evening after supper, mindful of Dumbledore's order (for such he took it to be) to socialize, Snape went to the staff room to play cribbage with Flitwick. It was McGonagall who referred back to the supper conversation.

"Muggle banks? You have money in a muggle bank? Wouldn't Gringotts be safer? You can keep anything safe there."

"Thirty-one, that's two for me. Yes, Professor, but in a muggle bank, the amount of money I have keeps getting larger. Fifteen-two, fifteen-four, and a pair is six."

"Larger? You mean they pay you to keep your money there?"

Flitwick was counting quickly. "Fifteen-two and three is five. And a pair in the crib for another two. And… I'll take the two you didn't count because you were paying too much attention to Minerva."

"What? Blast! If I get skunked this game, Professor, it'll be your fault."

"It's only a game. Tell me about this 'they pay you' business."

"It's called interest. They don't put your money in a vault. They loan it to other people or invest it, which is a kind of loan. They collect interest on the loans, and they pay part of it to you because the loan was made with your money. I hadn't been using the money for a while, so the total got bigger. Now I've been withdrawing some for books and the theater, so the total is going down. I either have to stop buying so many things, or find a way to make more muggle money."

"Where did you get that money?" asked Sprout.

"They sold my muggle grandmother's house when she died, and I was her only heir. Then I made some muggle money tutoring. I used to charge less if they paid me in pounds."

"Why would you want muggle money?"

"For things you can't buy with wizard money, like a subscription to the _Guardian_ or a ticket to the theater. Books."

"You can buy books at Flourish and Blotts."

"Not these books."

Sprout wasn't really interested in the kinds of books Severus bought, so she let the subject drop. Later, having lost the game but not having been skunked, Snape went to his rooms to decide which book to look at first. He chose the history.

It was a peculiar thing, but although Snape always started a nonfiction book at page one and tried dutifully to read to page two, page three, and so on, he always succumbed to the desire to skip around and jump back and forth. This evening was no exception. There seemed to be little profit in beaker people and Celtic migrations, so he started to browse. That was when he came across the Civil War.

Now Snape actually knew something about the Civil War, for there were some in the countryside around his home who still passed down the old divisions, remembering that mighty Liverpool had once been a Whig island in the Tory sea of Lancaster and lamenting the tragic death of King Charles, and who might have continued drinking to the king 'over the water' if any such were left alive.

To his surprise, however, this was quite a different civil war. This one was fought in the twelfth century between a king's daughter, Matilda, who claimed to be queen, and her cousin Stephen, who had himself crowned king. It was a time of lawlessness and wildly shifting fortunes, when for a time both armies were generaled by women, Stephen having been captured, but his wife refusing to surrender and finally forcing a prisoner exchange.

_I have those books!_ Snape thought, and dug into his belongings for things purchased the previous August, including the four volumes of murder mysteries he'd bought but never had a chance to really read except for the first. Now he started the second.

That first volume had not mentioned the civil war, but this one revolved around the siege of Shrewsbury and a murderer who tried to hide his victim among the scores of executed traitors after the town and castle fell.

There was from the beginning a character with whom Snape identified. In his early twenties, short, slender, dark haired and dark eyed, quick with his tongue but slow to reveal his true self, this character quickly became one of the murder suspects, and throughout the rest of the book the question of his guilt or innocence hung in the balance.

It was past midnight and halfway to dawn when Snape finished the book, marveling first that he'd read the whole thing in a few hours, and second that the medieval mind saw no problem in judging guilt and innocence by combat, where the better fighter was also deemed to be right.

Now there were two questions to be resolved, that of death and that of justice. Snape dragged himself to bed, but dozed only fitfully, his head filled with too many ideas for sleep.

February eased its way toward March, though the cold remained bitter. In the middle of the month, Maggie Pulcifer left Hogwarts. She was the Hufflepuff student whose uncle, as it turned out, had been a Death Eater. Sprout tried everything she could to shield the girl, but it was the steady drip of small things, like drops of water on a stone, that wore her down and drove her away. The two Ravenclaw students were still holding out, though they were visibly weakening, growing more quiet and isolated as the days passed.

Only Slytherin remained strong, protecting its own with fierce jealousy. Slytherin students who'd never been Death Eaters, even those whose families had been harmed by Death Eaters, found themselves targeted for teasing by the other houses because they defended their housemates. The house as a whole became stronger with adversity, its unity now a matter of pride and honor, its opinion of the other houses reduced to scorn and expressed in defiance.

Snape visited the common room on an almost daily basis to be sure everything there was going smoothly and to ensure no retaliation was being planned. Behind the safety of the Wall and guarded by the lake above them, the Slytherin students were able to relax, devising ways to amuse themselves or help each other despite being confined more than usual by the weather and their own fortress mentality. Many were helping their housemates with their studies, and Slytherin's academic record for the year was high.

There were no more trips to London for the rest of February. Snape just couldn't force himself to brave the outside world again, so while his house strengthened, it seemed he weakened. There were more books he wanted to get, but that priority had not risen to the point where it could override his nervousness.

_Views of the Afterworld_ proved to be a valuable resource in some ways, but not in others. It gave very deep, detailed explanations of the different religions' and philosophies' beliefs and attitudes about dying and what happened thereafter, but no instruction on which belief was most likely to be correct. Snape was left with the impression that each person was allowed to imagine the afterworld that was most comforting or useful at the moment, and that there was a presumption that simple belief caused the image to become real.

_That's silly. It's like belief in God. If God exists, will the fact that I don't believe in God change God at all? And if God doesn't exist, will the fact that I believe create God? Of course not. My personal belief or disbelief has no effect on God whatsoever, for the existence or nonexistence of God is outside of me._

This wasn't an easy thought, and Snape wished his parents had raised him with some religious training so that he could have a little background on the matter, but there was no help for it now. He had to find out on his own. The only way to do that was to try practicing some of the things in the book and see if he got a reaction from the universe.

He decided to start at the beginning with animism and ancestor worship. Animism was, in fact, rather easy, since it was the belief that everything had a spirit and was capable of conscious thought, including trees and rocks, and that somehow these spirits formed a vast network so that disruption in one part could cause turbulence in another part. Most magic was based on this interconnectedness as was, apparently, the whole concept of prayer, and Snape had certainly had enough experience with the magical aspects.

Ancestor worship was based on the idea that the dead didn't leave you. Their animating spirits continued to watch over and protect the living, and they deserved to be honored. _I'm not sure how much protection Dad could give, but Mum and Nana and Gra might be worth something._

The next thing was what to do about it. The ancient Romans had a lararium in their home for simple daily observance, and it seemed easy enough to do, so Snape looked around his small domain for a place. _Near the hearth. I don't cook here, though, so it isn't a proper hearth. On the other hand, I do have that cookbook, so if I started cooking it would be._ He set a small table next to the fireplace in his office and thought about what to put on it.

_Spirits of the ancestors. I might have pictures at home, but that would mean going home and hunting for them. Leaving Hogwarts… Spirits of the place. That would mean the Founders, I suppose, though it might mean unnamed spirits of the cliff, the lake, and the forest._ The small dishes for burning incense and food offerings were easy – his potions stores were full of them – but he needed to set them aside for special use, dedicate them as it were, for the lararium.

The biggest obstacle was the picture of his parents, and as February waned, Snape tried to work up the courage to leave again, to go to the bank, to buy books, and to go to his childhood home in Lancashire for photographs.

With the beginning of March, however, a new priority took over, a priority that gripped the whole school and electrified Slytherin house with determination. The first weekend in March was the Quidditch game against Ravenclaw, and Slytherin's chance to show the rest of the school their true mettle.

The first signs of trouble appeared a week before the Slytherin-Ravenclaw match, though at first no one realized that there was anything ominous about it. Notices appeared on the school bulletin boards asking the school to join Gryffindor house in dedicating the first Saturday of every month to the celebration of a different world culture. The first one, coincidentally on the day of the game, was to be a tribute to Mexico.

"Where did they get that idea?" Snape asked McGonagall at Saturday supper.

"They came up with it themselves. I was quite thrilled. I didn't think they paid any attention to history, geography, or culture. To tell the truth, I'd have to think a bit to find Mexico on a map, but they're tremendously wrapped up in it. They've even checked with the kitchens to see if the house-elves can serve Mexican food that day. The whole thing is delightful."

For the next couple of days, Gryffindor students lobbied the other houses for their support in the event, calling it a chance for them all just to get together and have fun. It was soon apparent that Ravenclaw had entered wholeheartedly into the spirit of the occasion, for by midweek many students had already begun sporting sombreros and serapes over their birettas and robes. Hufflepuff was for some reason a bit more reluctant to go along.

Wednesday evening there was a major meeting in the Slytherin common room where the whole question of supporting the world culture event was debated. The diehard Gryffindor haters insisted that nothing Gryffindor did could ever do less than harm Slytherin, while the more conciliatory saw the occasion as an opportunity to build bridges and relieve some of the tension. It was finally decided that each student could do as he or she saw fit. Several of the Slytherin students sent for costumes.

_Saturday, March 6, 1982 (3 days before the full moon)_

On the day of the Slytherin-Ravenclaw game the school was a riot of red, white, and green. The school was planning to march en masse to the Quidditch field flying the Mexican flag. It was, Snape thought as he returned to his rooms from breakfast, rather enjoyable to see the blaze of color and hear the magically produced strains of _'Cielito Lindo'_ played in the entrance hall. He was looking forward to the celebratory lunch, and went to the Great Hall at noon with pleasurable anticipation.

The Slytherin table was empty.

"Where are they, Severus?" Dumbledore asked as the rest of the Hall filled while Slytherin remained conspicuous by its absence.

"I don't know, sir," Snape replied. "Let me check in the common room. I know many of them were planning to take part."

He met Chris Tobin coming across the entrance hall. "Thank goodness, Professor," Chris said. "I was coming to get you. We need you right away."

The common room was packed and, as Snape came through the Wall, silent. Algie stood defiant in the speaker's area by the great fireplace, and rage radiated through the room.

"What's wrong?" Snape asked. "They're expecting you in the Hall."

Algie spoke up. "They're expecting us all right, so they can laugh at us. And they're expecting us to parade to the Quidditch field under the Mexican flag. Well they won't get us. Have you ever seen the Mexican flag, sir?"

Numbly Snape shook his head. From under his arm, Algie pulled a vibrant piece of red, white, and green bunting and spread it out for the head of Slytherin house to see. There, on the central white vertical stripe, was the picture of an eagle, sitting on a cactus, killing a snake.

The Ravenclaw eagle devouring the Slytherin snake.

Snape felt sick. "Where did you get this?" he asked.

"They're setting them up on the seventh floor. They're not planning to unfurl them until they're halfway down the hill, when it'll be too late for the teachers to stop it. They were hoping to have lots of Slytherins in the procession to make our house look divided and fragmented. I spied on them, and I grabbed this one, and I ran. I had six Gryffindors after me all the way to the Wall."

"Of course we can't join them," said Snape. "If you'll give me that, I have to tell Dumbledore."

Taking the colorful piece of cloth, Snape left the common room, but it was already too late. Gryffindor, knowing its moments numbered, had jumped the gun and started the procession. They were leaving the Hall and heading across the lawn to the hill by the time Snape reached the entrance hall.

"Well," said McGonagall, slipping in beside him. "Where are they all?"

For answer, Snape handed her the flag.

"Oh," said McGonagall. "My. We must find Albus at once."

"You find him, if you don't mind," said Snape. "I have a house to look after."

Slytherin came down the hill after all the other houses, flying the green serpent banner. As they marched, they chanted: "Sly-ther-IN means to WIN! Sly-ther-IN means to WIN!" They could not match Gryffindor and Ravenclaw together in numbers, but they managed to match them in volume. Many Hufflepuffs deserted the school flags to join Slytherin, since they were to play Ravenclaw in a month's time.

As Snape made his way to the staff stands, to sit with McGonagall and Sprout between him and Flitwick, Kettleburn appeared at his side. "Do they have a chance?" Kettleburn whispered anxiously.

"A chance? Can't you hear them? They want blood. I didn't do that, Professor Kettleburn, they did it. With a little help from Gryffindor and Ravenclaw. You bet the way you feel, but my house wants blood."

"That's all I need to know," said Kettleburn, and left to place his bets.

Flitwick leaned forward and spoke across the others. "I'm sorry, Severus. I didn't know. If it's any help, I think my students see it as purely a Quidditch prank. Not directed against you as a house but as a match opponent."

Dumbledore appeared then. "It is your call, Severus. We can remove the flags if you want, though your house did catch on to the plot before they were made the butt of the joke…"

Snape looked at the stands, where Slytherin green was now accented by Hufflepuff yellow, the roars of defiance growing louder by the second. "No, sir," he said. "Let the flags stay. They'll only help us now."

With a nod and a quiet smile, Dumbledore took his seat.

Madam Hooch started the game, and the Keepers sped to their hoops. A Ravenclaw Chaser got the Quaffle and headed across the pitch, two Slytherin Chasers behind her on either side. As she entered the scoring area in front of the left hoop, the Ravenclaw suddenly dove down, sideways, and up to the right hoop, the Quaffle scoring before the Slytherin Keeper could adjust his position. The Ravenclaw and Gryffindor stands erupted in cheers.

Slytherin took the Quaffle, and the Ravenclaw Chasers united in a Parkin's Pincer to force him away from the hoops. Instead he broke away from them to soar high into the air, and as the three Ravenclaw Chasers went after him, he flung the Quaffle left-handed down to a waiting team mate who was already in the scoring area. Slytherin went wild as their team scored ten points.

The next Ravenclaw who tried to score was distracted by a Bludger that flew across his path, directly in front of his nose, and Slytherin was able to take the Quaffle again. Algie slammed another Bludger in the direction of the Ravenclaw Keeper and it immediately turned on him in attack, Ravenclaw's own Beaters being halfway down the pitch at the time. With the Keeper unable to protect his hoops, Slytherin scored again.

Meanwhile, high above the pitch, the two Seekers hovered unmoving. Both teams needed a high-scoring game, and for the time being the Snitch was unimportant.

There was no doubt from the moment the game began that the Ravenclaw Chasers had the advantage. They'd been playing together for four years, and their coordination was spectacular. Slytherin had the advantage in Keeper and Beaters. Ravenclaw's ability to hold on to the Quaffle in attempt after attempt meant that Slytherin, while blocking throw after throw, began to fall behind. The score stood at 60-20 when the Slytherin Seeker suddenly dove downward, hurtling toward the ground in a death-defying plunge, the Ravenclaw Seeker right behind.

At the last moment, the Seeker pulled away, skimming the edge of the pitch and climbing back up into the air. It was a feint, there had been no Snitch, but while the other players were distracted, Slytherin had scored a goal.

Fifteen minutes later, a Bludger took out Ravenclaw's Keeper, and for the short while he needed to recover, Slytherin was able to rack up points, but Ravenclaw's greater team experience was taking its toll. Twice more, the Slytherin Seeker tried a Wronski Feint, and the third time the Ravenclaw Seeker scarcely paid him any attention. After two hours of intense play, with the stands on either side screaming "Sly-ther-IN!" and "Ra-ven-CLAW!" the score stood at 150-90, and Ravenclaw was looking for the Snitch.

Algie and Chris turned the Bludgers on the Ravenclaw Seeker now, while the Ravenclaw scoring attack turned into a fight to protect their Seeker. As Slytherin managed one more goal, the Slytherin Seeker streaked downwards in yet another Wronski Feint.

Only this time it wasn't a feint. This time the Snitch darted and zigzagged near the ground. By the time the Ravenclaw Seeker realized this and joined the hunt, it was too late. Slytherin had the Snitch and the game, 250-150, and Ravenclaw's chances for the Cup were destroyed.

Slytherin and Hufflepuff went wild, green banners and yellow streamers waving high over their heads. Students poured onto the pitch to lift the players into the air on their shoulders and carry them back up the hill for a victory celebration. Ravenclaw and Gryffindor hung back, disappointed and quiet.

In the teachers' box, Flitwick reached over to shake Snape's hand. "Well played! Well played!" he exclaimed. "I haven't seen such an exciting game in years! I won't say it was worth losing just to see it, because it wasn't, but it was a great game!"

The most heartfelt congratulations came from Kettleburn. "Great game, lad! Well played! You had me worried for a bit, but it ended up fine!"

"I take it you decided not to bet on Ravenclaw," Snape commented.

"I got better odds betting on Slytherin. And a two-hour game with that much action would've been worth losing a bet on. To get both was icing on the cake."

They were following the students up to the castle. "I'd like to be able to promise you an equally long and exciting game next time, but the truth is that we need to win, and the quicker the better."

"How do you figure that?"

"If we win, we'll be the only house with three victories, and the score totals won't matter. But if Gryffindor wins, we'll have to be at least forty points ahead of them in Quaffle scoring in order to beat their point total. Gryffindor plays like Ravenclaw, and you saw how hard it was for us to keep up with them. They'll want to win fast, too, so that they can get the Cup on scoring."

"Sounds like you're actually learning how this game is played."

"I can't afford to sound like an idiot when I'm talking to my own team, can I? Besides, this part is mathematics, and a lot easier to understand."

They reached the castle to find the Great Hall had been taken over for a Slytherin-Hufflepuff party. The decorations from the 'cultural celebration' remained, but new flags had been added. These were yellow, white, and green, and the central picture was of a snake killing an eagle.

"Are you going in?" Kettleburn asked.

"No. I'd just have to tell them to break up the party. I don't think they're supposed to be doing this in the Great Hall. As long as I don't go in, I can pretend I don't know about it."

McGonagall stopped next to them. "You know they shouldn't be carrying on like that in the Hall. What do you plan to do about it?"

"Not a thing. I haven't looked in, and I haven't seen it."

"Young man, you are shirking your duties!"

"Oh, come on, Professor. They've had so little to celebrate recently. Give them an hour."

"Professor Dumbledore," McGonagall called as Dumbledore came into the castle. "Professor Snape doesn't think it necessary to restrain his house's over-exuberant enthusiasm."

"Are they being over-enthusiastically exuberant, Minerva? That may be a matter of opinion. Perhaps we should discuss the parameters in my office."

"Albus! You know what you would do if this was Gryffindor!"

"Yes, Minerva. I should ignore it for a decent interval of time, then tell the students to relocate their festivities to another area. Their common room, for example. Surely you expect me to give Slytherin the same treatment."

McGonagall opened her mouth to respond, then closed it again. Around them the entrance hall was beginning to clear as Gryffindor and Ravenclaw students made their way upstairs to their houses. Since both Slytherin and Hufflepuff had their common rooms and dormitories in the lower areas, there would be no confrontations.

"It is now about forty-five minutes since the end of the game," Dumbledore went on, "most of which time was spent walking up the hill. If I disperse them now, and if Gryffindor wins the cup at the end of the year, Gryffindor will be granted no more time for public celebration than Slytherin is given now. Deal, Minerva?"

"You have a deal, Albus."

Dumbledore swept into the Great Hall in majesty, and those nearest the door quieted at once. "Slytherin house!" he called, and students shushed one another. "I have come to offer my congratulations, to the green and silver, for today Slytherin stands at the top, with two victories and no defeats…" The roar of cheering and banging on tables drowned him out for a moment, then they calmed down again. "It was a good game, well-played and hard-fought – I must say that I enjoyed watching every exciting minute of it." More cheers and pounding. "Now, however, there is another priority, and that is supper. The house-elves must have the hall cleared and cleaned and supper laid in an hour, and so I ask that you avail yourselves of those decorations you wish, and join your head of house in the Slytherin common room to continue your celebrations…"

Algie was up on a bench at once, still dressed in his Quidditch uniform. "Will you join us, too, Headmaster? Will you come to the common room and raise a glass to the Slytherin Quidditch team?"

"Master Colfax, I shall. And with the greatest pleasure."

That settled it. As the students poured from the hall back to their houses, Dumbledore took Snape's arm and walked with him, cheerfully waving to McGonagall as he disappeared down the steps into the dungeons.

Dumbledore didn't stay long in the Slytherin common room, but then no one expected him to. They showed him around with some pride, applauded when he toasted the team with pumpkin juice, and bade him good afternoon politely when he made his excuses and left, but the house as a whole was immensely pleased that he'd been there.

"Thank you for coming," Snape said as he walked with the headmaster back to the entrance hall. "It means a lot to them. Sometimes they feel ostracized."

"You must thank Master Colfax for inviting me. I could not have come otherwise. Remember that if Professor McGonagall challenges you."

"I will, sir. Thank you, sir."

By supper time the house was reasonably calm again, and made their way in to supper in a fairly normal manner, without unnecessary grandstanding. It appeared Gryffindor and Ravenclaw may have been prepared for a confrontation, but as it never reached that point, supper was peaceful.

Nothing else of moment happened all of March except for a brief flurry of excitement four days after the Quidditch match when a rumor spread through the school that the world was about to end. Someone received word from outside that on March 10 all of the planets would line up on the same side of the sun, and the resulting gravitational pull would tear the earth apart. Snape, with his interest in astronomy, patiently explained to his nervous students gathered in the common room that this had occurred many times in the past with no ill effects, and they were mollified. It was fun, however, to watch the rest of the school run around in panic.

Then the Easter break was upon them and, as at Christmas, the great majority of the students were leaving to spend a couple of weeks at home with their families. "Where will you go for the break, Severus?" Dumbledore asked at breakfast on the first Sunday of the break when the students were all departing for the train.

"Here. I'm not setting foot outside of Hogwarts."

"Do you wish my opinion?" Since Snape didn't reply, Dumbledore went on. "I think you should take advantage of the free time to get some things accomplished. You wanted to go to the bank, for example, or buy more books."

"And let them throw me in Azkaban for violating parole? No, I think not."

"You know, I have always been curious as to the interior of a muggle bank. I would take it as a great favor if you would allow me to see one."

"I suppose if I'm going to have a nursemaid, I may as well get top value for my money."

"My thoughts exactly."

Dumbledore did not pass muster the next day as they prepared to go to London.

"No. Absolutely not. You're not wearing a striped jacket with plaid trousers. Don't you have anything that's just black, or brown, or dark blue?"

The trousers became white, and the jacket navy blue, with brown shoes. Snape held his head in his hands. "You look like you just walked off a yacht on the valet's day off."

"I really do not understand why you are so particular."

"I'm going to a bank to do business. You already look odd enough with the long white hair and beard. In conservative clothing you are merely eccentric. In anything else, you look like a nut case."

The entire suit became navy blue with black shoes and a modest tam o'shanter. "I'll take it," Snape said before Dumbledore could change into anything else.

They apparated into the west end near Snape's bank. Instead of just making a withdrawal, Snape asked to speak to a bank officer about his options. They looked at the relative advantages of long-term time deposits while Dumbledore wandered around examining everything.

"Do you think you might get your grandfather to sit down?" the bank officer said after a while, as she helped Snape fill out forms for having the interest from a long-term deposit transferred to his normal savings account. "I think he's making the other customers nervous."

Dumbledore was corralled and seated next to Snape as the paperwork was completed. Snape was then offered a little plastic card. "What's this?" he asked.

"It's for the cash machine outside. You put the card in, enter your personal secret number, and retrieve the cash you want. It operates twenty-four hours a day, and you don't have to come into the bank to get money. The amount is automatically deducted from your account."

Snape tried the machine instead of withdrawing the money inside. It worked beautifully and could be used wherever his bank had a cash machine. He took his money, thanked the bank officer, and he and Dumbledore headed towards Charing Cross Road. They ran right into Moody before they reached the end of Leicester Square.

"Fancy seeing you here!" Moody exclaimed. "Can't hardly turn around but what I run into you in London. Morning, Albus. What brings you to town?"

"Business," replied Dumbledore. "I see you knew exactly where to find us."

"Me? Chance encounter, purely chance encounter. You don't think I lie in wait stalking people, do you?"

"The thought had crossed my mind. We are now on our way to a bookstore. Are you planning to accompany us?"

"Books? I love books! Lead me to a book, and I'll follow like a thirsty horse to water. I'd be honored to accompany you."

It wasn't comfortable for Snape to walk up Charing Cross Road with Alastor Moody trailing him, but Dumbledore and Moody chatted along the way like the old friends that they were, and left Snape alone. When they got to the bookstore, Dumbledore demurred. "I know I promised to stay with you, but if Alastor will be my companion I think I should enjoy myself more in the Leaky Cauldron." It was impossible for Moody to refuse, and so Snape was left unmolested in the bookstore.

He spent two hours there, haunting the sections on religion, philosophy, history, and literature, trying to decide. He ended up with a book of European myths and legends, another of myths from around the world, a classic work on the first emperors of Rome, and the most recent of the series of murder mysteries set in the twelfth century. It was a most satisfactory day's work.

No one bothered Snape on his way to the Leaky Cauldron, where he found Dumbledore and Moody deep in a debate about the Salem witchcraft trials. Snape slipped into a chair at the table with them.

"Did you find anything?" Dumbledore asked.

"Several things. It was a very profitable day. Isn't it lunchtime? Maybe we could eat here?"

"That is an excellent idea, Severus. We shall make a whole day of it," Dumbledore replied, but Moody rose to say good-bye. Though both were polite, neither Snape nor Dumbledore was truly sorry to see him leave.

"I did," said Dumbledore as they ordered a bite to eat, "get Alastor to promise that neither he nor any other auror would hound you if you came to London. I think you should be reasonably safe from here on in."

"Thank you, sir," said Snape

On Thursday, Snape got a message by owl. It was a rather tattered looking owl, something like those used by a public messenger service, and it didn't wait for a response. Snape watched it flap its way out of the Hall, then opened his letter. It was short and succinct.

_Don't get angry. I tried everyone. Some can't help – some won't. I got to find a job. I have a drink at the Pig's Snout when I got a sickle. Some days I don't got a sickle. Please help. M. Bodkin._

It took a moment for Snape to remember Marcellus Bodkin, a quiet, untalented wizard who'd always had trouble getting jobs, and who never rose above supply clerk in the clinic. Snape didn't think he'd even attended Hogwarts; he certainly never seemed well educated. A harmless mouse of a man that no one ever noticed.

The Pig's Snout was a lower class pub on the south side of the Thames, frequented by working class wizards. Snape knew where it was, though he'd never been inside. _I guess it can't hurt to talk, and buy him a drink. I don't know how he thinks I can help._

The problem was Moody. He couldn't lead the aurors to someone like Bodkin. And yet Moody 'd promised Dumbledore not to trail him anymore. Snape thought maybe this was a time to test Moody's promise.

It was the break, so there were no students or classes. That evening it was an easy matter to go into Hogsmeade as if for some shopping or relaxation, and from there to apparate to his usual London haunts. Snape wandered around Leicester Square for a while, but saw no one who looked like a wizard, much less an auror. Just to be on the safe side, he popped over to a secluded part of Hyde Park, checked that he wasn't followed, then apparated across the river.

The Pig's Snout was tucked into the end of an alley. Snape entered a smoke-filled room, looked around and saw Bodkin, and walked over to his table, seating himself where he could watch the door.

"It was good of you to come, sir," Bodkin said, profuse in his thanks when Snape bought drinks for them both. "Truth to tell, sir, I been down on my luck. Them as has jobs open, they want to know what a man's done with himself the last few years, and I can't tell 'em. I heard you got a position up there in that school, and I thought it's a big place and might need someone who can do a day's hard work."

"It's possible. Why don't you come up and ask?"

"Me? Go way up there where I'd stick out like a sore thumb and no guarantee they'd even talk to me? Might just as well walk into the Ministry and ask for a ticket to Azkaban. You, now, you could pave the way, like."

"I really don't have that kind of influence up there. I'm very much the junior teacher and in need of help myself. The only thing I could do would be to tell Dumbledore about you and see what he says."

"That's a sight more 'n most would do, sir. I'd be in your debt for that much."

They talked a few minutes longer, and it turned out Bodkin had a family, a wife and two children right there in Southwark, then Snape felt he should go. No one had entered the pub after him.

On the street everything was quiet in the fading evening light. No one noticed as Snape ducked into another alley to apparate back to Leicester Square, and no one noticed as he disapparated from there to Hogsmeade.

They came out of the shadows as he walked past the Hog's Head on his way to the gate, an auror squad with wands drawn, no telltale sounds of apparation to warn Snape of their approach. Snape held his hands up immediately, to show he held no wand and didn't intend to fight. They removed his wand from his sleeve and bound his wrists.

"Severus Snape," one of them said, "you're under arrest for violating your parole by continuing to have contact with Death Eaters without permission of the Ministry."

"Please let me inform…"

"Shut up, Death Eater," and with that they apparated back to London and the Ministry.

Once again Snape was pulled through the Ministry atrium and down into the lower levels while witches and wizards turned to stare. This time he was taken directly into a cell block and locked in a cage, a box of metal bars with only one solid wall and no chance for privacy, its only furniture a chair and a cot.

After half an hour's wait, Moody arrived with three other men and a witch stenographer. He threw a black and white striped shirt and trousers onto the chair, and a pair of slippers next to them – a convict's garb. "Take off your clothes and put those on. We'll record identifying marks and then you're going on a little trip."

"No," Snape said flatly, trying not to look at the smug witch with her parchment and quill.

"No? Suit yourself." The blue eye began to whirl in Moody's socket. "About five foot seven, and I'd say well under nine stone. Black hair, dark eyes, Dark Mark branded into left arm and extensive scarring on the back, looks like a whip. Who did that, Death Eater, Voldemort when he was feeling frisky? Mole on the left shoulder…"

Snape stood rigidly still as Moody described him for the others, his face burning with shame. Then the stenographer left. "Now," Moody continued, "take off your clothes and put those on. Unless you'd rather have me put you in a full body bind and we get to do it for you." Defeated, Snape slowly began to unbutton his jacket.

When he was dressed in the prison clothing, they took his own clothes away. Snape lay down on the cot and stared blankly at the wall through the bars on his cage. He could hear the voices in the cell block and knew they were looking for a judge to sign some papers. From time to time a new voice would intrude.

"Alastor, I need you to release this to my department. It's that muggle tooth-healer's chair that Quimbly had set up in his cellar. The one he was using to… Oh, got another one, did you?"

"You're working late tonight, Arthur. Yeah, that's one we're shipping north as soon as we can find a judge. What's the hurry about this chair?"

"Just need to clear things off my desk. I've got the papers right here to sign. And there, too, if you don't mind. Thank you, Alastor. Try not to work too hard."

Then Snape's cell door opened and Moody and his men came in. "You've got a meeting with a judge," Moody said. "On your feet. He's late for supper and wants to get this over with as soon as possible."

The slippers were a little too big, forcing Snape to shuffle as he followed Moody out of the cell block, down a little corridor, and into an office. He felt like he was in Azkaban already.

The judge looked up as they entered. He was old and gray-haired, and looked bored. "I don't see why this can't wait until morning, Alastor. Let him stew a while in a cell. These Death Eaters don't deserve any better. Why they keep thinking that 'lord' of theirs is going to come back, I don't know. Well, as long as I'm here, give me the papers."

"I wouldn't have bothered you, your Honor, but there's a shipment going up to Azkaban just after midnight, and we wanted to get this over with."

"All right, all right. Let's see… trial… verdict… sentencing… probation… conspiracy… Not too bright, this one. Had a free ride at Hogwarts, then goes off consorting… Well, where's the pen?" He was dipping the quill into the ink when the office door opened.

"Good evening, Carter, Alastor, gentlemen," said a calm, dignified voice. "This is a bit late for you, isn't it, Carter?"

"Judge Wigglestaff was just helping us clear out some last minute business, your Honor," said Moody quickly.

"Good evening to you, Amelia," said the old judge. "Looks like you're working late as well."

"I've got a heavy docket. Who's this?" Judge Bones didn't look at Snape, but took the unsigned papers from the desk in front of Judge Wigglestaff. "Case looks familiar. I think I had it on arraignment. You'd think they'd have brains enough to stay out of trouble. I'll take this Carter. My unfinished business anyway. You go home. I'll wager Ermentrude is waiting supper for you."

Judge Wigglestaff was only too happy to wash his hands of the whole business as Judge Bones took his place at the desk. She looked sharply at Snape. "Did you know the terms of your parole forbade you to have contact with any former Death Eaters?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Why did you?"

"He asked for help. He needs a job. He was just a clerk at the clinic, and he has to support his family."

"That's not what he says."

"Ma'am?"

"I have here a statement that you were discussing the possible return of Lord Voldemort and the…"

"No, ma'am, that's not true." Realization was beginning to dawn, and Snape knew the trap was already sprung.

"We have here," said the judge, "a case of he said, he said. I can understand why you might lie about the conversation to protect yourself, but can you think of a reason why Mr. Bodkin would incriminate himself so deeply just because of you? It seems much more logical that he's telling the truth. You understand that unless you have another witness to back you up, I shall have to sign these papers? Do you have anything to say?"

Snape wracked his brain trying to think of something. "No, ma'am," he said at last, feeling as if the world had come to an end. "Could you let Professor Dumbledore know? I don't want him to think I ran away or anything."

"I am sure, since you were arrested at Hogwarts, that Professor Dumbledore already knows."

Snape looked up. "I was arrested in Hogsmeade, so I'm not sure if he knows or not."

"This says Hogwarts."

"No, ma'am. I didn't even get close to the gates. They picked me up right after I apparated in."

Judge Bones regarded Moody carefully. "Does this arrest report contain inaccuracies, Alastor? The prisoner says he was in Hogsmeade."

"I wasn't present, your Honor. I can check with the arresting aurors."

"Mr. Snape, how soon after you arrived in Hogsmeade did the arresting aurors get there?"

"I think they were already there, ma'am. I didn't hear them apparate in."

Judge Bones pushed the report away and put the quill down. "Alastor Moody," she said icily, "I have the greatest respect for your work as an auror, and sympathize with the fact that you have been through a very traumatic time, but this is taking things too far. I am going to give you a choice. First, we can investigate this matter, interviewing other patrons in the tavern and talking to witnesses in Hogsmeade who may have seen the arrest. If everything is as you say, he goes to Azkaban, but if I find one hint of entrapment I'll have you up on criminal charges. Or you can drop the matter, and I write up an injunction forbidding you to speak to this young man or come near him for the next ninety days, or even to discuss his case with other aurors. Which shall it be?"

Moody turned positively purple and fizzed like a steam engine, but in the end said, "I'll drop the charge, your Honor."

"Very wise. Bring Mr. Snape's belongings. I believe he should be getting back to Hogwarts."

Snape changed back into his own clothes in the privacy of the office, then went with Judge Bones back up to the atrium area. Professor Dumbledore was there waiting for him.

"You need to keep a leash on this one, Albus," Judge Bones said as they shook hands in greeting. "He's a wanderer."

"I owe you an immense debt, Amelia," Dumbledore replied. "You and Arthur both. We had no idea there was anything wrong until I got Arthur's message he was here pending transport. It was good of you to come back in tonight just for this. I am yours to command henceforth."

Back in Hogwarts, Dumbledore ordered Snape up to his office. "Of all the foolish, irresponsible… Severus, how could you go off like that to meet with another former Death Eater? – Here, have a glass of firewhisky and sit by the fire a bit. – Do you not understand that they will use any excuse…? – Have you eaten? You must be tired and hungry…"

After an hour of being alternately scolded and coddled, Snape went to his own rooms for the night, still shaking when he thought of how close he'd come to losing everything because he'd felt sorry for someone.


	27. Chapter 27 – Of God and Quidditch

**Severus Snape: The Middle Years – Of God and Quidditch**

_Friday, April 9, 1982 (the day after the full moon)_

Snape went to breakfast as usual the next day, and no one spoke to him of the night before because, as he found out, Dumbledore had told none of them of it. That suited Snape well, for he didn't wish to speak of it either. Instead he exchanged pleasantries, then took his breakfast to his office with the excuse that he was working on something.

Which was only partly true. The fact of the matter was that he was working out something and needed quiet and undisturbed calm.

_Why didn't I resist them? They were wrong, they were trying to trap me. Why did I go along so passively, like a sheep?_ The answer, when it came, was deceptively simple. _I obeyed them because I knew I'd broken the law. I wasn't supposed to speak to Death Eaters, I did, and I knew I was being punished for my own error. If it hadn't been for Judge Bones, I'd be kicking myself in Azkaban now for what a fool I'd been to talk to Bodkin. But if I'd fought back, maybe their plot would have been uncovered even without Judge Bones._

That thought brought iron resolve for all of twenty minutes, then gave way to one more sobering. _They took me because I didn't follow the rules. They were able to take me because I met them halfway. So predictable. Just like Sirius Black, the candy, and the green hair. Sirius got green hair because he stole and ate another student's candy. I got arrested because I broke the rule about talking to Death Eaters. The plot wouldn't have worked if I hadn't stepped into it._

Rules, he realized, weren't there to control you. They were there to protect you. _If I hadn't broken the rule, if I'd been arrested on a one hundred percent fabrication, I'd have had the moral strength to fight them from the beginning. When you break the rules, you forfeit the protection._ He thought of the New Year's resolutions that had lain unnoticed since January. This fell into the 'Be Prepared' category. Know what the rules are, then never break them. There was a corollary: Unless you are prepared to accept the consequences.

Another problem was that of justice. _Was I being justly punished for having peached on my mates_ – some how at this point Severus always heard his father's voice – _by having someone peach on me?_

Punished by whom? Probably not by Bodkin, who almost certainly did not know that Snape had given twenty-seven names to the Ministry. Not by Moody either, for Moody had wanted the names and wouldn't punish Snape for having given them. The question of just punishment thus presupposed an overarching source of justice – the existence of God. Snape wasn't sure he wanted to go this far, certainly not yet.

There was always the possibility of the universe expressing its sense of irony, which in its turn assumed that the universe was a conscious entity.

Luckily, Snape was able to sidestep the question entirely by remembering that the two instances were not analogous, for he had given names of people for something they had actually done – been members of the Death Eaters – whereas Bodkin had accused him of something he had not done – plan the return of the Dark Lord.

The problem of justice was temporarily shelved.

Lunch loomed, and the question of what to do. Break no rules. Snape searched for the areas in his mind that contained dangerous spontaneity and locked them behind a brand new door. Every word, every action, should be weighed. Snape went to the Great Hall.

"Ah, Severus!" Flitwick greeted him. "Up for a game or two?"

A heartbeat, the tiniest of pauses. "I think so. I'm in the middle of something, but a game or two might clear the brain."

Sprout joined them. "As long as I have a moment to go over the late spring plantings. There's a lot we could grow that you wouldn't have to order."

Another heartbeat as timetables clicked and resolved. "Would later this afternoon be all right? It would give me time to dig out my lists of what's needed for each class, and when it comes in the year."

"Severus, have you managed to look at that book on Greek myths? I have encountered a question or two…"

Black eyes met blue ones, and Dumbledore recoiled, not exactly in shock, but in consternation, the gentle smile still on his face. "Not yet, Headmaster, but I hope to soon. I shall let you know when I have," Snape said, the normal-sounding words not relieving Dumbledore's worry at all.

Dumbledore went to London to attend the wizards' council, and returned with news of the sentencing of the Lestranges and Barty Crouch. He discussed it only briefly with Snape.

"It is disturbing that Bellatrix is so positive that Moriarty has not been destroyed. Her faith in his return is unshakable. Can you think of any reason why that might be so?"

_Does he want me to reveal that I know more about it than I've told them? But I don't know anything_. "No, Headmaster. I have no idea why she would think that."

"I felt particularly sorry for Barty. The dementors have frightened him badly, and I believe he would have done or said anything to be taken out of their hands. His father was adamant, though. Well, that is all."

_Another warning about dementors. A reminder of what's waiting outside. Does he want to keep me frightened as well, bound to him?_ "Thank you, sir. I appreciate your sharing this with me." Severus returned to his own office and Dumbledore went to talk to Hagrid.

Hagrid poured tea while Dumbledore nibbled on something that was supposed to resemble a scone. "The problem is, I am not certain if this is ultimately a good thing or a bad thing," Dumbledore mused. "If he is exploring new ways to protect himself that he will eventually have more control over and can fine tune to adapt to circumstances, then all may be well. If he has merely found a new way to hide, it could be disastrous. I wish I could get inside his mind."

"All I can say is, if he's goin' back t' where he was when he were thirteen, I'll be a mite disappointed. One thing t' hold 'em when they're small and kicking, but he's growed now and his tantrums are more focused."

"Exactly the point," said Dumbledore. "The tighter he closes himself off, the greater the explosion when it breaks through. It is not healthy."

"What're you doing about it?"

"Nothing at the moment. Interference may be counterproductive. If he were a thestral, Hagrid, what would you do?"

"Get him used t' what makes him skittish. Start with it far away and not a threat, then slowly move it closer 'til he sees it as a normal part of the landscape. Let him examine it, sniff it, play with it if he wants."

"That would work very well if he were skittish about an object, but I doubt Alastor or Rufus would let themselves be a normal part of any landscape, much less be sniffed."

"Sometimes it helps if they've a chance just t' run free for a bit, not penned-up like."

"He won't leave the grounds. I have to work him back up to that."

"Begging your pardon, Professor, but it ain't really his body that's penned up. It's his brain. He needs to open them doors and let fresh air in."

"The students return this weekend. Are you planning anything for your last few days of rest?" McGonagall's question was a general one, addressed to the resident staff as a whole. The response was restrained. Sprout was reorganizing greenhouse three, and Flitwick just wanted to rest. "What about you?" McGonagall asked Snape.

_To whom might you pass information about my comings and goings?_ "I still haven't finished the books I bought last week. I'll probably spend the time quietly reading."

As the teachers finished breakfast and separated, Dumbledore joined Snape. "It might be a good idea to take advantage of the opportunity. Is there nothing that needs doing outside? No place you would like to go?"

_Why do you want me off the grounds? To be set up for arrest like last week?_ "No, sir. I really would prefer to stay here." Snape headed for the security of the dungeons, still pondering Dumbledore's motives. _Every time something happens, it makes me more dependent on him. Is that what he wants, for me to be tied to Hogwarts forever? Or is he honestly concerned about me?_

Stepping into the office, however, he noticed the unfinished lararium. Was it worth continuing the experiment to see if it revealed anything about death and the existence of an afterworld? Suddenly Snape remembered that there was something he wanted outside of Hogwarts. He hurried back up to the entrance hall. Dumbledore was still there, talking to Filch.

When the headmaster was free, and Filch gone upstairs, Snape made his request. "There is a place I want to go, but… do you think I might take Hagrid with me?"

"That would be up to Hagrid. I have no objection. I hope you have a pleasant day."

Snape waited to see if Dumbledore would ask where he was going, but the headmaster simply went upstairs. It was a good sign. Snape left the castle and went down to Hagrid's hut.

Snape was still nervous about being tailed, so he and Hagrid apparated first to London, then side by side to Pendle Hill. From the top of the great tor they surveyed the rolling countryside. "Moor country," Hagrid said. "I didn't know ya came from moor country. Always thought of ya as kind of a city boy somehow."

"Factory town," said Snape. "Mill and mine." He took Hagrid to the east side of the hill and pointed out a spot in the distance. "We're going there. Shouldn't be anyone around at this time of the morning. They'll mostly be working or at market."

The two approached the quiet, deserted street and the small house at the end. A couple of other houses still had boarded-up windows, but others that had been empty were now inhabited again. Snape released the locking spells and opened the door. Hagrid had some trouble squeezing through, but managed it. The house seemed tiny with Hagrid in it. The groundskeeper filled the whole living room.

"Ya got a lot of books," Hagrid said as Snape moved furniture to give him space to pass.

"I hope to have more. I plan to line this other wall with bookcases, too. Can I get you some tea? There's nothing to eat, I'm afraid."

"Tea 'd be nice." Hagrid followed Snape to the kitchen watching with interest the whole business of lighting coal in a grate. "Whyn't ya just magic it?"

It was a logical question, and Hagrid already knew about his parents. "Dad never liked the magic part of it, and Mum wouldn't use magic in the house. It wouldn't feel right if I did." It took a moment for the water to run clear after sitting so long in the pipes, but soon a kettle was on the grate and shortly thereafter they had tea. Snape did use magic to make one of the chairs sturdy enough for Hagrid to sit on, then excused himself to go upstairs.

He returned a few minutes later with a slim album of photographs. "We didn't have many. These were the last Dad ever had taken. We went to Blackpool when I was nine."

Hagrid examined the pictures, comparing Tobias's and Eileen's faces with Snape's own. "Ya do favor both of them, don't ya? Yer dad had a craggier face, though, and thicker hair. Are all muggle pictures, ya know, quiet?"

"Muggles don't have moving photographs. Not yet, anyway. I'll be upstairs for a bit. There's one or two other things I want to find, but the photos were the most important."

Most of the things Snape wanted were in boxes in the storeroom. He had a photo each of Gra and Nana in small frames. For his great-grandfather, he took a little voodoo doll. One thing that troubled him was that he'd never had a picture of Lily, but while looking for Wensley Snape's dark magic artifacts, he found his old schoolbooks. Flipping through them quickly he came across a scrap of paper with "Lake. Tonight." scrawled across it. It was a piece of Lily he hadn't realized he possessed.

Feeling much better now, Snape returned to Hagrid, who was fascinated by the voodoo doll. "It was the muggle one had this?" he kept asking, as if the idea that a muggle might know something about magic was totally alien to him.

They left the little house, and Snape reset all the locks. This time they didn't worry about being followed, apparating directly to the outskirts of Hogsmeade. "If ya don't mind," Hagrid said, "I'll stop by the Hog's Head for a nip. Ya don't need me anymore, do ya?"

"No, I'm all right from here. Thank you for coming. It was good of you." Snape left Hagrid to his socializing and went up the hill to the castle to assemble his lararium.

Dumbledore was waiting in the Hog's Head. "I trust all went well," he said as Hagrid ordered a firewhisky.

"Not hide nor hair of a problem," Hagrid replied. "In and out smooth as can be. He got all he went for, too."

"I am pleased to hear that. It is time something went right for him, even something this small."

"Did ya know he lived in a place like that? Fair surprised me, it did. I was expecting something a bit, well, bigger."

"The first time I saw it was after his parents died. I, too, had not realized the extent of the poverty he grew up with. It helped explain some of his discomfort around the other students."

"Ya'd think he'd move, now that he's on his own."

"You know, Hagrid, I think he is afraid of spending the money. He was very careful in the bank to find a way to conserve his resources. It is as if it is his guarantee that he will not be poor again. I do not think he could find it in himself to give up that much."

"I can see that. I'd be scared t' go back to that kind of life m' self. Fair makes my hut look like a palace."

Dumbledore did not comment on the hut. He and Hagrid chatted a bit more, and then Dumbledore, too, returned to the castle.

The little table by the fireplace was covered with a green cloth. On it, back from the center, Snape placed a photo of his parents in a standing frame and, on either side, the pictures of his grandmothers, Gra next to his father and Nana next to his mother. In front of them stood the voodoo doll and Lily's note, also encased in a frame. For the geniuses of the place Snape had rocks – smooth polished stones from the lake shore and a larger, rougher rock veined with green from the cliff. The forest had given him a pine cone. At the front of the table was a votive candle, an incense burner, and dish of clean gravel for offerings and libations.

It was, as near as Severus could tell, just as described in his book for later lararia. That was when he encountered the next problem. _How do you use a lararium?_ He went back to his books to try to find some description of the rites involved. What he found was very sketchy. All he could figure out was that it was twice daily, and lasted about two or three minutes, but what words you said, or what exactly you did was a mystery.

_What if I do it wrong? Will that negate the experiment?_ That, naturally, brought up the larger question of 'Is there a God?' The first thing Severus did was revisit his conclusions about belief. _Belief does not affect God. If God does not exist, my belief will not create God. If God exists, my non-belief will not cause God to disappear. I cannot use belief as proof._

The next step was rather simple. _If God does not exist, nothing I experiment with will hurt me in any way. It can't get me into any trouble. The nonexistence of God brings no new problems, but no new comfort either._

The possibility of the existence of God did bring problems. _It really depends on the personality of God. If God is gentle and kindly, any attempt to find God will meet with approval. If God is rigid and vindictive, any wrong action will bring punishment. Is wrong action worse or better than no action?_

The question could not be resolved empirically. Religion was not science. In the end, it was a leap in the dark. You might land in paradise, or you might plunge into the abyss, or nothing might happen at all, but you would not know which until you jumped.

Being by upbringing and inclination an agnostic, Snape was not overly concerned about the punishments of a rigid and vindictive God. _If I find out that what I am doing is not exactly right, I can change it. The point is to honor God and the spirits. All religions believe in spirits. Sometimes they call those spirits by other names, like angels, but they have them._

By then it was supper time, and Snape went to the Great Hall, but he didn't stay long. Instead he took a morsel of bread and a small vial of – well it was going to be pumpkin juice, but the whole problem of combustibility made him take firewhisky instead – and returned to his office. There he agonized over the question of sacrifice and finally gave up a five-pound note. The note, folded small, and the morsel of bread, he placed on the dish of gravel, the vial of firewhisky next to it. Then he lit both the candle and the incense.

It felt awkward, speaking out loud in an empty room. Standing in front of the table, Severus said, "I dedicate this place to God, whoever and whatever God may be, and offer these symbols of food and drink to represent my continued life, and money to represent my labor, in honor of God." With that he poured the firewhisky over the bread and money, and ignited it, watching the resultant fire with pleasurable interest. Then he continued.

"I honor the spirits of cliff, lake, and forest that shelter and protect Hogwarts. I honor the spirits of my parents and my grandparents, of my great-grandfather, and of Lily Evans. If they are still able to see and hear me, I ask their continued interest in my life. May good fortune attend all in this place. Let it be so."

That was it. It was somehow, except for the fire, unsatisfying, being far too short and simple. _Maybe the repetition makes it more meaningful. I have to remember to do this twice a day. Not the five pound note, though._

Severus went back to the Great Hall for supper. He discussed plantings with Sprout and played cribbage with Flitwick, and to all appearances his flirtation with religion changed nothing.

The students returned for the summer term, and immediately the world of Death Eaters and the Ministry intruded itself into Hogwarts. Anna Prendergast and Richie Gamp came to Snape together to tell him that both their fathers had been sentenced to Azkaban. Snape let them mourn in the privacy of his office, then informed the other teachers, so that any teasing might be nipped in the bud.

The biggest, most pressing focus of the school, however, was far more normal than anything the outside world could force on them. The fifth and seventh year students were in the last stages of preparing for OWLs and NEWTs, and the library and study rooms were packed with serious, and occasionally panicky, scholars. Snape even held review sessions that reminded him of his tutoring days when he was a student.

And, of course, there was the upcoming Quidditch match between Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff on the twenty-fourth of April, the last Saturday of the month.

"Who do you favor?" Sprout demanded of Snape two days before the match.

"Ravenclaw, of course. If they win, then the worst we can do is second place. But if you win we might end up in third place."

"Humpf," said Sprout. "You were a much nicer person when you didn't understand Quidditch."

Snape had been saying his private ritual in front of the lararium for about two weeks, minus the burnt offering, with indifferent results. At the beginning it had been hard to remember, and Snape had to force himself to stop, recollect, and say the words. At the end of a week it became more automatic, an almost habitual part of his routine. He still had no reaction from it until the night before the Quidditch match.

_He was in a greenhouse checking the replanting schedules and stopped in front of a Lilium bulbiferum, Sprout's pride and joy. "Where am I going next," the flower asked._

"_One of the gardens," he answered. "I'm sure you'll like it there."_

"_Not the Magician's garden. He has roses, and I don't like them."_

"_I'm not sure which one. I don't know much about the gardens."_

"_Do you remember the first one we ever saw?" The flower was smiling._

"_Of course. We had to sneak in."_

"_Whose stands were we in?"_

"_Hufflepuff's."_

"_Who lost?"_

"_Ravenclaw."_

"_Remember me."_

Snape started awake. It was three in the morning, and he was shaking like a leaf in a storm. He lay for a while in bed, trying to recall who and where he was, the flower's voice as real and present as the touch of his sheets and pillow.

After about fifteen minutes, he got up and went into the office, where the embers of the fire still cast the tiniest of glows. The lararium was veiled in darkness, but Snape stood in front of it, looking towards the spot where Lily's shadowed note lay. _I remember_, he thought.

He sat for an hour and a half, until dawn began to soften the dark, staring at the embers. He knew little of the gardens, but he remembered the stealth of feigning to be Hufflepuff and his first joy of bludgers. It was a message he would heed. _I need a control. Every experiment needs a control._

The control came at lunch in the form of Professor Kettleburn. Snape cornered him. "Make a bet with me."

"Who do you favor?"

"I want Ravenclaw to win, but I want to bet on Hufflepuff. Make a bet with me."

Kettleburn stepped back and eyed Snape suspiciously. "Why?"

"I had a dream. I just have to bet something on Hufflepuff."

"You got it. You want a galleon, a sickle?"

"Just a knut. All I need is a bet."

Kettleburn agreed with no hesitation, then went and placed all his other bets on Hufflepuff.

It was a hard-fought game, for Ravenclaw needed to win, but Hufflepuff needed to score. The yellow and black kept the blue and bronze away from the Snitch for over two hours, until the score favored Ravenclaw 150 to 120. Then, in a breathtaking bit of flying, the Hufflepuff Seeker found the Snitch, and the score ended at 270 to 150. The Hufflepuff stands went crazy.

Ravenclaw was in last place; they had won no games, so their total score was irrelevant. Hufflepuff had two victories and a total of 450 points. Slytherin had two victories and a total of 420 points, but with a game still to play. Gryffindor had one victory, 300 points, and a game still to play.

If Slytherin won their last game, then Slytherin would win the Quidditch Cup. Hufflepuff would be second unless Gryffindor managed at least 160 Quaffle points – not likely. But if Gryffindor won without Quaffle scoring, then they tied Hufflepuff for the Cup. On the other hand, a Slytherin Quaffle score of at least forty would beat out Hufflepuff… There was no way to explain it without a diagram. What it meant was that in the last game Slytherin had to win outright or, barring that, to outscore Gryffindor by at least forty points with the Quaffle.

Kettleburn cared nothing for the long-term planning. He'd bet Hufflepuff, and he'd won from everyone except Snape to whom he cheerfully paid the knut. "You tell me about any other dreams you have," he said as he left.

Did the Hufflepuff win mean what Snape wanted it to mean? Was that really a communication with Lily, or was it a subconscious desire of his own mind expressed in a dream? Snape had no way to tell.

True, the Hufflepuff victory had been unexpected, not so much because they won, but because of the way they won. To hold Ravenclaw from victory for so long while at the same time scoring so many points was not Hufflepuff's usual form of play. They now had a chance at the Quidditch Cup, something no one had anticipated in the fall.

_Why would I dream that? Why would I dream anything about Quidditch at all? If Lily and my parents can speak to me, why don't I ever dream about Nana and Gra?_

Another thing Snape now wanted to know was whether or not the dead learned the truth about people. _Does Lily know that Sirius betrayed her? Has she learned what a hypocrite her husband was, pretending to hate dark arts and using curses, hexes, and jinxes on a daily basis, as pranks or as a means to intimidate other students? Has James found out what a fool he was, making a traitor his secret keeper and causing his wife's death?_

The idea that the dead discovered the truth was a little eerie. _What is there about me that I would not want Lily to know? In all honesty, he could think of nothing. She already knew about his demon. She would learn he'd been a Death Eater, but she would also learn that he'd turned against the Dark Lord and risked his life for her. In fact, the idea that Lily would know the truth after she died was, on the whole, a comforting thought._

One thing Snape was sure of was that he would continue to use the lararium. The dream by itself wasn't proof that it worked, but it certainly wasn't proof that it didn't work. He was rather hoping for more dreams.

The next weekend was a Hogsmeade excursion, and Snape had supervisory duties in the town. He wandered the streets for a while, then went into the Three Broomstick for a snack and something to drink. He'd just settled in a corner with tea and biscuits, when a figure rose from another table and slipped into a chair next to him. It was Gawain Robards.

"I thought you were supposed to leave me alone," said Snape.

"Moody is supposed to leave you alone. There was no injunction written against me."

"Are you going to try arresting me again?"

"That wasn't me. That was Moody and Scrimgeour. I did my job, got my conviction, and sent you to prison."

"I'm not in prison."

"No? That's not the impression I had. It doesn't matter. This is more in the way of a friendly conversation. I just wanted you to know that Moody's getting help adjusting – he doesn't want the help, but he's getting it. Crouch is out, and Scrimgeour is looking to move up, so he won't be after you any more. He's angling for a lot bigger fish."

"It's kind of you to tell me this."

"I don't do anything out of pure kindness. I want to know what you can tell me about him." Robards lay a piece of paper in front of Snape with the note 'L. Malfoy' written in one corner.

_Can this be another trap? At least he's asking about someone specific, and not just for names in general._ "His father hated… 'him', and he wouldn't become a… one of us until his father died mysteriously of dragon pox. I think it was his father's death that finally drove him to it."

"Mysteriously? What do you mean?"

"There hadn't been any outbreaks. It was an isolated case and…" Snape paused. It was the first time he had ever voiced the suspicion. "I know that shortly before it happened, the Dark Lord was interested in protection from dragon pox. The infection may not have been accidental."

"Did you know him well?"

"A little, from before, when none of us had yet joined. Afterwards, I hardly saw him at all."

"Do you know if… 'his' agents ever used Imperius curses on people."

"Oh, yes. They did. I didn't know it at first, but I overheard some of them talking. That was a tactic I know was used more than once."

"So this person might be telling us the truth?"

"I don't know for certain, but it's possible."

"Did he ever go out on raids?'

"I don't know. I never saw him in any of my classes."

Robards seemed pleased with the information. "That'll help with the case. It gives me a better idea what to look for. You haven't been in contact with him recently, have you?"

"No, sir."

"Be sure you don't. You escaped the consequences for talking to one of your old colleagues. You wouldn't be able to wiggle out of this one." Robards rose to leave. "Well, thank you for the conversation. Enjoy your day with the students."

Snape watched as Robards left the Three Broomsticks and headed for the outskirts of the town, where he could apparate beck to London. _Am I ever going to be free of the Ministry?_

When Snape was a student at Hogwarts, the mutability of time had always intrigued him. At the beginning of the school year, a month seemed to last an eternity. At the end of the year, a month sped by in the blink of an eye. It was the same as a teacher. As May rushed to its closing, the school was concerned with two things – exams and Quidditch, and Quidditch predominated. For the first time in years, it was not certain at all who would win the Quidditch Cup, or even who would be second.

_Saturday, May 29, 1982 (the first quarter)_

"Who's going to win?" was Kettleburn's first question. "Any dreams?"

"I haven't a clue," was Snape's response. "And none at all."

There were no house alliances at this game. Slytherin needed to win, or outscore Gryffindor with the Quaffle by at least forty points. Gryffindor needed to score and then win. Hufflepuff wanted a quick Gryffindor win with no prior scoring just to tie for first place. Only Ravenclaw went simply to watch a game. Whatever happened, they were in fourth place.

As the students packed the stands, the teachers, too, took their places. This time Snape and McGonagall were separated, with Sprout and Flitwick between them, Sprout next to Snape. They all knew it would be a short game. Once Gryffindor scored, both Seekers would be hunting the Snitch.

Madam Hooch released the four Quidditch balls, and the game began. Gryffindor got the Quaffle and made a run at the hoops. Slytherin blocked and took the Quaffle. Then it happened.

The Slytherin chasers rushed the Gryffindor hoops, and the Quaffle carrier entered the scoring area. Just as she made her pass, the Gryffindor Keeper suddenly looked beyond her and pointed. She paid no attention, taking advantage of his distraction to score, but there was no resounding cheer from the Slytherin stands. Instead, the entire school rose to its feet with a gasp of dismay.

Out in the center of the pitch, both Gryffindor Beaters had hit the same Bludger at the same time. Impelled by the double force, the Bludger rocketed forward with murderous speed and struck the Slytherin Seeker in the back. He tumbled from his broom and lay motionless in the grass.

Snape was out of his seat at once, running across the pitch, Madam Pomfrey right behind him. Madam Hooch called a halt to the game. As the silent stands watched, Snape and Pomfrey knelt by the unconscious Seeker. Dumbledore and the other teachers gathered around them.

Pomfrey checked the boy's back while Snape gently held his eyelids open and looked into his eyes. "I need to get him up to the hospital wing at once," Pomfrey murmured, "to check for internal injuries."

Snape shook his head. "Cracked ribs," he whispered. "He's had the breath knocked out of him, but I don't see anything else."

Pomfrey regarded Snape for a few seconds. "Maybe there's more of Constantina Rossendale in you than I thought." She rose to her feet and conjured a stretcher. "It looks like nothing serious. We'll move him to the sidelines and I'll treat him for the injuries. I can't say yet if he'll be able to resume the game."

That was it. The game had to continue, with Slytherin minus their Seeker. This meant that Slytherin had no chance of winning the game, because only the Seeker could catch the Snitch. They would have to outscore Gryffindor by more than 150 points, a clear impossibility. Gryffindor could score its goal and hunt the Snitch at leisure.

But Slytherin wasn't going to let them do it. Fired and focused with anger, the Slytherin team now had one goal – to keep Gryffindor from scoring. The Beaters began aiming for the Quaffle, forcing Chasers to swerve away from the scoring area and even knocking the Quaffle itself away from the hoops twice. McGonagall protested, but Hooch pointed out that there was no rule about hitting the Quaffle with a Bludger. The Chasers, meanwhile, swooped and attacked each other like dog-fighting airplanes. The miraculous happened. Slytherin scored again, and it was 20-0.

Then, on the sidelines, Slytherin's Seeker appeared, talking calmly to Snape, Pomfrey, and Dumbledore, and it became clear that he would reenter the game. Gryffindor's choices were narrowing. If they couldn't score, a Slytherin win would put them in third place and endanger their chances of winning the House Cup. If Slytherin scored twice more, even a Gryffindor win in this game would put Slytherin in first place for the Quidditch Cup. A Gryffindor win now would tie them for first place with Hufflepuff. It was a tense, spit-second decision for the Gryffindor team, and their Seeker went for the Snitch.

Half of Gryffindor was screaming for him to stop, sure that they could keep fighting for a definitive win, but it was too late. In a breathtaking dive, the Seeker grabbed the Snitch. The game was over. Gryffindor won the game to share the Quidditch Cup with Hufflepuff. The Hufflepuff stands went wild.

"How strong is it?" Madam Pomfrey asked Snape as they climbed the hill back to the castle.

"Not very. Most of the time I can't see anything, but when someone's knocked out like that, there's no interference. Nothing blocking it, if you know what I mean. My grandmother had me do it once for an injured townsman."

"What did you see that time?"

"A ruptured spleen."

"That specific? It's good to know if there should ever come a time…"

Kettleburn caught up with them. "What a game! Who'd 've thought? I figured it was all over when your Seeker went down! Sprout owes you one!"

"How did you do?" Snape asked politely as Pomfrey left them and hurried forward to get back to the hospital wing.

"Not well. Lost some and tied others. I should have listened when you said you didn't have a clue. Well, there's always next year."

"Ah, but next year we won't have the same Beaters. They're seventh years."

"More's the pity. If you need help with the selection, let me know."

The mood in the Slytherin common room was almost like a victory party.

"Did you see it, Professor? Did you see!" Algie was as happy as it was possible for a losing player to be. "They put their tail between their legs and ran! They couldn't face us team to team! They took second best because they couldn't beat us!"

It was good that even defeat was a kind of victory, and Snape wondered if Gryffindor saw their victory as a kind of defeat. Probably not. That viewpoint usually belonged to the losers. Still, Gryffindor had clearly not wanted to take any chances against a full Slytherin team, and that was something that hadn't happened in a long time.

"I'm sorry you won't be here to help us win next year," Snape told Algie

Chris joined them then. "I've been telling him he has to fail his NEWTs so he can keep playing. Then you really would win next year."

"I think we'll muddle along without the two of you," Snape said, and left the common room to its partying.

The next day, Snape asked to speak with Dumbledore in his office. He was requesting to be allowed to stay at Hogwarts during the summer break.

"It would give me a chance to do some curriculum planning, to rework lesson plans, to do research in the library…"

"Alastor has been ordered not to bother you." Dumbledore sat at his desk as Snape paced the office.

"The injunction expires in mid July. What if he does something then?"

"There are more people watching out for you, Severus, than you realize. Not just me, Hagrid, and Judge Bones, you know. Alastor's friends don't want to see him in more trouble. They will be keeping an eye on him, to be sure he does not transgress again. They will keep an eye on you, too, to be sure you are safe."

"Spy on me?"

"I agree that there is a fine line between protection and control, but I assure you that no one wishes any control beyond what the court order requires, and that is that you remain under my authority. I would like you to go home for the summer. I would like you to live a more normal life than has been possible these last few months. The 'spying' is intended to help you do that. Is it too much to ask?"

"No, sir," Snape replied.

June was well under way, and suddenly the Sunday when the OWL examiners arrived was upon them. Snape had proctoring duties for written exams in subjects other than his own, and partial supervision of the astronomy nighttime practical session. In addition, he had his own exams to give and grade.

And then it was over. Students, results in hand, were packing and saying their goodbyes for the summer, teachers were storing equipment and sealing their rooms, and the whole school was shutting down.

Professor Sprout arrived at the farewell feast beaming from ear to ear. When the other teachers finally got her to tell them why she was so pleased, they found she was spending July in the Amazon rain forest on an educational and plant specimen collecting trip.

"Anacondas," said Hagrid, having overheard the conversation.

"I beg your pardon," Sprout said, bewildered.

"Ya might bring back a breeding pair of anacondas. I'd like a snake or two t' keep the vermin down in the gardens."

"Don't they get rather big?" asked McGonagall. "I, for one, don't want any hundred foot long snakes eating the students."

"Maybe she could bring back snake eggs instead of snakes," Snape suggested.

"That shows how much you know," Hagrid informed them. "Longest confirmed measurement of a South American anaconda was twenty-eight feet, and they don't lay eggs. Ya been listening to too many stories."

"I stand corrected," McGonagall retorted, "but I don't want any twenty-eight foot long snakes eating the students either."

"You couldn't have anacondas here anyway," Kettleburn jumped in, this being his specialty. "They're water snakes. Can't support that bulk on the ground or in trees, just in the water. Think what the merpeople would do if we put giant predators into their lake. And if you brought a breeding pair you wouldn't have a couple of baby snakes, more like six dozen."

"No anacondas," said Sprout.

"What are you doing for the summer?" McGonagall asked Snape.

"Staying at home mostly. I have a couple of projects I'd like to finish. What about you?"

"My son and his wife are going to Thailand, so I'll be riding herd on the grandchildren for a few weeks. I'll need the time to whip them back into proper shape. Generally they are badly spoiled. These young folk don't know how to raise children."

"I am off to the upper Nile and the pyramids of Nubia," Flitwick announced. "It's something I've always wanted to do, and this year I am doing it."

_Everyone else has interesting plans, and here I am thinking it's something just to have the nerve to go home. How pathetic can you get?_ Still, it had been several years since Snape was able to spend an extended time in his own town, and there was something to be said for the quiet life.

_Saturday, June 26, 1982 (2 days before the first quarter)_

Hogwarts was closing. Only Dumbledore, Hagrid, Filch and the house-elves remained to watch over the school. The graduating seventh years for the most part apparated out. Many other students left from Hogsmeade with their parents, while the rest took the train down to London. After they were gone, the teachers bade each other a pleasant summer and left as well.

Snape arrived back in Lancashire with his old Gladstone bag and a large parcel of books. He left the lararium in Hogwarts, having concluded that experiment for the time being. After setting his things down in the sitting room, he went back into his little kitchen to rediscover the fact that he had no food in the house.

_Idiot! You have to go shopping! What do you get?_ He remembered his cookbook then, and went to the sitting room to open the parcel. Most of the recipes seemed very complicated, but then he settled on one for chicken paprikas with noodles that looked relatively simple. He started to make a list of things he would need, and included the eggs, milk, sausages, coffee and other things he could think of for breakfasts and lunches.

That was when Snape remembered that he didn't have any electricity for the icebox. _I could put a spell on the icebox to keep it cold inside. But the magic is traceable. On the other hand, I already used magic here for Hagrid's chair…_ In the end Snape decided that one small spell on the icebox was worth the trouble. After that he went shopping.

The market on the other side of the river was bigger than he remembered, and then Snape realized that it was, in fact, new – a different place from the market of his childhood. It also carried a wider variety of goods. He took a basket and started to look for the things he needed, overwhelmed by the variety and the lack of experience that made it difficult for him to choose.

"You," said a matronly voice behind him, "aren't you Eileen Snape's boy?"

Snape turned to find himself confronting a familiar face. "Good afternoon, Mrs. Hanson," he said, "you have an excellent memory." They chatted for a few minutes, then made their purchases and left to go their own ways. It was a pleasant encounter.

The chicken paprikas took twice as long to make as Snape anticipated, but it tasted quite good.


	28. Chapter 28 – The Barracuda

**Severus Snape: The Middle Years 1982 – 1983 – The Barracuda**

_Summer 1982_

Cookbooks gave recipes for four, six, or eight people. Snape quickly got into a routine where he would cook once every two or three days, then eat the same thing for every meal until it was finished. That way he had more time for other things.

At first he was nervous about stepping outside his door, looking carefully down the street for anyone even remotely odd, but after a while going outside became more routine, and he began to explore. It had been years since he'd been out on the moors, and he'd never before gone out with the purpose of just collecting plants, having always relied on his grandmother's garden as a boy. Now the neighbors, many of whom remembered him and his parents, started to think of him as the resident naturalist.

Snape knew he was seen as more than a little eccentric. It didn't bother him in the slightest – in fact, it made things easier. People greeted him with a pleasant 'Good morning' or asked if he'd had a profitable excursion, but recognized that he didn't want to socialize or visit, so the conversations were generally short. He could even pop into the local pub for a pint, sit for a while in a corner labeling the small clear bags that he put the leaves and flowers into, and not feel out of place.

True, the first time had been strange. When he'd walked in toward the beginning of July to get out of a sudden downpour on the way home, several of the men in the pub had stared at him as if he were from Mars, but he soon found out why.

"Afternoon," the barkeep said, ready to take an order. "Hope you don't mind my asking, but would you happen to be Toby Snape's boy Russ?" When Snape admitted that he was, men came over to shake his hand and tell him that they still missed his father. One or two even asked about 'that fancy school' he'd gone to, which – to Snape's great surprise – Toby had apparently bragged about at some length. When he told them he was now a teacher at that same school, they agreed Toby'd have been proud, and pleased, too, that he would still condescend to come into a local pub to drink a pint with his dad's old mates.

They even tried once to get him into a game of darts, but it was soon clear that Russ Snape had inherited little or none of Toby Snape's instinctive skill, so they left him, for the most part, to his more academic pursuits.

Only Mrs. Hanson treated him with the familiarity that one expects from close friends. She had the right, certainly, since she'd sheltered him many times when, as a boy, he'd needed protection from his father's rage, or just to give his parents time to be alone. Whenever they met in the market, she'd ramble on about her sister's family and her arthritis. Snape visited her once or twice for tea. He'd always thought of her as old, but really she was only about sixty now, and just ten or eleven years older than his mother would have been had she still been alive.

August came all too soon, and Snape let the neighbors know that he'd be gone for the school year, so they wouldn't think it odd that the house stood empty. They agreed that it would be nice if he managed to make it back for a few days at Christmas and Easter, and then it was the first of August, and he was walking out into his own back area yard with his Gladstone bag and a large parcel of books, sheltered from view by the brick wall and the gate, and apparating back to Hogwarts.

It was the longest Snape had spent in his own home since he'd graduated from Hogwarts four years earlier.

Hogsmeade appeared just as quiet when Snape arrived on the edge of the town. He was walking calmly down the empty street past the Hog's Head when an all-too-familiar voice made him spin around in sudden panic, expecting an ambush.

"There you are, right on time. I see Albus has you well trained already." Moody's scarred face and disconcerting eye leered at Snape from the alley next to the inn.

"You're not supposed to talk to me," said Snape, noting with some relief that Moody seemed to be alone.

"That order's expired. I can have a nice conversation with an old acquaintance in a public street now any time I like just as long as Judge Bones isn't shocked by my behavior. I've just come to let you know I still take a keen interest in your welfare, and that there's a place up north reserved with your name on it in case you decide to finally pay your debts."

"You can't threaten me."

"No? Think of it as advice. I'm watching. I'm waiting for you to make a mistake. The papers are all ready – just need a date and a signature." Moody advanced slowly until their faces were inches apart. "So you just keep your nose clean and your toes on the right side of the line, because you never know where I'll be or who on the street is working for me."

With that Moody backed away far enough so that he could apparate out, but near enough so that the percussion of his apparation pushed Severus back a couple of inches. When he was certain Moody was gone, Severus continued to the Hogwarts gate, wondering if he should tell Dumbledore what had just happened.

Many of the teachers were already in their rooms beginning to sort things out. They would all get together at breakfast for the welcome back and first staff meeting of the season. Snape decided that before anything he would go up and tell Dumbledore about Moody, mainly because he thought Dumbledore would want to know, Moody being a friend of his.

As he approached the spiral staircase to the headmaster's office, Professor McGonagall came down. She had a pinched I've-just-been-eating-lemons look on her face – more than usual – that made Snape quickly get out of her way. She glared at him as she flounced past, muttering "At least you knew something about potions!" and swept down the stairs to her own rooms.

Somewhat taken aback by the curtness of McGonagall's manner, Snape made his way up the stairs to Dumbledore's office. "Come in, Severus. Come in." Dumbledore called to him from across the room. "I trust the break was pleasant for you."

"Good morning, Headmaster. I… Have I done something to upset Professor McGonagall? She seemed abrupt with me."

"With you? No, no, no. With me. Do not worry. You shall hear all about it, and in spades, at breakfast. I just hope Minerva has calmed down enough by then to let us attend to other business as well."

"Well, that's good, then…" Snape caught himself. "No, it isn't good – it's unfortunate. I just meant that it's good for me that it isn't me… That I'm not responsible."

"Do not apologize. It is, in fact, very good for you that you are not involved. You should try to stay that way. Did you wish to talk to me about something, or is this just a social call?"

"Yes. I mean, no. I mean, I did want to tell you something, it wasn't just a social call. I just bumped into Mr. Moody. Not really bump, of course. We just met in Hogsmeade."

Dumbledore smiled as if gently amused by Snape's awkwardness. "What did Alastor have to say to you?"

"He wanted to remind me to stay out of trouble because I'm still on probation, he's watching, and Azkaban's waiting."

"He should not be doing that." Dumbledore was serious at once. "I shall speak with him and, if necessary, with Judge Bones."

"I don't want to cause trouble."

"I do not want you to have trouble. Thank you for bringing this to my attention."

Snape went to unlock his rooms and survey them for a bit, but he didn't immediately throw himself into doing things. He'd done so much the previous year, which he'd kept good records of, that much of his work was already done. Now he wanted to take his time, think carefully, and fine tune it.

Breakfast was better than he'd expected. During the school year, the teachers ate strung out along the high table, and many of them commuted to their homes in the evenings and on weekends, so they seldom had a chance to really talk to each other. August was the truly collegial time for the staff, when they sat around a lower table and talked without having to worry about the students.

Sprout was bubbling about Brazil, and Flitwick about Nubia. Sinistra had gone to the twenty-four hour darkness of the South Polar Plateau and the Amundsen-Scott Station to observe the stars of the Southern Hemisphere. Trelawney, with admirable restraint, simply 'could not describe' her encounters with a renowned selection of medieval mystics, all deceased, while Dawson had taken up archery at the age of fifty-seven.

The better part of breakfast was passed in chitchat, and then Dumbledore called them to order. After the usual administrative announcements, he came to what Snape quickly realized was the crux of the matter.

"We have also," Dumbledore pronounced with some pleasure, "acquired a new Defense against the Dark Arts teacher. This is a lady of quite considerable qualifications whom I approached a couple of years ago, but who at that time was unable to accept because of the now recently ended 'troubles.' She was, in fact, targeted by Voldemort for her knowledge and expertise, and has spent the last few years overseas…"

There was a general gasp around the table. "You don't mean…?" cried Madam Pince.

"I do mean, ladies and gentlemen, that well-known author, scholar and adventurer, Val Carmichael."

Snape's eyes widened at that, for he knew the works of Dr. Carmichael. A muggle-born witch, she was famous in both worlds not only for her adventures (and her five husbands), but also for her academic merit, for she was a student of anthropology as well as of the development of primitive magic, and was considered one of the world experts on voodoo. Snape had read several of her works, though he owned none of them, and had found them well-researched and valuable.

This was clearly, however, the news that had upset McGonagall, for she remained frozen in her seat, an expression of great displeasure on her face.

Dr. Carmichael arrived on Sunday the fifteenth, intending to be a resident teacher ('Until the divorce is final, of course. Silly American laws. You'd think all fifty states would be the same, but no. If I'd been married in California, I wouldn't have to worry about this year of separation business.') Her entrance onto the Hogwarts stage was so eagerly anticipated that almost the whole staff stayed for supper that evening, and the reception afterwards, just to meet her.

Snape was shocked when he walked into the Great Hall. It was almost as packed as at the start of term banquet. This time, however, the seats were full of Ministry types, reporters, influential rich people, and members of the wizard publishing trade. The return of Val Carmichael to Britain was quite an event.

The staff, in fact, was relegated to the lower tables, in McGonagall's case by choice. From somewhere in the center of the hall, Snape regarded Hogwarts's newest celebrity. It was impressive and amusing at the same time.

Val Carmichael had clearly once been a very handsome woman. She was tall and athletically built, even muscular, but the deep tans of her youth had prematurely aged her skin, and there was a vague mummy-like quality to the leathery folds of her face. If she had left it there, it would have added character. Her attempts to defy aging had led her, however, to dye her hair a garish red, and to bury her wrinkles and creases under makeup. She dressed in clothes a hair too tight, and heels a centimeter too high. Her fingernails were sharp, clawlike, and scarlet, while her fingers were adorned with a variety of rings. She was almost a caricature of what she might have been.

During the reception following supper, Dumbledore pulled Snape over to introduce him in what must have been a long and boring line of Hogwarts teachers. Dr. Carmichael's acknowledgment was not routine.

"Well, I had begun to think Hogwarts was the male geriatric clinic of Northern Britain. I see I was mistaken. You must be the youngest teacher here."

"I was hired just last year to replace the retiring Potions professor."

"I love potions. I did a book on aphrodisiacs and other love potions. Not that I ever needed them. I must say it was a stroke of luck that other professor decided to retire."

Snape murmured an inaudible response and made way for Professor Vector, moving quickly himself to the outer areas of the Hall, where the refreshments were greater but the crowd less.

"What do you think?" Sprout gushed beside him. "Isn't it wonderful!"

"I don't know," said Snape. "She seemed a bit, well, over the top."

"Well of course, idiot. She's lived in America. She's a celebrity. That's what they're all like."

The clock ticked toward midnight, and the gathering thinned. All the aliens, from the Ministry, the media, and the mob, gradually left. Dr. Carmichael had been the sensation of the year, working the crowd like the professional she was, talking to everyone, stroking everyone.

"I need," she breathed in Snape's ear at about a quarter to midnight, "to get to know my colleagues better. I understand you are the absolute master of the dungeons. I love dungeons. All that writhing and screaming. Doesn't it keep you awake at night… wondering… longing…?"

"Good evening, Valeria dear," said McGonagall from Snape's elbow. "So sorry I didn't have a chance to welcome you earlier. You've met Professor Snape, of course. He was a bit after your time, though I believe you did share a year or two at Hogwarts with his mother. You do remember Eileen Prince? She'd have been right about the same time as you."

"Professor McGonagall. One of my best-remembered teachers. It's so good to see you've managed to hang on here. I suppose seniority can be a treasured commodity. You must be very proud of the niche you've carved out for yourself here at Hogwarts."

"I can treasure the fact that I, at least, have benefited the lives of those with whom I have come in contact. Self esteem. I am sure you join me in pitying those who do not have it."

"I was just suggesting to Professor Snape here that he might show me around the castle."

"And I was just about to see that he was able to relax from the tedium of the evening by being able to go to his quarters, alone, to get a good night's sleep. I'd be more than happy to show you to your own rooms, in case you'd forgotten the way."

"I'm still far too young for forgetfulness to hamper my lifestyle, though I can see why you might be concerned about its appearance in your contemporaries. I think I can… get to bed on my own."

"See that you do, dear."

"Good night, Minerva."

"Good night, Valeria."

The entire encounter left Snape with a deep desire to set out saucers of milk for the night.

They had brunch the next day instead of breakfast, so many of the staff needing to sleep in from the late hours of the night before. Snape rather thought that he might be the first, but McGonagall was there before him. "Severus," she waved from the table, "come over here and join me. We need to decide on the Quidditch schedule. Last year was a bit unusual." Within five minutes, the heads of houses were all together at the deputy headmistress's end of the table, Snape at the corner on McGonagall's left, Flitwick on her right and Sprout, at McGonagall's insistence, next to Snape on the other side.

"Last year," McGonagall said, "we had to rearrange the Quidditch schedule due to… well, you know… and this year we need to decide whether to keep it that way or return it to the way it was before. I tend to think we should go back to the traditional schedule, but it is something requiring the consensus of the heads."

"I rather liked the Gryffindor – Slytherin match at the end," Sprout said. "It made things more exciting, more rivalry during the year."

"Because we dislike each other so much?" Snape asked cynically.

"Of course, dear," replied Sprout. "There's nothing like good, old-fashioned, I'm-going-to-kick-your-face-in hatred to spice up a Quidditch game."

Snape glanced to his right, but McGonagall wasn't listening. She had turned and was watching the entrance, a small smirk of triumph on her face. Following her gaze, Snape saw that Dr. Carmichael had entered the Hall. Her gaze went right to the group at the table's foot, and she seemed displeased. After a moment's hesitation, she came over to them. "Good morning. I take it this is the scintillating end of the table?"

"Good morning, Valeria," replied McGonagall. "I regret to say that this is the dull, house business end of the table. You might find conversation more to your liking with Albus, or some of the others. There's plenty of room along the table."

"But I love house business," said Carmichael, glancing pointedly at Sprout as if expecting her to slide over and make room for the newcomer on the bench. When Sprout didn't move, Carmichael went to the other side of the table to swing her legs over the bench and sit by Flitwick. It was McGonagall's turn to look displeased.

"We really do need to be informal," Carmichael gushed. "I want all of you to call me Val. That's what my friends do. I already know Minerva. You're…?"

"Pomona," said Sprout, a little waspishly, which Snape didn't quite understand since Sprout was usually so cheerful.

Carmichael looked to her right, and Flitwick replied, "Filius."

"Let me just jot this down in my notebook," said Carmichael, pulling a small spiral pad and a ball-point pen from her robes. "I swear sometimes, my head is like a sieve when it comes to names. Then she stretched her hand across the table so the tips of her fingernails were almost touching Snape's hand. "And you, the baby of the staff, what's your name, dear?"

"Severus."

"How sweet. I'm still looking forward to you showing me around the place." Snape noted that she did not jot his name down in her pad.

"I'm afraid that will have to wait," McGonagall said crisply. "Professor Snape and I need to go over the texts and coordinate our curriculum this morning. And I'm sure you'll want to work in your classroom and office. The last Dark Arts teacher left in the middle of the year, and you have quite a bit of work to do."

This took Snape by surprise, since McGonagall had never mentioned coordinating curriculum before, but Flitwick was acting as if it was perfectly normal, a tiny gleam of amusement in his eyes, while Sprout nodded affirmingly.

"Maybe later, then, Sevvy dear. We have the whole year ahead of us. Oh! There's Albus. Excuse me, I did want to ask him something." Carmichael was up off the bench and heading for the opposite end of the table before any of the other four could respond. They all turned to Snape.

"That woman," said Sprout solemnly, "is a barracuda. She's marked her prey, and she's circling in the water."

"Yes," said Flitwick. "I remembered last night. She's the former Valeria Aurifosser, isn't she, Minerva?" When McGonagall nodded grimly, Flitwick smiled at Snape. "She collects trophies. She had quite a string here at Hogwarts by her seventh year."

"You'd better be careful," said Sprout, "if you don't want your head on the wall."

"Wait a minute," said Snape, suddenly realizing what they were talking about. "She's old enough to be my mother!"

"I never knew that to stop her before," said McGonagall quietly.

Snape managed to get a quiet word in with Sprout before going up to McGonagall's office. "Is it my imagination, or is there something more between that woman and Professor McGonagall?"

"It isn't your imagination. They clearly hate each other. But I haven't a clue what it's about. Maybe Filius will know. Are you going to let her get away with calling you Sevvy?"

"What am I supposed to say? She's old enough to be my mother, and famous into the bargain. I can't just tell her not to use a nickname."

"She starts calling me Pommy or Mona and I'll tell her fast enough."

Upstairs in McGonagall's office, Snape got a bit more information as well as a lot of advice.

"What Filius said about trophies is true. Her affairs are legendary, as is her callousness when she decides it's over. "

"It sounded like she's about to divorce her fifth husband."

"Dear boy, she marries only the rich ones. I heard once that she'd bragged of making a conquest for every place she'd worked and every place she'd visited. I don't know if it's true, but I wouldn't be surprised. And she prefers them young. It's a bit like a game, a hunt. Your bad luck is that you're the only man here younger than she is."

"I could stay away from her."

"Will she stay away from you? Pomona, Filius, and I will help all we can, but it's going to be a long year."

Flitwick was a little more forthcoming. "She had quite the reputation in school for ruthlessness and vindictiveness. I always felt sorry for the young men she got her claws into. One in particular happened long after she left the school. She was twenty-three and already had her first husband, but she targeted a student who'd just turned eighteen, and he ended up dropping out of Hogwarts for her. There was quite a scandal, hushed up of course, but it ruined his chances for a career with the Ministry. Took the family years to recover."

"Is that why Professor McGonagall dislikes her so much, because she wrecked the life of one of her students?"

Flitwick looked embarrassed. "Listen, Severus, I would never breathe a word of this as gossip, but it looks like you're on her menu now, too, so you need to know exactly what you're up against. That young man… was Professor McGonagall's son."

"Why then would Professor Dumbledore hire her? Surely he knows about it?" Then Snape remembered the first of August, and McGonagall's anger as she left Dumbledore's office. _No wonder she was upset. How could Dumbledore have done this?_

Now Snape wanted more than ever to have nothing to do with Val Carmichael.

"So this is your little hideaway. How cozy! And so very private."

Snape looked up from his desk at the sound of Carmichael's voice, and immediately rose. "I'm sorry," he said, "I'm rather busy at the moment preparing the inventories for the things we just got in."

"Tut-tut, Sevvy dear. All work and no play can make Jack a very dull boy indeed. Come on, now. You have to give me the tour of the grounds. I need to refresh my memory of the place."

It occurred to Snape at that moment that they were isolated down in the dungeons and that Carmichael was blocking the door. And that she was bigger than he was. "You're right," he said, "now would be an excellent time, before the students arrive in September. If you'll wait for me in the entrance hall, I can be with you in five minutes."

She would clearly rather have gone to the entrance hall with Snape, but it was hard to refuse his request without being rude. Carmichael wiggled her fingers in goodbye. "See you in five minutes, then."

Quickly clearing the papers from his desk and locking the drawers, Snape followed, being sure to lock the office door securely as well. He jumped as he heard Carmichael's voice again.

"Whatever do you have to seal the place like that for? It's not like there are students here."

"Potions," Snape explained. "Some of what's in there is poisonous."

Carmichael nodded in understanding, and they made their way to the entrance hall and out onto the lawn.

It was actually a rather pleasant afternoon. Dr. Carmichael had both studied and traveled widely, and had a lot of interesting observations. It was clear that her knowledge of dark arts was extensive, and she might very well be an excellent teacher. She did, however, have a disconcerting habit of reaching out and touching him – his arm, his shoulder – that Snape didn't like, but he wasn't certain how to get her to stop it.

They saw the Willow, the forest, Hagrid's hut and then, at Carmichael's request, the grotto under the cliff where the boats docked with the first years. They went down to the boats from the top of the cliff, since Snape did not want to take her by Lily's rock. In the dark, narrow cavern she brushed against him once, only once, so he wasn't sure if it was intentional or accidental. Snape was beginning to get nervous, but then they were back in the sunshine.

Stables, hospital wing, library, it was a fairly full tour, and when it was over she thanked him very politely and went her way upstairs to her own rooms, leaving Snape wondering if she was really as dangerous as he'd been led to believe.

_Wednesday, September 1, 1982 (2 days before the full moon)_

Snape stood out on the lawn in the cool air of a September evening, the first in the month, and watched the rim of the moon peek over the low mountains. The day before the first day of a full moon cycle, almost werewolf time, and the arrival of a new group of first years. The thestral carriages had already left for the train station, and Snape was waiting for the sound of the incoming train whistle from across the lake as the Hogwarts Express pulled in from London.

Dumbledore stopped beside him. "Penny for your thoughts?" he said.

"I was just recalling a certain student who wouldn't have been able to come in on the train tomorrow night if he were starting now instead of eleven years ago. Have you ever tried that experiment since?"

"I have not yet had occasion to."

"You know, if you always had the train come in during a full moon cycle, you would always be sure there was no werewolf at Hogwarts. At least not at the beginning of the year."

"Interesting thought, Severus. And if I nailed up crucifixes and garlic, and insisted the train arrive before sunset, I would be certain there were no vampires."

"I stand rebuked and mocked," Snape sighed.

"Do not take it so to heart. It is only the mediocre who are never mocked, and the spiritless who are never rebuked."

"You are too kind, sir. What brings you out here on the first day, anyway? You weren't here last year."

"Tonight I anticipate the arrival of the eldest son of an old friend of mine. The boy's name is Bill. Bill Weasley."

"I'm not familiar with the name."

"You should be, though his parents were before your time. His father is Arthur Weasley, an employee of the Ministry, the one who managed to 'weasel' his way into your cell block and then inform me that you'd been arrested back last Easter."

"Ah!" said Snape. "I shall keep that in mind."

"You are under no circumstances to treat the boy any differently than you would if he were not connected to you in any way."

"Yes, sir. No, sir."

Later, shepherding the students in from the thestral carriages, greeting students that he happened to come face to face with, and generally maintaining order, Snape noticed that Dr. Carmichael wasn't there. _Pity. I'd have liked to find out if she can see the thestrals. Maybe no one warned her this was part of her job._

When he entered the Hall, Snape was in for a shock, for Dr. Carmichael was sitting in what was supposed to be Kettleburn's chair which, since Snape sat at the end of the high table, made her his only dinner partner. Kettleburn, on her other side, raised his eyebrows in mock horror while she wasn't looking.

Trouble started even before the Hall settled or the first years entered for the Sorting, for Carmichael was definitely pressing her leg against his. After momentary panic, Snape rose, said, "Excuse me, Professor, I fear I am crowding you," and moved his chair six inches to the right. It allowed him to watch the Sorting in peace.

He didn't follow the Sorting as closely as the previous year, primarily interested in the student Dumbledore was interested in. As the list went through the alphabet and the number of unsorted students diminished, Snape began to wonder if it wasn't a tall, gangling redhead who, though quiet, seemed more confident of himself than most of the other eleven-year-olds. Sure enough, that year there were no Xes, Ys, or Zs, and the last name called was 'Weasley, Bill.' The Hat cried, "Gryffindor!" and the Sorting was over.

Dumbledore then rose to welcome the students back to Hogwarts, and to introduce the new Professor, Dr. Carmichael. Val Carmichael was known by name to many of the students, and she got a warm round of applause. And then the feast began.

That was when the second stage started, for the tables were suddenly loaded with food. Carmichael observed the wide array of entrees and side dishes, and stage whispered, "They don't expect us to eat this, do they? Whatever is it?"

Snape looked around at the food. "It's the normal feast. The house-elves do somewhat lay it on, but it's all very good."

"I don't think so. What happened to the normal food we've been eating? The roast beef and roast chicken? The potatoes and Yorkshire pudding?"

"But when you were traveling all over the world, didn't you try new, exotic foods from different countries?"

"And end up with food poisoning? Or worse? Child, you have no idea of the bacteria and the bacilli, not to mention the viruses, running around in strange places and on strange food. You take your life in your hands every time you pick up a fork. Roast beef for me. Yorkshire pudding. You can't go wrong. What's that?"

The dish contained soft pieces of flesh in a savory sauce that was quite good. Snape had tried it once before. "I think it's sweetbreads."

"Sweetbreads! It's a gland! It's a calf's thymus gland. And if they ever serve you 'fries' in the States, it's usually potatoes, but sometimes it's testicles. Now I have a great fondness for 'fries,' but I'm not about to eat them. And those things. What are those?"

His face flaming scarlet, Snape struggled to explain. As he did, she leaned closer, and he felt her leg press against his once more. "Uh, scallops. I think they're called scallops. And those are shrimps."

"Sea vermin. I have never eaten a piece of sea vermin, and I never will. Stop fidgeting, boy." Her foot was now trying to wrap around his. "What's in this dish?"

"It's a paté, made from goose or chicken livers, I think…"

"Organ meat! Where I come from we throw this in the garbage where it belongs. You know, I've traveled among tribes that tried to feed me snakes and locusts. And larvae! And brains! And I always fooled them. I always brought my own food and managed to magic it in. You can't even trust what's in sausages. I'll eat bacon, and roast pork and ham, a leg of lamb from time to time, but it's mostly roast beef and a chicken or two with me. None of those fancy foreign sauces."

Snape managed with some difficulty to unwind his leg from hers. "I hope you will excuse me," he said. "I am the head of a house, and I do have to greet my prefects, and my Quidditch team, and the other students. Please. Excuse me. I'll be right back."

The Slytherin students were happy to see him, and they appreciated his attention. As he made his way down the table, a little group of girls pulled him aside.

"We thought you could use some advice, Professor. About the situation."

"What situation?"

They glanced at each other. "Well," one ventured. "When a boy tries that with me, with the leg and everything, well I just find a way to 'accidentally' step on his foot."

Snape looked up at the high table and realized the whole under-the-table business was clearly visible to all the students at the Slytherin table. He turned back to the girls. "How do you keep him from getting mad at you?"

"Sometimes you can't, but if you apologize enough, he can't say anything."

"Look, she can get me in real trouble." They, knowing his Death Eater past, nodded wisely. "She can't know that you know, and she can't be embarrassed."

The girls reassured him. "The whole table is mum, sir. We don't see anything."

Returning to his seat, Snape tried to steer the conversation away from unusual food. He himself took the plainest, most basic dishes there were, all three of them. Within minutes Carmichael's leg and ankle were working again.

"Look at that!" Snape said to her. "They may be starting a fight." He turned toward the Slytherin table, and as he turned his foot turned, his left heel coming down hard on her right big toe.

"You idiot!" Carmichael gasped.

"I am sorry, I am so sorry," Snape exclaimed. "I can't believe… I am so mortified… Please, do you want me to call Madam Pomfrey."

"I'll be fine," Carmichael hissed, and a few minutes later found a reason to speak to Professor Dumbledore, leaving Snape alone at the end of the table.

Snape looked over at the Slytherin table. A hefty percentage of the students had managed to get something stuck between their teeth, for they all had their faces buried in their table napkins. Severus flashed a 'thumbs up' to the girls, and they responded in kind.

The feast ended without further incident, and all made it safely to their beds.

The next morning, Minerva McGonagall was making absolutely no headway with Maximilian Kettleburn at all. "I don't see why you can't make a small effort to be at meals on time so that you can sit in your usual place."

"And since I'm not a head of house, I don't see why it makes any difference where I sit." Kettleburn was, in fact, early in to breakfast since he'd spent the night at Hogwarts to make sure everything was going well for his first lessons, some of his instructional materials having minds of their own. The two were sitting in an otherwise empty Great Hall.

"If you prefer not helping a colleague in a difficult situation…"

"Severus? He can take care of himself. And if he can't it's time he learned. He was doing pretty well last night."

"He has less experience with this sort of thing…"

"He's twenty-two, Minerva. If he doesn't know yet how to escape the unwanted attentions of an older woman, it's about time he learned. And he'll only learn by doing. Don't wrap this one in cotton."

"It's just that I believe this to be more than simple flirting. The woman has a reputation…"

Kettleburn began to laugh. "Well good for Severus! There are young men who'd give their eyeteeth to be trained up by an expert with no strings attached. He's not getting any younger, you know."

The innocent subject of their conversation walked into the Hall, which was now beginning to fill. McGonagall waved to him. "Severus! Come sit by me. We have business to discuss. And you, sir," she added, turning back to Kettleburn, "may take your crude ideas to your end of the table. Trained up indeed!"

His eyes twinkling merrily, Kettleburn rose to give his seat to Snape. As the younger man approached, Kettleburn leaned forward with a conspiratorial air. "As long as they're giving it away, lad, there's no harm in taking a free sample." Then he strode, still laughing, to the end of the high table.

"What was that all about?" Snape asked McGonagall.

"Best you not know, dear. Sit down."

By the time Carmichael made it down to the Hall, Snape was well protected on both sides, and she had to make do with Kettleburn's company. She kept her eyes on the center of the table, and they were filled with a cold calculation. It wasn't Snape she was watching, however. It was McGonagall.

When breakfast was over, and the students filing off to their houses for the opening talks and orientation, Carmichael managed to be beside McGonagall leaving the hall. "They're like birds," she said.

"I beg your pardon," McGonagall responded, puzzled.

"The harder you try to hold on to them, the more they struggle to be free. Hold too tight, and you kill them. I thought you'd learned that already."

"I have no idea what you're talking about."

"I think you do." With that, Carmichael swept from the Hall, up the stairs to her rooms.

McGonagall sought out Dumbledore, not waiting to get to his office before starting.

"You have to do something about that woman, Albus. She's up to her old tricks."

"And what tricks would those be, Minerva?" Dumbledore was patient, but only somewhat sympathetic.

"She's trying to get her claws into that poor innocent young boy…"

"Last year he was that evil Death Eater who was going to bring Voldemort back."

"That was before. Now I know him better. You have to get rid of her for his sake. She'll ruin him."

By this time they were in the office. Dumbledore offered McGonagall a seat and sat himself at his desk. "Minerva, forgive me for being blunt, but we have had a similar conversation already. This time I believe that you are using Severus as a tool to attack Dr. Carmichael with. It is true that she has a somewhat overly physical lifestyle, but he is no child. He is an adult, and has been one for some years. He does not need my protection in this matter. Besides, I have seen no indication that he is even remotely attracted to her, and there is thus no problem."

"She is an evil, wicked woman who preys on…"

"Minerva," said Dumbledore gently, "have you considered the possibility that in trying to atone for mistakes you made in the past, you are in fact about to repeat them?"

"Are you telling me, Albus, that you consider me responsible for what that woman did? She should have gone to jail for what she did, a woman of her age and a mere boy! And now she's after another boy who doesn't have the experience to see…"

"May I remind you that she was, that other time, merely a year older than Severus is now."

"You can count age in more ways than by years! In terms of hardness and experience, the last time she was Severus's age she was thirteen."

"Now Minerva, you did not start teaching here until she was in her seventh year."

"I did the research twenty years ago. I know what happened. She should have gone to jail."

"But you cannot get around the fact that Severus is an adult. As Marcellus was an adult. They have and had the right to control their own lives. Holding a teenage boy is a little like holding a bird. Too tight…"

"You're on her side, aren't you?" McGonagall screeched, springing from her seat in taut anger. "You've been conferring with her on how to dupe me! Well I won't let you! There is such a thing as justice, and justice is finally going to be done!" With that McGonagall stormed out of Dumbledore's office in a rage.

Snape gave his Start of Term speech, which was well received, in the common room. He talked about Slytherin's responsibility to the wizarding world to show you couldn't label a whole group of people because of the actions of a few, and that adherence to the rules was not only protection, but an actual weapon against the malice of enemies. He'd spoken of the possibility of winning the Quidditch Cup and the importance of the tryouts, and of the House Cup and the advantages Slytherin had both in terms of discipline and academic achievement.

"Doesn't Ravenclaw outdo us on both?" called a voice from the back.

"Yes," Snape answered. "But now we beat them in Quidditch. If we can match them in discipline and academics, we have a chance at the House Cup for the first time in more than five years."

"You mean we won the House Cup when you were a student?" cried someone on the side.

"Once or twice. But we had a particularly cooperative group of Gryffindors who were always losing points for their house. You can't count on that now. You have to do it yourselves."

Tryout days for Quidditch were announced, along with preliminary plans for in-house tutoring and Death Eater family support groups.

Snape went to his office to go over the last of the files of those students newly sorted into his house. He'd start the interviews in the afternoon.

Lunch was made less tense by the fact that McGonagall was not there. In addition, Dr. Carmichael seemed to have decided to leave Snape alone, for she sat further down the table talking with Professor Futhark. This did mean that she was facing Snape the whole time, and he had the distinct impression she was observing him, but it was better than playing footsie.

For the next two days, Snape had no contact with Carmichael at all, and on Sunday she merely asked him a question about the Dark Arts curriculum, an easy question that he knew the answer to and enjoyed talking about, though he rather had the feeling that she had already known the answer as well.

Gradually, over the next few weeks, Carmichael found more occasions to talk to Snape, and the conversations became longer and more involved. Snape found himself enjoying her company, even looking forward to it. There was no one else at Hogwarts he could talk to about the Dark Arts, and her knowledge was a gold mine.

Sprout and Flitwick relaxed their guard, certain that Carmichael realized now how unwanted her earlier attentions had been. Carmichael even found reasons to seek their advice, and had more than one long chat with Sprout about dangerous and poisonous plants, and with Flitwick about the nature of hexes and jinxes.

This new, more professional relationship with Dr. Carmichael seemed to bother Professor McGonagall even more than before, and she became irritable and withdrawn, her temper less under control, even shouting at her students during classes. She constantly warned Snape not to let down his guard, and had long meetings with Dumbledore that didn't seem to help at all.

September wore into October, and life at Hogwarts settled into a routine. Most of Snape's time was spent in his classes or in his office, but he was spending more time at meals in the Great Hall or in the staff room in the evening than he had the previous year. Hagrid was pleased because Snape was eating. Flitwick was pleased because it meant more card games. Even McGonagall accepted the arrangement since while Snape was talking to Carmichael in the staffroom, McGonagall could keep an eye on them. The world seemed a calm and pleasant place.

_Saturday, October 23, 1982 (2 days before the first quarter)_

The first Hogsmeade excursion of the year was the Saturday a week before Halloween. They had brunch instead of breakfast and lunch that day so that the students who could go into Hogsmeade would be ready and able to leave around noon (and so they would be inclined to buy more in the village).

For the first time since the beginning of the term, Dr. Carmichael sat next to Snape at brunch. Once again she was commenting on the food.

"What in the world is that disgusting mess?"

"Stewed kidneys. They're part of the old, traditional English breakfast. Or what they used to call a hunt breakfast. At least that's what I understand. We never had them for breakfast at home." Snape's mother had cooked kidneys from time to time because they were cheaper, and steak and kidney pie was frequently served as pub food where he lived, but he didn't tell Dr. Carmichael that.

"Organ meat. How can you eat it? Do you know what kidneys do while they're alive?"

"Doesn't bother me a bit. They have a strong taste, and you do have to prepare them properly so they're not too strong, but I like them. I wouldn't recommend them to you, though. I don't think you'd like them at all."

"I'll make a deal with you. I'll try the kidneys if you'll take tea with me in Hogsmeade."

Snape thought about this for a moment. Hogsmeade would be crowded, so it would be impossible for anything serious to occur. "All right," he said. "You have a deal."

Taking a teaspoon, Dr. Carmichael filled half of it with a tiny bit of kidney and a little sauce, grimaced, and put it into her mouth. After a thoughtful pause, she said, "It's milder than I thought it would be."

"That's because they were cut up properly before they were cooked."

"How do you know that?"

"My mum used to make them. The house-elves here do a good job."

Carmichael had a few more bites of the dish to prove she really did like it, then rose, saying as she left, "I'll see you in Hogsmeade around tea time. At the Three Broomsticks."

Snape went at once to the Three Broomsticks, since it was a place from whose windows he could conveniently keep an eye on the largest number of students at once. He'd hardly sat down when he was joined at the table by Alastor Moody.

"Thought I might find you out here today. Lovely day, isn't it? We've missed you in London." Moody greeted him heartily.

"I'm afraid you're going to have to go on missing me. I haven't done anything wrong."

"I can keep hoping. How's the new professor doing?"

"Well enough. She has a good grasp of the subject, and the students are in awe of her."

"I hear she's a man hunter and a cradle robber. Is she working on getting you into trouble?"

"No."

"Pity. I could use the help. I'm not letting that little room up north go to waste. There's things that have to be paid for and a person who has to pay. It's just a matter of time."

"Mr. Moody, I understand that you consider me responsible for certain things that have gone wrong in your life, but I assure you that I never intended to cause harm, and certainly not to you."

"And yet look what happened. Somebody helped them out. Somebody's paying." With that, Moody rose and left the room, calling out, "See you in December," just before he disappeared through the door.

Snape sat quietly for a long time, staring out the window at the students with their bags of sweets, toys from the joke shop, new robes, and wondered how life could be so carefree for some and not for others. He couldn't remember any time when his world had been like that.

"You're pensive," said Carmichael as she settled into the chair opposite him. "Penny for your thoughts."

"I was envying their ability to relax and enjoy themselves."

"You need to regress, return to your youth – or in your case, your school days – pretend you're fifteen again."

"That wouldn't work. It might make things worse."

"Then get away from here now and again. I notice you don't take your nights off. Isn't there some young lady you're courting who can help you relax and forget this place for a few hours?"

Snape reddened and looked down at his hands.

"You've got to learn to control that. No sooner do I bring up sex but you blush like a girl. It gives you away every time." Carmichael leaned across the table and patted Snape's hand maternally. "Don't worry, I won't tell your secret. But you've got to find a way to get past that, or each year it'll get worse. Now I know a few…"

"I'd rather not talk about this," said Snape suddenly, and stood to leave, but her chair blocked his way.

"You promised to have tea with me. I'll drop the subject and we'll sit and talk about voodoo." Which is what they did until it was time to return to the castle.

After the Hogsmeade gates had closed on the last of the students trudging up the hill to the castle, Snape went directly to Hagrid.

"How is it I can close my mind off to the Dark Lord and Dumbledore, but people like her know what I'm thinking? I don't want her to know the intimate details of my life, but she does! She doesn't need legilimency, she knows! And not just her. Everybody knows!"

"Can't say as I know, so it can't be everybody. What kinds of things do all these people know about ya?" Hagrid was boiling something in a huge cauldron, probably laundry, and had his back to Snape.

"In school – they could always tell when I was scared, Rabastan, Sirius, it didn't matter. They could always tell, and they knew when to jump me."

"And this 'her' y're on about, that's riled ya. That wouldn't be Professor Carmichael now, would it?"

"See? Even you can do it. What good is occlumency if everyone knows what you're thinking? I may as well hang up a sign – Open brain. Feel free to walk around as much as you like."

"What does Professor Carmichael read in ya? If ya don't mind?"

Snape hesitated, but if anyone would lend a sympathetic ear, it would be Hagrid. "Every now and again she brings up the subject of… well… sex. And she knows that I… haven't." Hagrid was silent, kept his face carefully averted, and waited for Snape to continue. "This afternoon she told me I blushed like a girl."

"Ya do tend t' get a mite flustered when the subject comes up," Hagrid observed. When Snape's only reply was a sigh, Hagrid went on. "They ain't reading yer thoughts, lad. They're reading yer feelings. And it ain't coming out through yer brain, it's coming out through yer body. It's blushing, and looking away, and the sudden sharp way ya glance for the exits. Yer body speaks a language. Fang can read it easy. So can the thestrals. I bet You-Know-Who couldn't read it at all."

"Is there any way to control my body's language? I really don't want the whole world to know about my personal life." Or lack of it.

"Practice, I suppose. If y're used enough to a subject, bringing it up in conversation won't make ya blush. If ya know yer eyes give ya away when y're scared, ya can control what ya look at."

"I don't understand."

It was Hagrid's turn to sigh. He pulled over a stool and sat facing Snape, black eyes to black eyes. "I been caring for yer scrawny little carcass since ya was nigh thirteen, diet and rickets and bad teeth, and you ain't never realized what a friend it is. Ya need t' move, it runs. Ya need t' climb, it climbs. It's a better weapon than a wand, and ya ain't never learned how t' use it 'cept to roll out of the way when someone aims a curse at ya. Ya want t' learn not t' blush? It's easy. Whatever embarrasses ya… study it. Learn every twist and turn of it. Get so ya can explain it all in loving detail, and when someone starts talking t' ya, ya won't care. It'll be old hat. Yer eyes go t' exits when y're scared. Check the way out every time ya enter a room so when trouble stirs ya already know which way y're jumping. Then turn t' ice and stare them down."

Snape had never before thought of training himself physically – the same way he might train a dog, or a horse – to conceal emotional responses as well as perform actions. He and Hagrid talked for a while, then Snape went to his own rooms to plan.

The following Thursday, Snape did take his day off. He went to his London bookstore to buy a book on sex and sexual customs. It was probably the most embarrassing book he'd ever read in his life, but it was invaluable. Sunday was Halloween, and by Halloween he'd read and reread enough so that he doubted if any casual remark could cause him any embarrassment at all.

_Halloween, Sunday, October 31, 1982 (the day before the full moon)_

The Halloween feast was set to begin at eight o'clock and last for two hours. The only other meal of the day was brunch, but an hors d'oeuvres table was set up at six. At the request of several of the teachers, who had enjoyed the welcoming feast, the six o'clock table concentrated on seafood.

Dr. Carmichael approached Snape. "The kidney experiment was relatively successful. Which of these little sea vermin should I try?"

"I'm not sure. I haven't eaten all of them. Those round things are scallops, and the curled pink ones are shrimps. The ones on the strange gray shells are oysters, and the ones in the narrow black shells are mussels."

"If you eat an oyster, I'll eat an oyster," said Carmichael. Snape agreed, though immediately after he swallowed his first oyster she whispered, "They're aphrodisiacs, you know."

_Blest be Hagrid and blest be books_, thought Snape as the dictionary definition of 'aphrodisiac' skidded across his brain. He picked up another. "They have that reputation, but it's more for shape and texture than any actual effect they have. The power of suggestion may be involved, however. I suppose if you thought Yorkshire pudding was an aphrodisiac, it would become one." He ate the second oyster.

Carmichael regarded Snape with narrowed eyes. "Are you sure you haven't kidnapped Professor Snape and insinuated yourself into his place cleverly disguised? Where's the sweet, innocent boy I had tea with last week?"

"Dr. Carmichael, I have been called some rather unpleasant names in my life, but you are the first person to have the temerity to use the words 'sweet' and 'innocent' to my face."

She laughed, but to Snape's great relief did not respond with more banter. He wasn't sure if he could think of anything else to say that wouldn't come out wrong. Instead Carmichael clapped him on the shoulder and said, "Round one to you, Sevvy. But I'm going to put your theory to the test. I'm going to eat a few more of these, and if you're wrong, I may be hunting for you later – for dessert." She turned away from him then and struck up a conversation with Professor Futhark.

McGonagall appeared at Snape's elbow. "Thank goodness you were able to keep your distance. You have to be careful about that woman, Severus. She'll probe for every crack in your armor, and just when you think you're well defended, she'll strike again."

"Please don't worry about me, Professor McGonagall. I'm really not attracted to her. She rather frightens me sometimes."

"Good boy. But just to be on the safe side, you probably shouldn't eat any more of those." She steered Snape away from the oysters.

The Great Hall was festooned with jack-o'-lanterns, black cats, skeletons, and bats. Most of them were purely decorative, but one or two real bats did have to be ejected from the party after they made nuisances of themselves.

Many of the students had purchased costumes in Hogsmeade the weekend before, which caused a bit of a problem since, after about half an hour, it became apparent that some of them were trying to infiltrate the tables of the other houses behind the anonymity of masks for the purpose of gathering information to be used as weapons later on. This only came to the attention of the staff when Gryffindor started the first round of 'Hunt the Spy' and chased an unlucky Hufflepuff boy halfway around the Hall before his mates came to his rescue.

At that point, all four tables began a spy search, which quickly escalated to a food fight. The staff sprang to do its duty, with about as much success as one usually has with two hundred eighty teenagers at a party, while Dumbledore watched from the dais with a beatific smile on his face.

After savoring the chaos for all of five minutes, Dumbledore rose. "Enough!" he thundered, stopping the trajectory of mashed potatoes and gelatin salad in mid flight. "Everyone will kindly sit down and resume the feast, or there will be no dessert." The students obeyed, returning demurely to their benches as the teachers went back to the high table and Dumbledore removed the mess with a wave of his wand.

Snape got back to his chair to find that Dr. Carmichael had moved next to him. She patted the seat of his chair with her heavily ringed hand. "Come sit beside me, Sevvy." He had the impression she may have had a glass or two too many. He took his seat, afraid that if he refused she might cause a scene, and fairly sure of Kettleburn's support on her other side if she got too much out of line.

"I'm sorry if I offended you earlier, dear," Carmichael whispered, leaning towards Snape and slipping her arm into his. "But you really are a sweet boy, and I really would like to know you better. It must be such a strain for you, surrounded by all this temptation, forced to stay aloof, alone. I can help you, make it easier for you…"

She had to be tipsy. Snape glanced over at Kettleburn, who was also looking worried. Just as Snape was thinking that the two of them should get Dr. Carmichael out of the Hall, McGonagall came and stood behind them.

"What do you think you're doing," she hissed quietly at Carmichael. "exhibiting your brazenness in front of the whole school? It's bad enough you behave like a hussy when the students aren't present, but on display like this?"

"Dear Minerva," replied Carmichael, turning slowly to face McGonagall, her voice also low so that the student tables couldn't hear, "there isn't a student here who doesn't do the same or worse behind the sofas in the common rooms after midnight. Believe me, they are not shocked."

"How dare you assume that these children are like you. Just because you were a wanton doesn't mean the rest of the world follows your example."

Snape, his arm firmly gripped by Carmichael, couldn't move, but Kettleburn was on his feet heading for Dumbledore, knowing that an explosion was coming and coming soon.

"Wanton, am I?" Carmichael started to rise but, not relinquishing her hold on Snape, found it difficult to do. "At least I don't chase them away by dying my nose indigo. You stifle them, and they run…"

"Professor McGonagall, if you would kindly step into the side chamber, I would be obliged," said Dumbledore, who now joined the fray. "And Professor Carmichael as well. Severus, would you assist Professor Carmichael. She may be unfamiliar with the room."

McGonagall glared at Dumbledore, her temper already flaring, but turned and stalked to the side chamber with great dignity. Snape rose, bringing Carmichael to her feet with him, Kettleburn helping on the other side. Carmichael was quite capable of standing and walking by herself, but both men wanted her restrained in case she decided to lash out.

They managed to make it to the side chamber without the students being aware that anything was happening. Once they were inside, Dumbledore had each of the ladies sit on opposite sides of the room while Kettleburn returned to his seat. Snape was sent for coffee for Dr. Carmichael. He could hear Dumbledore's voice as he opened the chamber door on his return.

"…last year because of the lack of a Dark Arts professor for the second and third terms." Dumbledore turn at the sound of the door. "Thank you, Severus. Dr. Carmichael, I strongly advise you to drink the coffee. Severus, you should stay since it seems, will you nill you, you are part of this. Now, Minerva, as I told you earlier, we were able to avoid disaster last June by concentrating all our efforts on the fifth and seventh years so that they could pass their OWLs and NEWTs, but the other years were seriously neglected and far behind where they should have been. The school needs – I need – a Dark Arts expert. Dr. Carmichael has already been able to make up most of the deficit in just two months. By June all of the classes should be well prepared for their exams."

"Does the moral character of this school stand for nothing! That woman is a disgrace –"

"Minerva!"

"A bad example to our students. She practically encourages lewd and immoral behavior."

"Have you ever seen her behave in anything but a professional way with the students."

"No, but at the welcoming feast and this evening she was exhibiting a level of inappropriateness that was unacceptable."

"She called me names, Albus," said Carmichael menacingly. "Unpleasant names."

"You were crawling all over a male professor in full view…"

"Linking arms doesn't constitute crawling…"

"Ladies!" The room was silent. Then Dumbledore turned toward the door. "Severus, public demonstrations aside, are Dr. Carmichael's attentions in any way disagreeable to you?"

Snape was taken aback by the question. He thought for a moment. "I would rather it were kept on a professional basis," he said, noting both McGonagall's smugness and Carmichael's anger.

"Very well. Professor McGonagall, I expect you to behave professionally when you come into contact with Dr. Carmichael. You should stay separated from each other at meals and exchange as few remarks as possible at official occasions."

"Sir, I want to register my opinion that this woman is not fit to teach children and should not remain."

"Opinion registered. Now you will follow my instructions."

"Yes, sir."

"Dr. Carmichael, the same. And you will not initiate any kind of flirtation with Professor Snape."

"Just keep her away from me, Albus. That woman is vindictive and dangerous."

"Enough from both of you! Now, we must maintain appearances. Severus, you will leave first and go to your place at the far side of the table. Then, Minerva, you will take your seat at the center. Valeria, you will follow me out and remain at this end. None of you should look at each other for the remainder of the feast. We do not want the students to know there is discord among the staff. The rest of the staff should not be forced to deal with it either. Is that understood?"

They all agreed and went to their separate places without comment. The rest of the Halloween feast passed in apparent calm and good cheer.

After the students had retired to their dormitories, the teachers collected in the staffroom for a final round of drinks and a little friendly chatting. McGonagall went immediately to the far corner to help Sinistra fill the little goblets with sherry, and to stay as far as possible from the general crowd.

Most of them had been served when, a few minutes later, Carmichael walked in. She stayed near the door and carefully kept her face turned away from the other side of the room so that she and McGonagall wouldn't look at each other. Most of the teachers didn't notice.

"Is it all right if I ask you to get me a glass, too?" Carmichael asked Snape, and there was a bitter note in her voice. "You wouldn't interpret it as an attack or anything like that?"

"Of course not," Snape answered. "What would you like? Sherry? Port? Mead?"

"A glass of sherry would be nice."

Snape made his way to the other end of the room. "Could I have a goblet of sherry for Professor Carmichael," he asked Sinistra.

"Let me get that for you," said McGonagall, turning to pour the glass from a bottle on the counter and handing it to Snape who took it to Carmichael.

Carmichael received the goblet with thanks and returned to her conversation with Futhark, drinking the sherry in a couple of mouthfuls. A moment later a funny look came across her face. "Dear," she said turning to Sprout. "Is there a ladies room on this floor? I think I'm going to be sick."

Sprout went with Carmichael to be sure she found the way, and the rest of the teachers began clearing up, as it was after eleven o'clock. No one thought much of it until fifteen minutes later when Sprout came running into the staffroom in great agitation.

"Madam Pomfrey!" Sprout called. "Is Madam Pomfrey here?"

"Over here, Pomona," said the nurse. "What's wrong?"

"It's Dr. Carmichael! She's terribly sick, Poppy. I've never seen anything like it."

Sprout and Pomfrey hurried out of the room, while the rest of the staff exchanged concerned glances. McGonagall went over to Snape. "You've got the youngest legs. Go up and let Albus know. He'll want to be with her."

Snape sprinted up the stairs to the seventh floor, and was admitted to the spiral staircase. A few words, and Dumbledore was speeding down to the first floor staff bathroom to find out what was happening. The teachers hovered around the entrance hall and the staffroom, worried and wanting to help.

Sprout appeared among them and was inundated with questions.

"The poor woman," she said. "It's like her system is trying to purge everything inside her. Diarrhea, vomiting, it won't stop. And in between bouts she just keeps pacing, waiting for the next one. Her skin's all clammy, and she's shaking like a leaf."

Dumbledore came to the staffroom. "What was she doing just before she took ill?" he asked.

"She walked in fine," said Futhark, "and we got to talking. There was nothing wrong. And then like that – suddenly she got all queer in the face and said she was going to be sick. Just one second to the next."

"Did she eat or drink anything?"

"I think she had a glass of… what was it?"

"Sherry," said Snape. "I gave it to her."

"And where did you get it from?"

"Over there. Professor Sinistra… no, Professor McGonagall poured it for me."

"Where is the glass now?"

The glass had been cleared away and cleaned, and placed with the others in the cupboard. There was no way to tell which it had been, or if found, what it had contained. Meanwhile, Madam Pomfrey stayed by Dr. Carmichael's side, unable even to take her to the hospital wing until the purging was finished.

"Right now," Pomfrey told Dumbledore, "I'm most concerned about dehydration. She's losing too much fluid, and her stomach won't hold anything that I give her."

After two hours, the strength and frequency of the bouts of purging seemed to abate to the point where Pomfrey was ready to take Carmichael to the hospital wing on a stretcher. By this time Carmichael was beset by chills, shivering with cold even though wrapped in a blanket.

Dumbledore sent the rest of the staff, including McGonagall, to bed, but asked Sprout and Snape to stay with him in the hospital wing. He had need of their expertise.

"What could cause this?" he asked them.

Pomfrey joined them. "It's over," she said. "Dr. Carmichael is fine. Vomiting, diarrhea, chills, all gone. It's as if she was never sick. First she's shivering in one of my beds, then she's fit as a fiddle. I've told her she has to stay here until morning, and she's agreed."

"Diagnosis?" Dumbledore asked.

"No disease that I know of. Pharmacological."

"Which means?"

Snape answered. "It may be a result of poisoning."

"What could cause this?" Dumbledore repeated.

"It could be something that's both cathartic and emetic. Blue flag… May apple…" Snape said. "Or a combination of a cathartic with an emetic."

"Do we have these things at Hogwarts?" Dumbledore asked.

"Headmaster," said Sprout, "there are poisons all around us. The bulb of a daffodil could have caused vomiting like that… though at that strength it would have killed her hours ago. Finding them isn't difficult if you know what to look for."

"All right," Dumbledore sighed. "We must consider ourselves in the midst of a full investigation. Severus, have you been within view of someone else at all times tonight?"

"Yes, sir. Except when I went upstairs to get you."

"Will it be possible to confirm by witnesses that from a certain time you have not gone back to your own rooms?"

Seeing where the questions led, Snape paused, trying to fight the surge of bitterness that rose in him. "Yes, sir. I've been visible since this afternoon."

"Good. I need to go down and seal your rooms, and you need to sleep somewhere else for the rest of the night. Pomona, how secure are the greenhouses?"

"Ordinary locking, but I shut them down Saturday morning, and I could tell if anyone had opened them."

"I shall seal them tonight as well. As for the more available poisons, we shall have to try to account for as much as we may. I fear classes must be suspended tomorrow while I talk to the staff and the Ministry."

Snape went with Sprout and Dumbledore first to his own rooms, which were sealed against him, and then to the greenhouses, which were sealed against Sprout. That they were also sealed against everyone else seemed irrelevant.

"Where am I to sleep tonight, sir," Snape asked Dumbledore. By this time it was nearly four in the morning. Notices had been placed that there would be brunch instead of breakfast, and that classes would not be held.

"The house-elves have prepared one of the guest rooms on the sixth floor. You should be comfortable there for a day or two. Until we see how serious the situation really is."

Snape went to the sixth floor, immensely tired and more than ready to sleep. The guest quarters turned out to be far more spacious and comfortable than his own rooms, if a bit sparsely supplied with things like books. He had, in any case, no need of books that night – or rather that morning – and could remedy the lack if he had to stay longer than a night.

It was easier to get to sleep than he thought. Random speculation about who might be responsible for the attack on Dr. Carmichael succumbed to exhaustion, and he was asleep very quickly, dreaming of clams and mussels having an obstacle race past the Whomping Willow while Lily cheered 'Mudbloods! Mudbloods! Go... mudbloods!'

When Snape woke the next morning, it was nearly nine o'clock. It took him a moment to remember where he was and why, then he dressed quickly and went downstairs. Most of the staff was filing into the Great Hall for brunch along with a highly elated group of students who were ecstatic to find their classes canceled for the day. McGonagall wasn't there.

"I hear she's still in the hospital," said Kettleburn, not having to explain who 'she' was.

"I think it's just a precaution. She was feeling better around three o'clock."

"You were up that late? Guess it goes with the potions job. My wife wasn't happy with the hour I got in, even if it was Halloween, but when I told her what happened she was as concerned as I was. What did they find out?"

"I'm not sure I'm supposed to talk about it," said Snape, and left it at that.

At ten o'clock, the team from the Ministry arrived. By this time, most of the students had finished in the Great Hall and gone outside or to the library to study. After inviting the Ministry team to join the staff at brunch, Dumbledore turned the Great Hall into an interview room. The team spoke to the teachers one by one, cautioning each not to reveal anything of the session to the others.

McGonagall had finally come downstairs. "Is all this really necessary?" she asked Dumbledore, waving toward the Hall. "It is a serious disruption of the school's routine."

"I fear it is necessary, Minerva. Yesterday's episode is unprecedented in Hogwarts history, at least since the end of the Middle Ages, and Val Carmichael is a very well-known person. We must see that all procedures are correctly followed."

Snape, since he was one of the principal witnesses, was one of the last called. Sitting before the investigators reminded him of his trial nearly a year earlier.

"Did you get Dr. Carmichael a glass of sherry?"

"I did."

"Why did you do that?"

"Because she asked me to."

The investigation droned on in a dull litany of seemingly pointless questions.

"Where was the sherry?"

"In the far corner of the room."

"And the glasses?"

"The same."

"Did you ask Professor McGonagall for the sherry?"

"No, I asked Professor Sinistra."

"Did Professor Sinistra give you the sherry?"

"No, Professor McGonagall did."

"Did she know it was for Dr. Carmichael?"

"Yes."

On and on, for over two hours, the Ministry team questioned Snape, while he locked and sealed every feeling he had under double doors and hatches in order to remain calm. They reviewed the timing of the glass of sherry repeatedly, then extended the questioning to earlier occasions, including a detailed account of Carmichael's 'attentions' to him. Fortunately, his study on the subject had its continued good effect in making him impervious to both the questions and their implications, and at no point did Snape become embarrassed or blush.

"Are you certain that you never encouraged Dr. Carmichael?"

"I don't understand what you mean."

"Did you ever do anything to make her feel that you took pleasure in her company?"

"I did take pleasure in her company. She has a excellent understanding of her subject, and I enjoyed talking to her."

"So Dr. Carmichael had some grounds for feeling that you might be attracted to her?"

"I have no way of knowing what Dr. Carmichael felt. For that you should ask her."

"But Professor McGonagall tried to discourage you from association with Dr. Carmichael?"

"On several occasions, yes."

When the questioning was over, Snape was asked to take the team to his office. There, in the presence and with the help of Professor Dumbledore, they broke the seals on the door and entered.

"Are these the only rooms over which you have control, Professor Snape?"

"There's also the classroom."

"We'll check that, too. Do you have an inventory of everything in this room?"

Enormously grateful now for all the meticulous work he'd done since taking the potions job, Snape pulled the inventory files from their cabinet and gave them to the inspectors.

"Is this the only place where you keep poisons?"

"Yes."

"You may go for the moment. We may have more questions after we finish here. Don't discuss this with anyone."

Snape left them reluctantly, knowing they were about to sort through everything he had at Hogwarts. _That's what I get for being the only one here who regularly deals with poisons._ He went to the staff room. It was still only mid afternoon, but since the investigating team had taken over the Great Hall, dinner would be served to the students in their dormitories and to the staff in the staffroom. Meanwhile, a refreshment table had been set up.

"Good Lord, Severus," Sprout exclaimed when she saw him, "we thought they were never going to let you come up for air. Here, have a bite to eat and something to drink. You must be exhausted."

"Just pumpkin juice, Pomona, thank you. I'm supposed to hold myself available for further questioning. They're searching my rooms now."

"Whatever for?"

"I'm not supposed to discuss it."

"If this is how they treat you," said Flitwick gravely, "what do you suppose they'll do to Minerva?"

"Have they inspected the greenhouses?" Snape asked Sprout.

"Not yet, though I'm sure they will. They're not going to find anything there but plants, though."

"Right," said Snape. "Perfectly harmless things like mandragora, henbane, and monkshood. Nothing suspicious there at all." Sprout looked suddenly nervous.

Flopping into one of the leather chairs, Snape sipped his pumpkin juice and let the conversation flow around him, feeling no desire whatever to join in. It would have been pleasant just to relax for an hour in the staffroom were it not for the certainty that his interrogation wasn't over yet. Sure enough, the hour had barely passed when he was called back into the Great Hall.

"Professor Snape, we wish to thank you for making our job so easy. Have you always kept such detailed accounts of your inventory?"

"This is my second year at Hogwarts. Last year I had to start everything with no prior records. The detailed inventories were necessary."

"And before that?"

"I beg your pardon."

"Is it true, Professor Snape that you were a Death Eater?"

"Yes."

"What were your duties?"

"Making potions, inventing a few spells, teaching basic self-defense…"

"Did you keep such detailed accounts in your potions work there?"

"Of course."

"Were you ever asked to brew poisons?"

Three heartbeats. "A couple of times."

"Define 'couple.'"

"Four."

"Is there any reason why you tried to minimize the quantity by using an ambiguous word?"

"No."

"Were you ever asked to produce a poison to be used specifically against Val Carmichael?"

"No."

"Are you certain."

"Positive. I was never told what things were used for."

"So they might have been used against her without your knowledge."

"It is a possibility."

"Professor Snape, who are these people?" The photos from the lararium were pushed across the table.

"That's me with my parents at Blackpool."

"Muggle pictures?"

"My father was a muggle. This was my witch grandmother, Constantina Rossendale, and this my muggle grandmother, Leonora Smith."

"And this?" It was the framed scrap of paper from Lily.

"A classmate who died during the troubles. I didn't have a photograph."

"Who was it?"

"I would prefer not to say."

There was a pause as they noted that he would not answer the question. Then they started up again. "It seems, Professor, that you have some unusual reading material in your room." The book about sexual practices was placed in front of Snape on the table.

"I got that at the suggestion of a colleague. I was unfamiliar with some of Dr. Carmichael's references, and he suggested I learn more about the subject."

"You bought a book like this to understand flirtatious nuances?"

"Dr. Carmichael has extensive experience."

That silenced them for a moment as each member of the team apparently tried to imagine what Carmichael may have said to Snape. Then they resumed.

"Who was the colleague?"

Two more heartbeats. "Hagrid. But he will not want to say so if he feels he is violating my confidence."

"You also have a set of murder mysteries in your private collection."

"Yes."

"The third volume in the series deals with deadly poison put into food that will only be consumed by one person."

"I believe it does. The poison involved is aconite."

"Is there any aconite at Hogwarts?"

"Yes, the monkshood plant grows in the greenhouses, and I have aconite in my stores. But you are not looking for that."

"Why not, Professor?"

"Aconite poisoning affects the heart. Whatever was used on Dr. Carmichael affected the digestive tract, both upper and lower."

"You know a lot about poisons."

"I'm the potions master. It's my job."

The interrogation of Professor McGonagall was widely anticipated and even wagered on, this last inspired and encouraged by Kettleburn. The entire staff watched from doorways and behind pillars as McGonagall marched proudly down the marble staircase and into the Great Hall, the massive doors closing behind her.

No one overheard the interview, and the Ministry never made it public, but the Hogwarts staff witnessed the faces of the investigative team as they left the Great Hall several hours later. They were all in shock. McGonagall had, of course, taught them all in Transfiguration, and had been head of house to two of the three. She knew their deepest secrets, and was not a woman to forego the use of ammunition when the situation required it.

"They had the nerve," McGonagall told the rest of the teachers later in the staffroom, "to suggest that I might want to poison the woman! As if I would waste good poison on her! What did they ask you, Severus?"

"They instructed me not to talk about it," Snape replied. When the others pressured him, he continued, "And I am sure that in light of my experiences of last year, you can all understand why I am reluctant to defy their orders."

That silenced them all, even McGonagall, though she did whisper, "If there was something I really needed to know, you would hint…?" He assured her that he would, if there were.

The only other worry was that the team called Hagrid late into the evening. Snape had his fingers crossed that Hagrid would, in fact, tell them the truth, and was on pins and needles until the session ended.

"They told me ya said ya'd talked t' me," Hagrid admitted to Snape later. "Now how would they know that unless ya really told them? So I told them 'bout our chat."

"The whole thing?" Snape asked, cringing inside, though careful reflection had already told him that no amount of embarrassment about his sexual innocence could ever compare to being suspected of attempted murder.

"Well, how was I supposed t' know what was important and what was not? Sure I told them the whole thing."

"And you did well, Hagrid. You probably helped me a lot. Thank you."

"Glad I could, too. You been known t' get yerself into the strangest of scrapes."

"I know, Hagrid. Thank you again. I appreciate it."

The investigative team stayed on for a few more days, then returned to the Ministry in London. Classes had begun to resume even while they were still on the grounds and, except for Dark Arts, were in full swing before the end of the week. And then – the remedy for all ills – the first Quidditch game of the season was upon them.

_Saturday, November 6, 1982 (two days before the last quarter)_

It was Slytherin versus Gryffindor, the heads having decided to return to the traditional schedule. Snape was sorry that Algie and Chris were gone, both having graduated, but eager to test the talents of the new team. Lionel Atherton a sixth year now, continued as seeker. Rhonda Shoemaker, David Commyns, and Saffron Magee, were the chasers. The two new beaters were Sergey Duval and Josh Van Zandt, while the new keeper was Richie Gamp.

Snape was a little concerned about Richie's safety, since his father was known to have been a Death Eater, now in Azkaban. What was not known, not even to the Ministry, was that both Beaters and the youngest Chaser, Saffron, also came from Death Eater families. Snape had warned them all that he did not want the game to get too interesting.

Val Carmichael made her first public appearance at brunch on Saturday, the sixth of November, sitting next to Dumbledore while McGonagall sat at the far end of the high table from Snape, closer to her own house table. The atmosphere was deceptively calm.

"How does it look?" Kettleburn had stayed the night just to be on the grounds early for the game. "Are they in fighting shape?"

"It depends on what kind of fight you're looking for."

"Are you serious?"

"Professor Kettleburn, do you see that tall, blond Beater over there at the Gryffindor table?"

"Peterson? He's in one of my classes."

"He dropped out for a couple of months last year over the Death Eater business."

"I remember. Tried to take on one of your boys, didn't he?"

"Exactly. The boy he attacked is now our Keeper."

Kettleburn's eyes widened. "Thanks for the tip," he said, and moved off to make a side bet or two.

In the early afternoon, the whole school trooped down to the Quidditch field. Snape was surprised to see that a large number of spectators were coming through the gates from Hogsmeade. Many of them were total strangers to him.

"First opening game at Hogwarts since the whole You-Know-Who business ended," McGonagall whispered. "Last year they were still hunting Death Eaters. This year everyone feels safe."

Extra viewing stands had been set up to accommodate the visitors, among whom Snape recognized Alastor Moody, who waved at him but did not approach. Students were leaving the school groups to greet their parents, and Snape noted that the first year boy, Bill Weasley, ran over to a tall, thin man and a short plump woman, both with red hair, who must be Arthur Weasley and his wife. They were surrounded by a horde of young children, the youngest of whom seemed to be still a baby, though Snape was not good at judging children's ages. All of them had red hair, and most of them were distressingly active and noisy.

Dumbledore went over to speak with the Weasleys, and Mrs. Weasley glanced at Snape, then rather pointedly turned her back to tend the children. Arthur Weasley, however, followed Dumbledore to where Snape stood next to McGonagall.

"Minerva," Dumbledore said, "I am sure you remember Arthur. Arthur, this is our newest teacher, Professor Severus Snape."

Weasley stuck out his right hand. "Pleased to meet you, Professor."

Snape shook hands. "The honor is mine, sir. I understand that you did me a kindness earlier this year, and I welcome the opportunity to tell you how grateful I am."

"Not at all, not at all. I hear you're taking good care of Bill."

"Your son is quite competent at Potions," – an overstatement – "but I understand he excels at Charms and Defense against the Dark Arts."

"Yes, yes. We're quite pleased with his marks."

They parted then, McGonagall and Snape to sit with Flitwick and Sprout between them while Dumbledore joined some of the people from the Ministry.

Snape was not pleased to note that Val Carmichael had attached herself to Alastor Moody, and that the two of them were deep in conversation.

Madam Hooch started the game, and from the beginning it was apparent that Gryffindor's main tactic was to score by taking out the Slytherin Keeper. The first Bludger hit Richie in the shoulder, and the second was going for his head when Sergey managed to beat it back in time. In a way this was not a bad thing for Slytherin as long as they could protect Richie. It meant that Gryffindor, would rather narrow-mindedly keep the Bludgers around the Slytherin goal hoops where they were convenient to use against any Gryffindor Chasers who might approach, while the Slytherin Chasers were free from having to worry about Bludgers. It was a bit of a strain on Richie, though, who was the principal target.

Things began to heat up when a Gryffindor Beater ran his broom into Richie's. Madam Hooch's whistle stopped the action. "Foul!" she called. The Quaffle went to the Slytherin Chasers. Saffron made a pass at the right-hand hoop, suddenly dove out of the scoring area as she passed the Quaffle laterally to Rhonda, and Slytherin scored the first goal.

Cheers from Slytherin. Boos from Gryffindor. Snape was growing aware that the visiting crowd was mainly pro-Gryffindor, with the entire Weasley clan at its center. Mrs. Weasley, in particular, was loud and passionate not only in her support of Gryffindor, but also in her opposition to Slytherin.

"Isn't Mrs. Weasley taking this game a bit too seriously?" Snape whispered to Flitwick.

"Don't mind her. It's probably good for her. She was always an emotional student, and it's been hard the last couple of years having to hold everything in for her family's sake."

"I don't understand."

"Did you ever hear the names Gideon and Fabian Prewett?"

Snape remembered the day the squad of Death Eaters returned to headquarters with the news that they'd killed the Prewett brothers. There had been something of a celebration. All he said to Flitwick was, "Yes."

"She's their sister. Molly Prewett."

That explained her coldness and turning her back when Dumbledore wanted to introduce Snape to them. She probably knew about Richie's father, too. Snape tried to ignore the screaming visitor stands.

The game had become a war. Normally Quidditch was a highly physical game, but this one was a running battle that was now racking up more fouls than clean scores. Chasers were wrestling the Quaffle from each other's grasp, and two of them even locked brooms, bringing both crashing to the ground, still fighting for the Quaffle, and earning simultaneous fouls against both teams.

Richie was slammed against a goal post, removing him from the game for fifteen minutes. Slytherin made the foul shot, but Gryffindor began rushing the hoops and scored five times while there was no Keeper to defend them. Josh and a rival Beater got into a fist fight as both the Gryffindor and Slytherin stands screamed for blood, and Madam Hooch had to pull the two out of the game until they cooled off a little. Then Sergey's club hit the end of a Chaser's broom, knocking it and her to the ground and the Gryffindor stands began to empty onto the field ready to riot.

The game was stopped as the teachers struggled to get the students back into the stands. Dumbledore placed a barrier down the middle of the pitch at ground level to be sure no one could cross, and the game resumed. It was 90 - 70 in favor of Gryffindor, and after nearly an hour of play, no one had seen the Snitch.

Still the battle raged. The noise from the stands drowned out any possibility of conversation; the air around the pitch was pulsing and throbbing with the sound, the wooden stands vibrating from the stomping and pounding. Then a Gryffindor Beater hit a Bludger into the Hufflepuff stands forcing students to dive for cover, and Hufflepuff spilled onto the pitch, certain it was in retaliation for their support of Slytherin.

The sun was low in the sky and the score stood 140 - 130 when the Snitch finally appeared. Both Seekers saw it at the same time and plunged toward the earth, jostling and shoving each other while the electrified stands urged them on. The Snitch won, eluding both Seekers and streaking around the pitch with a whining hum. But now it was only a matter of who would get it first, and the scoring at the hoops became secondary as Beaters tried to break the concentration of Seekers and Chasers tried to throw them off course.

The end was a neck-and-neck race as the Snitch soared high into the air, both Seekers leaving the rest of their teams far below, and then the Gryffindor Seeker was chasing Lionel with murderous intent as he streaked back toward the ground with the Snitch firmly clasped in his right hand.

Slytherin had won, and all Gryffindor wanted was revenge.

Getting the students back into the castle was an exercise in riot control. Gryffindor and Ravenclaw went first, directly to the Great Hall for supper. Another barrier was placed down the middle of the hall to prevent projectile contact between the two sides as Hufflepuff and Slytherin followed them in. The teachers postponed their own meals to patrol the aisles, allowing the noise to continue, but silencing any attempts by either side to insult the other. By the end of supper, the mood had calmed considerably, Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff were no longer enemies, and everybody was ready for the common rooms and bed.


	29. Chapter 29 – Blackmail

**Severus Snape: The Middle Years 1982-1983 – Blackmail**

_Sunday, November 7, 1982 (the day before the last quarter)_

Dr. Carmichael made her next move on Sunday.

"You have quite a fan club in Alastor Moody," she cooed as she settled into the seat next to Snape at brunch and helped herself to an omelet. "We were comparing notes."

"That must have been dull. It was lucky you had the Quidditch to liven things up." Snape was selecting his usual kipper, toast, and coffee.

"On the contrary, it was fascinating. A young, unattached male Death Eater with an interest in sex and murder. It sounds like material for a popular novel. How many parents would feel comfortable with someone like that in daily close contact with their teenage daughters? Think of the scandal if I should happen to slip and mention it in an interview with _The Daily Prophet_."

"Are you trying to blackmail me?"

"You do cut right to the chase, don't you."

"I see no reason to waste time with someone as direct as you."

"Good boy. Now, what would you do if your position here was suddenly attacked by outraged mothers?"

"You're behind the times. It already has been, and Professor Dumbledore stood behind me all the way."

"Ah. That was the Death Eater business. I'm talking about sixteen- and seventeen-year-old girls in your NEWT level classes. There's not that much difference in your ages. Don't tell me you've never been tempted." Carmichael stretched out her hand as she spoke and turned Snape's jaw so that he faced her, meeting her eyes. "Oh," she said quietly, and looked away again. "There's more to this than I thought."

It was a shock to Snape as well to discover that Val Carmichael was something of a legilimens. His mind raced quickly over the past couple of months, trying to recall any incident when looking at her had brought unexplained random thoughts to the surface, but there were none. This was the first time she'd tried legilimency on him.

"Does it bother you?" he asked.

"Not at all, but I can see where it might bother you, dear. Intimacy does require a disturbing degree of… openness, doesn't it? Not something you're good at – or comfortable with – I imagine. I am now on the horns of a dilemma." Carmichael toyed with her food, then continued. "I'm beginning to see why someone like you might reject the advances of someone like me. Or of anyone for that matter. That little shell of yours is going to be very painful to crack, and I'm not into pain – quite the contrary. On the other hand, I have a reputation to protect. Men don't reject me, at least not publicly."

"What would you suggest?"

She considered him speculatively. "Whatever happened to the sweet, innocent boy of last month who blushed at everything I said? I rather miss him. At least there was some warmth there. This new one has gone all cold on me."

"I'll try to conjure up a blush."

"You'll conjure up more than that. Thursday's your night off. You're taking me on a date."

Snape's fork stopped in mid air as he glanced sideways at her. "Why?" he said.

"I told you. I have a reputation to protect. I'll leave you alone here at Hogwarts if we give the impression something's happening outside."

"Why don't you just choose someone else?"

"Who? Binns is a ghost, Flitwick and Dumbledore are too old. The others are married."

"Hagrid? Filch?"

Carmichael glared at him. "I'm trying to let you off the hook, and you're insulting me. I can get nasty, too, you know."

"What kind of date were you contemplating?"

"They tell me you're a muggle-raised half-blood. I'm muggle-born. How about dinner and a movie?"

Snape thought for a moment. It didn't seem like such a bad proposition, as long as they kept it platonic. "Anything in particularly that you want to see?" he asked.

"Surprise me."

And that was it. Snape had a date for Thursday evening.

The next problem was deciding where to go for dinner and what movie to see. Fortunately, Snape knew something of Dr. Carmichael's taste in food, and there was more than one restaurant, nice restaurants with good atmosphere (at least that was how they appeared through the windows), that catered to the plain, British, roast beef taste. On a Thursday evening in November there should be no problem getting a table.

It would, however, be more expensive than Snape was used to, which meant he would have to take a relatively large sum out of his bank account, necessitating the use of his cash card. He didn't really want Dr. Carmichael to know he had a muggle bank account, but there was no help for it.

That left the choice of a movie. Snape had restarted his subscription to the Guardian with the beginning of the new school year, and he pored over the listings trying to find something that he could watch with her that wouldn't be suggestive of a closer relationship.

That proved hard to do. It was November, and the movie listings were mostly films that had come out in the spring and the summer. Snape had saved old newspapers and was able to check the reviews, and was appalled at how many of them had either a romantic theme or were blatantly risqué. One or two looked promising on the surface, until he read the review. One, which he'd hoped to be a scholarly work, turned out to be very graphic. _It's a good thing I have the newspaper. I'd hate to think what would happen if I took her to that one._

In the end, the only one that seemed safe was a film about a man who got himself trapped inside something called a computer. Since much of the movie itself was actually made on one of these computer things, Snape thought it might be interesting to watch.

_Thursday, November 11, 1982 (3 days after the last quarter)_

McGonagall caught him at the top of the dungeon steps when he came up for breakfast on Thursday morning.

"Severus, you are not spending the evening with that woman!"

"How did you know?"

"It is true, then? She's talking about it at the high table, how you've been planning a romantic evening for ages, but it had to be postponed because of the 'unpleasantness.' And whenever she says 'unpleasantness,' she turns and smirks at me. How could you?"

"It hasn't been for ages, and I have no intention of it's being romantic, but please don't make a row. She wants this, and I don't need any more enemies."

McGonagall regarded him with just the tiniest touch of sympathy. "All right, I won't say anything. But you keep away from that woman's claws. She's a shark."

"Sharks don't have claws."

"Jaws, then. Or think of her as a tigress, ready to tear you to shreds."

"Nice image. I'll keep it in mind," said Snape, wondering if McGonagall had talked to her own son this way. When Carmichael was younger, talk like that might have been counterproductive.

Dumbledore was informed that neither Snape nor Dr. Carmichael would be at supper, and when Snape left his dungeon rooms late that afternoon dressed neatly in Victorian black frock coat and trousers with an overcoat against the cold, Carmichael was waiting for him in a rather elegant green cocktail-length dress, a thick, warm, hooded cape over her arm. Students on their way to the Great Hall paused to watch.

Taking the cape, Snape said politely, "You look very nice tonight," and held the cape open for her to step into, which she did leaning back a little so that her face turned toward him as she replied, "So do you." Around them students were whispering and stifling giggles, but Snape did his best to ignore both them and the amused teachers as Carmichael slipped her arm through his and they walked out into the November evening.

Neither spoke much on the way down the hill. Snape didn't look back either, but Carmichael did, and raised her free hand to wave. "We have an audience," she told him, which didn't make Snape feel any more comfortable about the whole business.

Once outside the Hogsmeade gate, they apparated to a little alley near the Leaky Cauldron. Snape led the way first to a cash machine in Leicester Square to get the necessary pounds while Carmichael watched, fascinated.

"You're a very strange wizard, even for a half-blood," she said. "Half the muggle-borns forget how to do things like this the moment they pick up a wand. It's as if they had a frontal lobotomy."

The restaurant was exactly what Snape had hoped, elegant and formal, where they could order perfectly normal soup, salad, and roast beef. Both oysters and escargot were on the menu, but neither of the two felt adventuresome.

"So," said Carmichael as they waited for their dinner. "Tell me about yourself."

"There isn't much to tell. My mother was a witch, my father a muggle…"

"Was? Are they dead?"

"Car accident. It was a long time ago. I went to Hogwarts, and now I teach there. That's all there is."

"Except for the excursion into the Death Eater business."

"I'd rather not talk about that. Besides, no one could top Moody's fertile imagination. What about you?"

"Muggle-born in a community with a large wizard population, so the Hogwarts letter came as no shock. It was harder for muggle-borns then, but Professor Dippet recognized my potential and had a job arranged for me in the Ministry with Muggle Artifacts. Unfortunately there was a change of teaching staff in my seventh year, and one of the teachers wasn't very experienced. As a result, we weren't adequately prepared for the NEWTs and I couldn't have the job. I got a job with a muggle company instead and met my first husband, Mr. Wolfstone. He was a muggle."

"So it turned out all right, then?"

"It did not. Jacob and I fought like cats and dogs. By the age of twenty-three I was in the middle of my first divorce. That was when I met Ignatius Carmichael. We traveled the world together, he and I, and I started writing. That's why I kept his name, even after the divorce."

Snape's face and mouth remained closed, but Carmichael leaned across the table and patted his hand. "You don't have to ask. Five husbands, five divorces. I'm beginning to think maybe it's me. There was Mulberry, then Pendennis, and the one I'm currently dumping is Buntley. Those are the ones I actually married. Variety is the spice of life."

"I don't think I could do that," Snape said.

"Dear, as tight as you've locked yourself up, I'll bet there's a lot you can't do. I wouldn't wager money you could even talk to a girl, much less go to… Oh, dear," she began to laugh, "I've got you blushing again!"

The food came then, and for a few minutes neither of them spoke.

"I'll bet," said Carmichael, pouring herself a second glass of wine, "that you've been wondering why Professor McGonagall doesn't like me."

"It isn't really my business."

"But you're stuck right in the middle of it, dear. I'd say that makes it at least a little bit your business."

When Snape didn't respond, Carmichael went on. "When I was in seventh year, Professor McGonagall's son started in first year. He was a cute little boy, and because she was one of my favorite teachers, I kind of adopted him – helped him with his homework, things like that. Then I left, got married, and six years later, in the middle of the divorce, I came back to Hogsmeade to have some quiet time and reflect on the direction my life was going. It happened to be an excursion weekend, and Marcellus recognized me and came over to say hello.

"Well, he wasn't eleven any more, he was seventeen and an adult. Smart and good-looking. And worried about his future. His mother was trying to push him into a career he hated. He needed someone to talk to, I needed someone to talk to, and so we talked. I met him the next excursion weekend, and then over the Christmas break. By then we'd both realized that we wanted more than talking.

"McGonagall raised the roof. She threatened him, and she threatened me. She went so far as to tell him she would disown him, and even hired spies to follow him. He was going crazy. During the Easter break he told me he had to get out of the situation and asked me to help. What was I to do? He dropped out of Hogwarts, and we were together for six months. Then he went back to her and patched things up while I took up with and married Ignatius. We've never seen each other since – I understand he's married and has children and is very happy – but McGonagall's never forgiven me."

"That's it?"

"That's it. It was more than twenty years ago."

They talked a little more about other things, then Snape said they had to leave to catch the movie. The cinema was just on the other side of Leicester Square, and they had plenty of time to stroll leisurely over to it. Snape had been in a cinema once or twice as a boy, and to the theater more recently, and so managed to figure out the box office and the tickets with a minimum of trouble.

Just before they went in, Carmichael looked over the posters with some distaste. "Are we sure we want to see this?" She asked.

"I thought it might be interesting. It's the cutting edge of computer graphics technology."

"If you say so, dear, though I never thought I would ever watch something called Tron. Sounds like a cartoon monster to me."

"You can't tell me you enjoyed that!" exclaimed Carmichael as they left the cinema. "It made no sense at all."

"But it did," Snape replied. "It was fascinating. The master program was taking over all the peripheral programs and incorporating them into itself. If it couldn't take over all of a program, it diverted its functions into non-vital areas, then eventually erased them." He was thinking of the NASA computers that ran his beloved Apollo and Voyager spacecraft. "Governments and large companies are all using computers like that. I think they're even marketing a couple that you can use in the home."

"How would you know that?"

"I read a newspaper."

"Okay, smart guy, in the movie, how did the person get into the computer?"

"That was because of the orange."

"What orange?"

"The one they were experimenting on. The one they separated into its molecules then put back together. The computer used the machine on him."

"Sounds like 'Star Trek' to me."

Snape stopped dead in the middle of Leicester Square. "What's 'Star Trek'?" he asked. "Because there's another movie out that has 'Star Trek' as part of its title."

"It's a television show I used to watch with my third husband, Peter Mulberry. He was a muggle, too. That would have been about fifteen years ago. They were always sending things to different places by mixing up their molecules."

"Maybe I'll go to that one next time. Science and the stars. Sounds interesting."

"Science fiction and the stars. There's a difference."

"Didn't you like anything about the movie?"

"Tron was cute. I wouldn't mind crawling into a computer with him. Flynn wasn't too bad either. What do you say to a little nightcap?"

"Do you mean a drink? I can't. It's time for rounds at Hogwarts, and I have to get back."

"Pooh!" snorted Carmichael. "Back it is, but I accept the date for next week."

"What date?" Snape was taken aback.

"To see the 'Star Trek' movie, of course. I wish I'd known earlier that you were into this science thing. We could have had a wonderful September and October."

Snape stopped again. They were almost at Charing Cross Road and their apparation point, but the conversation had taken a dangerous turn. "I can't do this with you again next week."

"Why not?" Carmichael's eyes narrowed dangerously.

It was an embarrassing moment, and Snape knew he was blushing again, though the darkness of the night mercifully hid it. "I don't have the money. I mean, I can't afford to spend that much money every week. I haven't got a lot, and I need to be careful."

Carmichael threw back her head and laughed. "If that's all, dear, don't you fret for a moment. I'll take you out. After four divorces and into my fifth, and two of them well-to-do muggles, not to mention all my book sales, I have more than enough to support your taste in movies. I've supported tastes in much more expensive things before now. You just support my public reputation, and you can write your own ticket."

They apparated back to Hogsmeade and walked up the hill to the castle. As they neared the staff room, Carmichael began to tell a joke, so that Snape was smiling when they walked in to greet McGonagall, Flitwick, and Sprout. McGonagall glowered, but offered sherry. Carmichael accepted, but insisted on pouring it herself. The tension was hidden behind masks of civility, and for the most part Snape paid no attention, instead explaining the movie to the others.

"What's a computer?" Sprout asked when he was done.

"Never mind," Snape said, shaking his head. "It's a muggle thing."

That answer apparently gave Dr. Carmichael great satisfaction, for she raised her glass in a mock toast to Professor McGonagall, a look of triumph on her face. "Yes," she said as she set down the goblet and wished the others good night. "There are certain things that only we muggles can understand."

"Well, that's over with," said McGonagall when Carmichael had left. "You don't have to do that again."

"Yes, I do," replied Snape. "We're seeing another movie next week." He ignored McGonagall's angry glare.

The next day, Snape was introduced to another aspect of his 'date' with Carmichael – the students. The first time a couple of girls stopped to watch him as he walked past them, he thought it was his imagination. By the short time it took him to cross the entrance hall and go in to breakfast, he knew it wasn't. He felt like the focal point for every pair of eyes in the school. Boys smirked, girls giggled, and it took every ounce of control Snape had not to start blushing again.

Kettleburn didn't help. "Well," he asked as soon as Snape sat down, "how was she?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"How was she?"

Toby's demon was back with full force, and Snape wanted to smash a fist into Kettleburn's nose. Rigid with anger and a growing sense of humiliation, he replied icily, "We went to dinner and a movie."

"And then?"

"We came back here to join the others in the staff room."

"And then?"

Before Snape could answer, Val Carmichael walked into the Hall, clearly rejoicing in the fact that she was the center of attention. And she had changed. Her hair was a gentler honey color, her makeup subtle and flattering. She wore robes of a demure heather green, and her soft, low-heeled shoes were soundless on the stone floor. In making no attempt to hide her age, she'd somehow managed to appear younger.

Both men rose as she approached, and Kettleburn relinquished his seat to her automatically, as if the place next to Snape was now hers by right. She settled in, naturally and comfortably, as little groups of students at the different tables began whispering. In the center of the high table, McGonagall glared, her nose pinched with anger.

"I slept very well," Carmichael began sweetly. "There's nothing like a romantic evening to relax you and give you a good night's rest."

Snape said nothing, but Kettleburn was grinning from ear to ear.

It got worse as the day progressed. Students paid scant attention to their assignments in his morning classes, and Snape caught tiny snippets of their conversations as he moved from cauldron to cauldron.

"…what she sees in him…"

"…enough to be his mother…"

"…better than Filch, I guess…"

"…both must be desperate…"

"…imagine them kissing…"

Toby's demon seethed inside of Snape, his manner becoming colder and colder as he struggled to keep his anger in check. He hardly dared say anything to the students for fear that it would be the wrong thing, or that he might lose control and scream at them, which would just make matters worse.

Lunch was an ordeal, the whispers and stares more pronounced, the level of mirth in the students' faces rising. When Carmichael came in and sat beside him, there were open giggles. Snape hardly spoke to her at all.

Then, in the afternoon classes, he found out that she had been talking about him. Talking about him to her classes. Peterson of Gryffindor didn't even try to hide the laughter in his voice as he settled into his seat before class began. "It's okay if you don't have our papers corrected from yesterday, Professor. We heard you were… occupied." His quip met with general laughter from the Gryffindor students.

Without even thinking of it, Snape had his wand out of his sleeve and in his hand, striding quickly over to Peterson's desk. Their eyes met for a fraction of a second, then Snape was pushing the demon down with all his strength, forcing it into hiding, strapping it into the most hidden corners of his mind and bolting all the doors.

"I might have occupied myself with your paper, Peterson," Snape said in a voice that was deceptively soft and gentle, "if it had contained even one iota of a useful idea. As it was, the unending stream of senseless drivel drove me to seek intellectual stimulation elsewhere, before the infection of its stupidity turned me into the same kind of mindless dolt as its writer. Now, are you going to attempt the assignment, or am I going to take points from Gryffindor?"

Standing there, icy calm, wand in hand and eyes black as jet, Snape radiated more menace than could be accounted for by the mere threat of deducting points. The room was silent, and Peterson backed down. Cold, palpable anger kept Snape's classes under control for the rest of the afternoon.

Snape paced his office in the time between the end of his last class and the beginning of supper. _How dare they! How dare they think my private life is nothing more than fodder for their jokes and gossip! They have no right! It isn't bad enough that I'm jailed up here in the middle of nowhere, with a mad auror thirsting for my blood and an aging nymphomaniac blackmailing me to escort her – not to mention being the focus of McGonagall's guilt and misguided maternal instincts, or Kettleburn's desire for vicarious titillation… Gad! What might Sprout and Flitwick be saying about me behind my back!_

There was a knock on the door, and Snape snapped, "Come in!"

It was Hagrid. "Begging you pardon, Professor, but I come to see how ya was doing. Seems there's some concern about yer, uh, mood."

"So they've gotten to you, have they? That didn't take long. I presume the owlery has been busy all day, too. Maybe they should take out notices in _The Daily Prophet_."

"Yes, I can see where they might get the idea ya was bitter."

"I feel like a bug stuck on a display tray with a pin through him. Well, what I do in my free time is none of anyone's business including yours. Is that what you came for?"

"If it's any help, ya 've always been the subject of some speculation."

"What!"

"Well, for that matter, so have I. Where I come from, and why I'm so big. Flitwick – they try to figure out why he's so small. Trelawney – they've made up a whole history 'bout her 'tragic' life. They got so they almost believe it, too. She's the kind it's easy to imagine things about. You, y're a natural, being so close t' their ages and all. And the whole Death Eater thing."

"Why do they have to gossip at all?"

"Boredom. Stuck out here away from family, friends. Ya got t' get yer entertainment where ya can find it. Happens you and Professor Carmichael, well you're hot news at the moment. It'll die down."

"And until it does?"

"Don't let it get t' ya. It ain't the first time, it won't be the last. And you ain't the first nor the last neither. It's just that with you…"

Snape spun around at the hint of mirth in Hagrid's voice. "What about me?"

"Y're such an easy target, lad. So stiff, so straight-laced. They get a chance t' pull you down to earth, make you seem human and fallible, well they're going t' take it."

"Not if I can help it they won't. There's nothing human or fallible about me. No chinks in the armor. They start making me the butt of their jokes, especially those monsters from Gryffindor…"

"Now y're playing right into their hands. Y're letting them rile ya. Got t' stop that, lad. Teenagers are like sharks. They smell blood, and they'll tear ya t' pieces. Don't let 'em smell blood. Cool, that's the ticket."

"Right. Cool. Cold as ice. They aren't important and they don't exist. What do I do about Carmichael?"

"Rumor is she's got a ring through yer nose and she's leading ya t' slaughter. You got your own reasons for keeping company with her, but ya could show a mite of independence in front of the students. Keep 'em guessing. Show 'em she might be exaggerating when she says she's calling the shots."

"Is that what she's telling them?"

"Don't know if she is. That's what they're saying. Might just be 'cause she's older and you're… well… not in her league when it comes t' experience."

"They know that, too!"

"Don't nobody know nothing. It's just talk. Ya handle it right, and ya can squelch it. Just don't hide from them."

"Meaning you want to be sure I go to supper and eat something."

"I always knew ya could see right through me, Professor."

There was something in what Hagrid said, so at first Snape behaved quite normally at supper, acting pleased to see Dr. Carmichael and chatting with her about unimportant things. Then he excused himself to go and speak for a moment to Professor Flitwick. The moment stretched to nearly ten minutes, until Carmichael began to look annoyed. Snape returned then to resume their conversation, but made a point of including Professor Kettleburn, making it clear that Carmichael was not controlling whatever relationship might exist between them.

At the end of supper, as they were rising to leave the Hall, Flitwick came over with the cribbage board. "Fancy a game or two?" he asked, and Snape agreed. They stayed in the Great Hall for the game, and Carmichael left in a huff. Snape glanced once at McGonagall, and she seemed pleased.

A couple of hours later, when Snape and Flitwick went into the staff room, Carmichael was there. She came over, and Snape didn't try to avoid her. "You are still taking me to London next Thursday," she said, making it sound like a question, though both of them knew better.

"Of course," Snape replied.

Dinner the following Thursday was at a restaurant that specialized in seafood. "Now," Snape told Carmichael, "you can have something safe like fish and chips, or you can be as adventuresome in your food as you are in your life and order the platter."

"What's on it?"

"Shrimp, clams, mussels, squid, and abalone."

"Sounds terrible."

"Fish and chips, then?"

"No. I'll take the platter."

The dinner turned out to be amusing. Dr. Carmichael kept her voice at a suitably low level as she explained in excruciating detail why clams and mussels (crabs and lobsters, too, for that matter) had to be alive at the moment of their cooking. This didn't upset Snape at all, since he already knew the sordid details, and they didn't bother him. Then she pronounced the squid the equivalent of tire tread in texture and insisted that Snape take hers – a bonus for him since he liked them very much. An exposition on mussels followed, comparing the black shells to the souls of Death Eaters which, on opening and exposing, revealed a much more attractive soul inside.

"Has anyone ever cracked your soul open, dear?" Carmichael asked.

"I don't crack easily," Snape replied.

The movie, however, was entirely for Snape. He completely forgot that Carmichael was there. It took time to adjust for the fact that most of the audience seemed already to know the characters, and that there was a preexisting situation that he was supposed to be aware of. Then Snape noted the close-up of the book spine that said _Moby Dick_, wondering for future reference if it was a real book, and entered into the story.

The most fascinating aspect was the idea that the molecules of a sterile world could be rearranged to form a new world that contained the seeds of life. This, combined with the characters' habit of disarranging and rearranging their molecules to travel long distances had Snape thinking of the whole question of transfiguration. _I wonder if Professor McGonagall knows she's temporarily rearranging molecular structure?_

Obsessive revenge and heroic sacrifice combined on screen with magical present and scientific future to form a 'reality' in which muggles and wizards might work together. It was a revelation. The film makers were not, of course, thinking of magic when they made the movie but Snape, watching it, was.

Afterwards, walking back towards the Leaky Cauldron, Snape tried to explain it to Dr. Carmichael. "Everything we do has its counterpart in the scientific world, even if for the muggles it's still speculation. Potions is chemistry. Transfiguration is molecular physics. There's a meeting place, a point of mutual understanding. In the muggle world that point still inhabits the realm of science fiction, but that could change any day…"

They reached the little alley behind the Leaky Cauldron, Snape still rapt and enchanted by the movie and, as they prepared to apparate, Carmichael twined her arms around his neck and started to kiss him.

Snape instinctively jerked backward, eyes wide as a startled deer, and instantly shut down, barely registering the blow as his head struck the stone wall behind him.

Carmichael rubbed her knuckles where they, too, had abraded against the stone. "Well, that was hardly subtle. I guess I don't need to ask you your opinion of my feeble attempts at seduction. I don't think I've ever been rejected quite so emphatically before."

"You took me by surprise."

"And you interpreted it as an attack. You've got to lighten up a little."

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to offend you."

"The man repels any closeness from me and has the gall to hope I'm not offended. Am I so repulsive?"

"No, no, don't think that. You're not repulsive. It's me. I'm not ready for this."

"You're twenty-two. When are you going to be ready?"

They apparated back to Hogsmeade in silence, and in silence went to the staff room for a nightcap. Carmichael once again poured her own drink and brought one to Snape. The heads of houses did their rounds a half hour later, and then they all went to bed.

Two days later, on Saturday, Snape asked to speak to Dumbledore.

"I take it you do not reciprocate her affections," said Dumbledore calmly as he handed Snape a cup of tea.

"Not in the slightest. It's like being with your mother, or one of your teachers. It just isn't right."

"Hardly something that Valeria would understand, I fear. I trust she has not yet found out that Eileen was at Hogwarts at the same time she was."

Snape paused in the stirring of his tea. "She's the same age as my mother?"

"I believe there was a five year gap. The older one gets, of course, the less important these minor age differences become, but if you feel awkward being with someone of your mother's generation, there is nothing that is going to swing you to the opposite viewpoint."

Snape considered this for a moment. "No," he said finally. "Nothing is."

Dumbledore sat at his desk, hands steepled in front of him. "Then – excuse me for asking – why do you take her to London every Thursday?"

"She insists on going. I wish I could find someone else for her to be interested in. I don't even know why she picked me. I'm not exactly the best looking, and even she's hinted that it isn't my personality."

"It is youth, I fear. And a narrow field. It was she, alas, who decided it would be best to reside in the castle instead of commuting. I could hardly insist, as she has been in America all these years and did not really have a British home to commute to. And it has been wonderful for the students. This year's NEWT classes are already a little ahead of where they should be, the OWL candidates are performing well at level, and the lower years are catching up rapidly. And I have interviewed the students. The progress is real. So in that sense, her being here is a great boon to Hogwarts, but it keeps her caged. Kettleburn and Futhark are married. Binns is a ghost. Single live males, in descending order of age, are me, Flitwick, Hagrid, Filch, and you. You are the only one younger than she is."

"My rotten luck."

"Pardon me, Severus, but why do you allow her to insist? You do not have to go."

Snape looked down at his hands. Very softly he said, "She's pointed out that by showing an interest in older women I'm relieving parental concerns that I might have an interest in… younger women."

"None of our parents has expressed any such concern. I have seen no evidence of a problem." When Snape didn't reply, Dumbledore continued. "Has she threatened to make it a problem?"

It was a question Snape didn't want to answer, not with Carmichael talking to Moody. There was a saying about Furies and a woman scorned. Carmichael, _The Daily Prophet_, and Moody were a combination that could get him arrested again. "It's nothing I can't handle," was what he said to Dumbledore. Then he looked up. "I know it's none of my business, but she told me about the problem with Professor McGonagall's son. If it's true, I think the antagonism between the two of them is making my problem worse."

"That the two ladies are battling each other over your soul? It is a possibility. Minerva may see history repeating itself in this situation."

"Professor, is it true that Professor McGonagall's son was trying to escape from his mother's control?"

"Is that what she told you?" Dumbledore thought for a moment, then spoke carefully. "Marcellus did feel at the time that he was being pressured into a career he did not want. And he was quite taken with Valeria. Minerva, for some reason, considered it a personal attack against herself."

"Professor, when did the… incident… occur?"

"Let me see… Marcellus started first year just before Minerva began teaching, which was December 1956… It began in the autumn of 1962, I believe."

Snape left Dumbledore's office still uncertain how to handle the Carmichael problem, but with a disturbing piece of information. Carmichael had spoken of a change in teaching staff in her seventh year and a new teacher whose inexperience had left Carmichael unprepared to pass her NEWTs. Could Professor McGonagall have been that inexperienced teacher? And if so, was it possible that Carmichael had influenced McGonagall's son as revenge for having had her own career plans destroyed? He could think of no way to uncover the truth of the matter, but the situation was looking far more complex than it had an hour earlier.

The next several weeks saw Snape and Carmichael at a variety of restaurants and movies. Carmichael seemed to have decided that experimenting with new types of food was a way to show her trust in Snape, and to bring them somehow closer together. By the end of November she'd sampled escargot and pronounced it 'better than I expected,' and had developed quite a taste for Moroccan food.

McGonagall, on the other hand, was becoming more and more agitated. On several occasions she pulled Snape aside to warn him that Carmichael was dangerous. She never allowed an opportunity to pass without making some kind of snide comment about Carmichael's relative age, and the two women were constantly sparring.

December progressed, and the Christmas break began. With the student population down to nearly nothing, the resident teachers, reduced to a skeleton staff, would have a lot more time together.

On the morning of Sunday, December 19, the students left. The staff was having an afternoon Christmas party, and then the nonresident teachers would leave to be with their families for the break. Before noon, Hagrid and Flitwick had finished the decorating – hauling in and trimming the trees, and hanging the mistletoe.

_Saturday, December 25, 1982_

The Christmas party started with lunch at noon. When the meal was over, the few students who'd remained on the grounds went to their common rooms, giving the teachers a chance to fraternize. It was a pleasant few hours. Normally during term they hardly ever spoke. At meals they were generally in their assigned places keeping an eye on the students, and so Snape, at one end of the table, never had a chance to talk to Sinistra or Dawson at the other end. Both of them commuted, so he never saw them in the staff room either.

Professor Dawson in particular wanted to pick Snape's brain about banks. She taught Muggle Studies, and had somehow heard about the cash machine and the long-term deposit, and the two of them spent nearly an hour going over Snape's whole experience at Barclay's. Snape didn't pay much attention to the others until Dawson said, "I think I'm appropriating too much of your time."

Snape looked around. Dr. Carmichael was watching them and seemed irritated. "I enjoyed our conversation," Snape told Professor Dawson, rose and went to talk with Futhark and Pince. As long as he kept moving, Carmichael didn't seem to care, but as soon as he devoted too much attention to one teacher, especially if that teacher was female, she started circling.

McGonagall was circling, too. Twice she pulled him away to ask a question just as Carmichael approached to claim him. It would actually have been amusing if Snape hadn't been the focal point of their rivalry. He wondered how many of the other teachers noticed and were hiding laughter. He tried to pretend that he didn't notice and to act as if everything was perfectly normal.

Around three o'clock, Carmichael finally cornered him. She began talking about a Christmas she'd spent in the Himalayas, and as she talked she edged closer. Snape, uncomfortable with her nearness, shifted his own position several times to maintain a more neutral distance. He was totally unaware of what she was doing until Carmichael suddenly exclaimed, "Oh, look! We're under the mistletoe!" leaned forward, and kissed him in front of all the others.

There was general laughter and applause. Snape, who'd been at a loss as to what to do, had simply stood there and let Carmichael take the lead. The rest of the teachers seemed to think the incident was cute and harmless. Carmichael even smiled as she said, "See. It doesn't hurt. You didn't melt or burst into flames."

Only McGonagall refused to accept that the moment was harmless fun. Storming across the room to confront Carmichael, she hissed, "Leave him alone! Can't you see he doesn't want your attentions? Have you no shame? A woman of your age! It's humiliating for him."

"Dear Minerva," replied Carmichael in a calmer tone, "there is nothing I could do that would humiliate anyone as much as the scene you're creating right now. As for my age, I have always respected your skills in Transfiguration, but I think you lack something in math."

"Lack something, do I? You weren't Hogwarts' only student. I looked up Eileen Prince, and she was still in school when you entered Hogwarts."

Carmichael turned to look at Snape. "She was being serious? Your mother was Eileen Prince? Hufflepuff's gobstone queen?" Snape nodded, fearing the explosion.

"Eileen Prince," McGonagall continued. "Not only are you old enough to be his mother, you went to school with her. Now back off and leave him alone!"

Fire glinted in Carmichael's eyes. She had a rival to defeat and an audience to play to. None of the other teachers went to find Dumbledore for fear they would miss some of the action. Teachers are not so very different from their students, after all.

"You envious, dried-up old prune," Carmichael said quietly. "There's more to age than years. From the moment you were born, you were old enough to be his mother."

"Cradle robber!" McGonagall cried. "I know what you're after. You string them along as tools for your own purposes, your own vindictiveness, and then when they're not useful to you any more…"

"I don't need to string them along. They run to me to get away from you!"

Snape was moving slowly toward the door, not wanting to have anything to do with the battle.

"You're a heartless vampire, sucking the life…"

"You smothered one 'til he had to run in order to breathe, don't smother…"

McGonagall jumped forward, fingernails reaching for Carmichael's face as the staff moved into the fray to restrain her and keep the two apart.

"Ladies, please control yourselves." Dumbledore stood in the doorway, some sixth sense having told him there was trouble in the Hall. "Minerva, please sit down over by the Gryffindor table. You seem overwrought. Valeria, I think you need to relax a bit, too. Pomona, would you…"

"That's all right, Albus. Severus and I were going to London today anyway," Carmichael said with considerable satisfaction.

"Is that true, Severus?" When Snape nodded, Dumbledore said, "Then maybe it would be a good idea if you continued with those plans. It would keep the two of them separate for a while."

"Since there are no students right now," Carmichael added, "there's no need to be back for curfew. So if you don't see us until tomorrow morning…"

"Valeria!" Dumbledore admonished as McGonagall rose from her bench. "Severus, get her out of here."

"Yes, sir," said Snape, steering Carmichael out of the Hall. Behind him he could hear McGonagall saying, "Albus, you can't let her…" and Dumbledore's reply, "Minerva, it is not up to you to control his life…"

They got to London far earlier than they'd intended, too early for dinner, so Carmichael insisted they go to a pub where, starting with a pint of beer and advancing to gin, she regaled Snape with her colorful opinion of anyone who allowed a grudge to last for that long. Snape merely sat and listened.

By dinner time, Carmichael had calmed down to the point where they were able to have a more normal conversation. Deciding this was the wrong time to experiment with new foods, Snape suggested they go to the seafood place they'd eaten at before. There he got her to talk more about the Himalayas, and then they went to the movie.

The movie was a comedy about a man who had to pretend he was a woman in order to get a job. There were moments, many moments, when the actor's portrayal of the female part was so good that Snape had trouble believing it was a man playing the role. _I would love to be able to act like that, to fool people into thinking what I want them to think of me, to step out of my own life._ For the first time he began to think of acting as a skill, a talent, an art.

The movie wasn't a long one, and by nine o'clock Snape and Dr. Carmichael were back out in Leicester Square. "Let's stay in London," she said. "Let's find a place and not go back to that horrid school until morning, and shock them all!"

"I really don't think that's a wise idea."

"How did you get to be so old so young? Where's your sense of adventure? Of fun?"

"I really should get back to Hogwarts. You could stay, though."

"By myself? No, dear, when you go I go. But not this early. Come on. Just into the pub for a couple more drinks."

Snape agreed, if only because he didn't want Carmichael to run into McGonagall when they got back to the school. The conversation over drinks, however, quickly became difficult for him.

"Stay the night with me here in London. The older you get, the harder it'll be. We have the opportunity, we have the time. I could teach you so much…"

"Dr. Carmichael, I don't think this is the proper…"

"Who cares about proper? We're two adults who enjoy each other's company. It doesn't have to get any more complicated than that. There's so much in life that you're missing, good things, enjoyable things."

"Look," said Snape, trying to chose his words carefully, "I like your company. I like to talk to you. I enjoy these evenings here in London, with the restaurants and the movies. And you have taught me a lot because you've done so much with your life, but…"

"Ah, that famous word. But what, dear?"

"I'm really not physically attracted to you. It's probably because I'm too young to appre…"

It was too late. Carmichael's face had closed, set into lines of cold, offended rage. When she spoke, her voice was low, the menace clear. "And for how long have we known that we had no physical attraction for each other? From the beginning? Have you been allowing me to pay for your food and entertainment all these weeks with no intention of reciprocating? Have you been misleading me?"

"No," Snape protested, "I've never said I wanted to be closer to you. The opposite. I've made it very clear that I wasn't ready for any kind of relationship with you."

"You asked me out to dinner and a movie because you didn't want to have a relationship?"

"I didn't ask you – you asked…"

"To see a movie about computers? Why would I invite any man to watch a movie about computers? The movie was your idea. Trying all those strange foods was your idea. Don't blame that on me."

"Look, can't we just forget we had this conversation and continue on…"

"Forcing you to go out with someone you find repulsive?"

"I didn't say that!"

"What's not attractive about me? My age? You like them younger? Say seventeen?"

"No, that's not it at all."

"Or maybe it's the seventeen-year-old boys… that's a fine hobby for a school teacher."

"Dr. Carmichael…"

Carmichael stood and finished her drink in one gulp. "We're going back to Hogwarts," she said. "Now."

Snape followed her out into the dark street, trying to calm her down, but every word he spoke seemed to make her angrier and angrier. It was well past nine-thirty when they apparated into Hogsmeade. By the time they got to the entrance hall it was nearly ten. There were quite a few teachers in the staffroom since some of the commuting staff were still there, and Snape tried to get Carmichael to go to her rooms so that she wouldn't run into McGonagall.

Carmichael, however, insisted on the staff room, and there was no stopping her. McGonagall was in the far corner where the drinks were prepared. Carmichael immediately struck up a conversation with Kettleburn as someone handed Snape two cups of punch. He gave one to Dr. Carmichael, who barely acknowledged his presence.

"You're back earlier than expected," Sprout said at Snape's elbow. "Kettleburn was sure it would be at least midnight, just for appearance's sake."

"Change of plan," said Snape, and then the sound of breaking glass diverted his attention.

Carmichael had dropped her cup on the floor and was holding her stomach. "They've done it again," she gasped. "Gad, they've done it again." She reeled from the room, heading for the girls bathroom, Pomfrey and Sprout with her, the rest of the teachers remaining in the staffroom in stunned silence.

This time both St. Mungo's hospital and the Ministry of Magic sent teams immediately. The staff room was left exactly as it was, and all who had been in the castle or on the grounds were asked to notify their families that they would be delayed in returning home. Snape found himself in the guest quarters on the sixth floor, his rooms once again sealed against him. _At least now there are no students. They'd have a wonderful time with this one._

Once again Snape waited until nearly the end for his own interrogation. It took a turn that was not totally unexpected.

"You gave her the glass of punch."

"Yes."

"Where did you get it?"

"I was handed two. I gave her one."

"Who gave them to you?"

"I didn't notice."

"How did you know which one to give her?"

"I don't think I understand the question. I was given two. I gave her one. It didn't matter which one."

"Why were you given two?"

"I don't know. I presume because they saw us come in."

"Are you and Dr. Carmichael considered a 'couple' by the staff here?"

"I don't think so. We're not a 'couple.'"

"You been dating for several weeks."

"'Dating' is a little strong."

"Do you know any other teachers on staff who are keeping company with each other?'

"No."

"So there might be grounds for other teachers to see you as a couple."

"I suppose so."

"Professor, do you brew poisons?"

"Of course."

"Please elaborate."

"It's part of the curriculum. My sixth year NEWT class will be analyzing poisons next term."

"Are those poisons already brewed?"

"No."

"What were your duties as a Death Eater?"

The question took Snape by surprise. "I brewed potions, invented spells, and taught rudimentary self-defense. This is all on record."

"What other Death Eater made potions?"

"None that I know of. I didn't know much about other departments. None of us did."

"Were you ever asked to brew poisons?"

"No."

"Do you know anyone who was asked to brew poisons?"

"No."

"Are you sure you wish that to be your answer?"

Nervous now, Snape replied, "Yes. That's my answer."

"We'd like to ask you now about your most recent date with Dr. Carmichael."

Snape's interrogation had, by this time, lasted two hours and gone into minute detail.

"Where did you go first?"

"To a pub."

"At your suggestion?"

"No, at hers."

"Did you eat or drink anything?"

"She had beer and a couple of glasses of gin. I had a glass of wine."

"And then?"

"We went to a restaurant."

"What did you eat and drink?"

"We had the same thing. Oysters Rockefeller, Caesar salad, and shrimp Alfredo. With white wine. Chocolate mousse and coffee."

"Did Dr. Carmichael seem ill at dinner?"

"No."

"Did she seem ill during the movie?"

"No."

"Did she eat or drink anything during or after the movie."

"Not during, but she had another glass of gin at the pub afterwards."

"Did she seem ill when you arrived at Hogwarts?"

"No."

McGonagall was last, not until Tuesday in fact, and it was noted by the staff that after five hours of questioning she seemed tired and drained. A rumor started that her son Marcellus was to be questioned as well. Then the team was gone, and the staff was notified that everyone was to remain available for further questioning after the Ministry analyzed the evidence.

Then, on the morning of Thursday the twenty-third of December, two representatives of the Ministry of Magic arrived at Hogwarts to escort Professor Minerva McGonagall to London for questioning in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement concerning the poisoning of Dr. Valeria Messalina Carmichael, aka Aurifossor, aka Wolfstone, aka Mulberry, aka Pendennis, aka Buntley. Headmaster Dumbledore was informed that the Ministry was not at that time able to tell him when Professor McGonagall would be able to return to Hogwarts.

Snape was distraught. He'd reached the point where he regarded everything that was happening at Hogwarts as his fault. He hated himself, his naiveté, his bluntness, even the lack of critical thinking that allowed him to hand an untested cup of punch to a colleague. He couldn't face the others with the knowledge of his own guilt, and he had to help McGonagall. And he had to do it without implicating anyone else.

That evening, without telling anyone, Snape apparated to London and went to the entrance of the Ministry of Magic. Granted entrance after some argument, he went to the desk in the atrium and asked to be allowed to speak to Judge Bones if she was still there. They took information about him and directed him to sit in a little waiting room while they checked with the judge.

It must have been a half hour later when a voice, a familiar voice, said, "Merlin preserve us, the Death Eaters are turning themselves in." It was Moody, leaning against the door post at the entrance to the room.

"I didn't come to talk to you," said Snape.

"I know, but she's tied up in chambers, and someone had to come up here and give you the greeting that's your due. You checking in at Azkaban this evening?"

"I'm not talking to you," Snape repeated.

Mercifully, Judge Bones arrived then, accompanied by Gawain Robards. "What did you wish to see me about?" she asked.

"It's about Professor McGonagall. She's been arrested for something she couldn't have done."

Judge Bones looked at him shrewdly. "Let me get this straight," she said. "You came here to try to prove that Professor McGonagall is innocent?"

Snape was puzzled. "Of course," he replied. "Why else would I be here?"

The judge stepped to the door. "Alastor," she called, "I want you in here, too. Now, if you please."

Hating the fact that Moody was present, Snape nonetheless sat where he was told and waited for their questions. Robards was taking notes.

"Who sent you here, Professor Snape?" Judge Bones asked.

"No one sent me. They don't even know I'm here."

"Albus doesn't know? So if we arrest you and send you down to a holding cell, no one will come to get you out?"

"You won't arrest me. I haven't done anything wrong. He might," Snape nodded at Moody, "but you wouldn't."

"Tell me about Professor McGonagall."

"She couldn't have planned to poison Dr. Carmichael because no one knew we were going to be there. Dr. Carmichael stated quite publicly that we'd be back later than usual, maybe not until the next morning. Even if we got in at eleven, the others would have gone home or to bed. The staff room would be empty and there wouldn't be any punch left."

"Are you telling me that you're the only one who knew what Dr. Carmichael's movements were that evening?"

"That's right."

"Why are you protecting Professor McGonagall?"

"I'm not protecting her. I'm telling you what the truth is. McGonagall couldn't have done it because poisoning requires preparation, and she didn't know the opportunity would be there."

"Do you have any idea who did do it?"

"I'm sorry, no, I don't."

Judge Bones looked over at the other two. Robards was thoughtful, and Moody had an unreadable expression on his face. "I'm going to tell him," the judge said, and neither man objected.

Turning to Snape, the judge said, "We're a bit surprised that you came here tonight to speak in Professor McGonagall's defense because she isn't our chief suspect. You are."

"I don't understand," said Snape, too bewildered to be wary.

For answer, Robards handed the judge a small book that she opened to a certain page. "Val Carmichael wrote this more than three years ago," the judge said, handing the book to Snape and pointing to a particular paragraph.

_In the spring of 1979, the forces of the self-styled Lord Voldemort changed their tactics. Since all of their direct physical attacks had failed, they started to use more subtle and clandestine ways to get rid of me. Chief among these was poison. Twice I actually consumed a brew intended to kill me, and on both occasions only the quick thinking of my husband and my publishing agent saved my life. It was this new, cowardly bid to exterminate me that finally led to my most difficult decision – leave Britain and emigrate to the United States. It was the only way to stay alive._

Snape closed the book. Its title was _Battling the Darkness_, published in the summer of 1979.

"When did you become a Death Eater," Judge Bones asked.

"July 1978."

"And when did you become Voldemort's potions brewer?"

"January 1979, but…"

"Yes?"

"I wasn't asked to make poison. No one ever mentioned attacking the Dark Lord's enemies with poison. I never even heard of Dr. Carmichael when I was a Death Eater."

Judge Bones sighed. "Do I have to remind you, Professor Snape, that you already have a well-established reputation for concealing vital information from this Ministry. And may I also remind you that in an earlier interview you stated that you had been asked to brew poisons four times. Why should we believe you when you can't even keep your story straight?"

Snape looked down at his hands. His voice became very small. "Are you going to arrest me?" he asked, and it was clear he expected the answer to be yes.

The other three exchanged glances, and then Moody got up and left the room.

Robards leaned forward. "No, we're not going to arrest you. And we haven't arrested Professor McGonagall either. Dr. Carmichael tells us you both have a motive for trying to harm her, but that by itself isn't enough."

"What's 'enough?'"

"I can't tell you that, but believe me, when we have it, you'll be one of the first to know."

The same words coming from Moody would have been a threat, but somehow Snape knew that from Robards they weren't. Robards had done his job, and done it devastatingly well, at Snape's trial, but he'd never gone beyond that, never harassed or threatened. "May I go back to Hogwarts now?" Snape asked.

"Certainly," Robards said. "And thank you for your information. If you wait about fifteen minutes, though, you can go back with Professor McGonagall."

"I think I'll do that," said Snape.

It was closer to twenty-five minutes before a clerk escorted McGonagall into the little waiting room. "They said you were here," she snapped, "but I thought it was a trick. What ever put the foolish idea into your head to come here now?"

"I wanted to tell them you couldn't possibly be guilty."

"I could tell them that myself, and did." McGonagall retorted, fussily straightening his collar, "so there was no reason for you to go getting yourself into more trouble. Now, take me back to Hogwarts."

"Yes, ma'am," Snape replied, and together they left the Ministry.

Carmichael left the school the next day to spend Christmas week with her publishing agent's family, so the atmosphere was much more relaxed for the holiday. It was just Dumbledore, the four heads of houses, Hagrid, and Filch, with a handful of students. They spent the day relaxing, chatting, playing cribbage, and never mentioned Carmichael once.

That changed on Monday, the twenty-seventh. Snape came out of the dungeons on his way to brunch to encounter an enraged McGonagall who waved a copy of _The Daily Prophet_ under his nose. "Look at this!" she ordered him. "That woman deserves to be in jail!"

Snape took the paper with a feeling of dread. On the third page was an interview with Val Carmichael in which she talked about her career, her return to Britain, and her teaching at Hogwarts.

"There!" said McGonagall, pointing to a section two-thirds of the way down. "Read that."

_Reporter: It must be pleasant for you to return to your native land without the threat of death hanging over you. Do you find your life more relaxed now that You-Know-Who is gone?_

_Carmichael: I did at first, but I've come to realize that his fear and hatred of my opposition to him stretch beyond the grave. There are still Death Eaters roaming free who are bound to fulfill their master's will, and twice now I've been targeted for execution. Luckily the attempts were unsuccessful._

_Reporter: It's amazing under the circumstances that you can remain so calm._

_Carmichael: The Ministry of Magic is investigating the incidents. I have great faith in them, and expect an arrest very soon._

"So that's her motive for me, that I'm still obeying the Dark Lord. At least she didn't mention my name or that it happened at Hogwarts."

"With all the scandal last year about your past, do you think it's going to be hard for some people to guess? Why is she switching her attack from me to you, anyway?"

"I turned down an offer. I told her I wasn't attracted to her."

McGonagall snorted. "And this is her revenge. Well, something good is coming of this, at least."

"What's that?" Snape asked.

"She's not going to be wanting to go on any more dates with you."

The next day _The Daily Prophet_ printed a retraction, apologizing for having interfered with an ongoing Ministry investigation. Snape would have to wait until the start of the next term to find out what, if any, damage had been done.


	30. Chapter 30 – Charge

**Severus Snape: The Middle Years 1982-1983 – Charge**

Dr. Carmichael returned to Hogwarts at the end of the week, to find herself facing Dumbledore's displeasure. Within an hour of her arrival, she was asked to come to his office. It was a conversation the details of which Snape never learned, but it did not make Dr. Carmichael a more friendly person. The first and most dramatic change was that she found a place in London and began commuting on a daily basis. Evenings at Hogwarts were more relaxed from that moment.

Then the students returned, and Snape found himself the subject of the rumor mill again. Whether or not Carmichael was fueling it in her classes was unknown.

"She dumped him?"

"Wouldn't you? I mean, look at him."

"I never understood why a woman like her would go for a skinny runt…"

"You think maybe he's never had a girlfriend?"

"Imagine being that desperate…"

Only the students in Slytherin house gave him any moral support at all, and he had to ask them to remain silent on the subject in public after one particularly embarrassing shouting match between two Slytherin and three Gryffindor girls in the entrance hall, during which the phrases 'like kissing a raven' and 'just as short as the rest of him' came up. Snape did not eat supper in the hall that evening.

"They're kids," Hagrid said, dropping by Snape's office with a plate of food that Snape didn't feel like eating. "They'll forget it in a couple of weeks."

"But during those couple of weeks I'll have to endure their whispering and giggling in my classes, in the library, in the Hall, and anywhere else students gather. I hate them. I hate them all."

"Ya can't let 'em smell blood. They'll hound ya for the rest of the term if ya do. Ya got t' show them they're not hurting ya."

"How do I do that?"

"Haven't got a clue."

Snape got a clue two days later in fifth year Potions when Daniel Peterson muttered "sex-starved git" under his breath.

"I beg your pardon, Master Peterson."

"I didn't say anything."

"Yes, you did. Not only I, but half the class heard it quite clearly. Totally aside from the fact that you are projecting your own biological frustrations onto other people, it was not an acceptable comment. Do you see that desk in the corner? You will leave your cauldron and go to that desk immediately, and you will write. 'Professor Snape is a sex-starved git' one thousand times with a nonmagical pen. If you do not finish during the class period, you will return for the hour before supper and again after supper. Only when you have completed this happy task will you be allowed to finish your Potions assignment, which must be accomplished before you retire for the night. I shall speak to Professor McGonagall and explain why you might not make it back to Gryffindor house before curfew."

Peterson had no choice but to obey, and the rest of the class was quiet for the remaining time.

"He has to write what!" McGonagall exclaimed when Snape told her.

"I thought maybe after he's written it a thousand times, he'll be so tired of it that he'll never say it again," Snape said as he helped himself to roast chicken at supper. Over at the Gryffindor table Peterson was nursing a sore hand, having made it through over half of his punishment. "And the others will be more circumspect about what they say in my hearing."

"They'll still talk about you behind your back."

"I can't help that. But talking behind my back is just being sneaky. Saying something to my face is a challenge. I wanted him to know I wasn't afraid of the words."

"You may have succeeded. He doesn't look like he wants to be flippant right now."

When Peterson came to finish his task after supper, Snape didn't say anything, simply waving the boy to the corner desk as if the situation were totally routine. It was after eight o'clock when Peterson laid the finished sheets of parchment on Snape's desk. He then went to his cauldron and spent the next two hours doing alone an assignment that he could have finished in half the time with a partner.

At ten-thirty, Peterson put the vial of potion on Snape's desk, his cauldron area already cleaned and ready for the next day. "Thank you, Master Peterson," Snape said quietly.

"Yes, sir," Peterson replied. Snape had no more problems with him in class for the rest of the term.

Midway through January, Rhonda Shoemaker and Anna Prendergast asked to speak to Snape privately. "It's Professor Carmichael, sir. We think she's trying to make trouble."

"Why would you think that?"

"From what the others say. She's talking in her classes."

"About me?"

"We don't know about that. We do know she's talking about Professor McGonagall."

Snape asked them to sit down while he settled behind his desk. "What's she saying about Professor McGonagall?"

The girls exchanged glances. "Anna and I haven't heard her because she doesn't talk in front of the NEWT levels. We think it's because all four houses are mixed together in those classes. The lower levels say she sometimes talks about Professor McGonagall to the Slytherin students. We think maybe she talks about you to the Gryffindors."

"What do the others say she says?"

"That Professor McGonagall hates her because the Professor's son was once in love with her, and that McGonagall always treats Slytherin students differently from the others, that she's unfair. That she holds grudges."

"Does she talk about this on a daily basis?"

"No, but occasional comments a couple of times a week."

"Do you think Professor McGonagall is unfair?"

Anna spoke this time. "We used to think that because she's so strict. We didn't know how she treated the other houses. But now I'm taking Transfiguration for my NEWTs, and she's just the same with a mixed class, and the others don't seem to think it's any different from before, so I guess she treats us all the same."

"You should tell the others that, and tell them not to believe everything Professor Carmichael says about other people."

"What about you, sir?" Rhonda asked.

"Well, we don't know that she talks about me."

"We can find out." Rhonda had the air of a girl with a mission.

Snape wasn't sure that he wanted to find out, but he was already thinking that he would have to go to Dumbledore about the problem, and in order to do that he'd need more complete information. "All right," he sighed. "But just the broad picture. I really don't need any details."

Dumbledore met first with the four heads of houses. Snape reported on what the girls had discovered. "It isn't a running tirade. It's just isolated, occasional comments. She's mentioned both of us in her Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff classes and Professor McGonagall in her Slytherin classes. My students can't check with the Gryffindor students, but one Ravenclaw girl told them the Gryffindor students have heard things about me."

"This is most awkward," Dumbledore said. "and I must consider also the welfare of the students. The very first thing we must do is check to be certain that the classes are following the curriculum and that the students are being prepared for their exams. Dr. Carmichael was brought in to correct a deficiency, and if that deficiency is being corrected I would not wish to punish the students by removing her if some other solution can be found."

That stage proved to be easy. Each head of house checked privately with their own students about all their subjects, so as not to single out any particular teacher, and reported back that Carmichael's students were all doing well and had an excellent grasp of the subject matter. Snape, and even McGonagall, admitted that there seemed to be no prejudice or favoritism shown between the houses, and that Carmichael's assignments and grading appeared fair and impartial.

"So whatever it is she has against the two of you, it does not spill over into other aspects of her job." Dumbledore thought for a moment while the heads of houses were silent. "Minerva, Snape, do you think you can you make it to the end of the school year without any explosions? Assuming the circumstances stay the same as they are now, of course, and do not escalate. We are, in any case, still waiting for a report on the Ministry investigation, and there is little I can do until then except reprimand her."

"I think so, sir," said Snape, and McGonagall reluctantly agreed. After a quick consultation, they both asked Dumbledore not to say anything to Carmichael. They didn't want to take the chance that her behavior might worsen.

The beginning of February brought the Gryffindor/Hufflepuff Quidditch match. This was an important game for both teams, since Gryffindor had lost its first match in November against Slytherin, and Hufflepuff had won its match in December against Ravenclaw. If Hufflepuff won, Gryffindor's chances to win the Quidditch Cup would practically disappear. The whole school was turning out to watch, though the weather was too cold to expect visitors.

Snape, however, was doomed not to be able to see the match, since Robards arrived from the Ministry right at the beginning of lunchtime that Saturday, asking to speak with Dumbledore. Half an hour later, Snape was called to Dumbledore's office.

"You sent for me, Headmaster?" was all Snape said when he entered the room, his face cold and closed.

"Yes, Professor Snape. Mr. Robards has come to advise me of the progress of the Ministry investigation. He has asked that you accompany him to London to take a formal deposition."

"Isn't Saturday an unusual time to be doing this?"

"We thought," Robards said, "that it would be less obvious and cause fewer problems for you if it didn't disrupt any of your classes. With a Quidditch game going on, most of the school won't even notice."

"I would prefer not. My memories of the interior of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement are not of the best."

"I understand. The deposition will be taken in front of Judge Bones. There will be a stenographer and myself. You'll be back before supper."

"No Moody?"

"Mr. Moody will not be there."

Snape agreed, and the two walked down the hill together while the school finished lunch, and apparated to London.

"You know," Snape remarked as he followed Robards down into the depths of the Ministry, "this is the first time I've been this far that I didn't have my hands tied. Except for the trial."

"I trust this experience will be a bit less unpleasant."

"I note that you don't expect it to be pleasant."

"Things like this never are."

They entered a hearing room and went to the table at the front. Judge Bones came in a moment later with the stenographer. "Thank you for accommodating us, Professor," she said, and they all sat down, the stenographer at another table, out of Snape's line of vision.

"You need to know," continued the judge, "that you're the last person being deposed in this case, unless something totally unexpected surfaces. We'd like you to be as candid and detailed as possible in your responses. I do have to warn you that all of this is under penalty of perjury, so at the same time you need to consider carefully what you are saying."

The first questions were routine, about Snape's identity and his job at Hogwarts. Then came a series of questions about his being a Death Eater, which turned out to be easier than he'd expected since Robards didn't ask him any names or to betray any trusts.

"When did you first meet Dr. Carmichael?"

"Last August. There was quite a gathering of outsiders to welcome her to the school."

"What did you say to each other."

"I was introduced to her in a reception line. She made a comment on my youth. We didn't speak for the rest of the gathering until the end."

"Is it true that Professor McGonagall tried to keep you apart?"

"I believe so. After a while I got the impression they didn't like each other."

"Did you know at that time about Professor McGonagall's son?"

"No. Professor Flitwick told me about it later."

"Did she know at that time that you'd been a Death Eater."

"I don't think so."

"When do you think she found out?"

"After the first poisoning incident. There was a Quidditch match, and she sat talking to Mr. Moody the whole time. I suspect he told her, because after that she knew."

"Before that, how did Dr. Carmichael speak with you?"

"She used highly suggestive language, and teased me about being embarrassed by it. I was trying to find ways to maintain my composure."

"Is that why you purchased the book on sexual customs?"

"Yes. It was helping, too. Some of the things she said to me later weren't such a surprise, and I was able to control my reactions. Until she threatened to use the book against me, of course."

Robards and the judge glanced at each other. "Did you tell her about the book?" Judge Bones asked.

"No. I got the impression that Mr. Moody told her about it at the Quidditch game."

Another exchange of glances, and Robards jotted something down in a notebook. Then Robards took up the questions again. "What kind of threats did she use?"

"She said she could spread rumors that I was interested in my students in inappropriate ways. She said that if I kept company with her, an older woman, then I wouldn't be vulnerable to rumors like that."

"Did she happen to say why she was interested in you?"

"She said she had a reputation to maintain, and I'm the only male teacher at Hogwarts who's younger than she is."

"Is that when you asked her for a date?"

"I didn't ask. She told me to take her to dinner and a movie. I asked what movie she wanted to see, and she told me to surprise her."

There followed extensive questions about the movies and the restaurants. Then, "Did she ever mention Professor McGonagall to you?"

Snape told them Carmichael's version of the incident involving McGonagall's son, then added, "I think the inexperienced teacher who was responsible for her not being prepared for her NEWT was Professor McGonagall."

This brought another exchange of glances. "Did she ever express any particular enmity toward Professor McGonagall?"

"Only that she thought the Professor was responsible for driving her own son from Hogwarts, and that it wasn't reasonable for her to blame Dr. Carmichael for it."

"Professor, how much did you know about Dr. Carmichael before August?"

"I read a couple of her books. They were very good. Very informative. I didn't know anything about her, though."

"Do you know anything about the poisoning attacks that caused her to leave Britain in 1979? The attacks ordered by Lord Voldemort."

"No."

"Were you ever asked to brew poisons?"

Snape hesitated. "Yes, four times. I was told it was for safe houses that were kept free of traceable magic, and were to kill vermin, rats. I used arsenic and strychnine. Neither would have produced the symptoms Dr. Carmichael experienced."

"Did you ever hear of anyone assigned to attack Dr. Carmichael?"

"No."

"Did you read _The Daily Prophet_ that appeared two days after Christmas?"

"Yes. I considered it directed at me personally."

"Why would she attack you personally?"

"I'd told her a few days earlier that I wouldn't stay with her in London and that I wasn't attracted to her."

"Was she at Hogwarts at the time you read the interview in the paper?"

"No. She was spending Christmas week with her publishing agent." A light came on in Snape's head. The page from the book that Judge Bones had shown him in December credited Dr. Carmichael's survival of the first poisoning attempts to the quick action of her husband and her publishing agent. "Wait a minute," he said quickly, "if this was an idea of her agent's it might explain why I never heard anything…"

"Please, Professor Snape," said Judge Bones quietly. "Don't speculate. Confine yourself to things that you know from personal experience."

Snape looked from Judge Bones to Robards. "This isn't new to you," he said. "What have you found out about…"

"Professor Snape," said Robards sharply. "If you think we're going to discuss the particulars of a case with one of the suspects…"

"Thank you, Gawain," said the judge. "Professor, you're here to answer questions. While Mr. Robards has been more brusque than I would have been, the point is well taken. It would be wrong for us to discuss the matter with you outside the area of your own knowledge. Now, if we can return to the deposition?"

The questioning went on to Snape's experiences since the appearance of _The Daily Prophet_ interview, and he was able to tell them what Rhonda and Anna had brought to his attention. Then the questioning turned to poisons and his knowledge of their effects. Snape had to confess that he didn't know what poison might have caused Dr. Carmichael's symptoms.

Several hours after it had begun, the deposition was over. Robards escorted Snape back up to the London streets, and watched as he apparated back to Hogwarts. So far as Snape knew, his business with the Ministry was over for the time being, but the experience had given him a reason for starting an investigation of his own.

"You must know something!" Snape insisted, following Madam Pomfrey around the hospital wing like a shadow. "You took samples – both times. Those samples were analyzed by the staff at St. Mungo's. You must have some idea what the poison in them was."

Pomfrey wheeled on him in exasperation. "Severus, St. Mungo's isn't going to tell me anything in a criminal case. Listen carefully. I. Do. Not. Know. What. They. Found!"

"Look," Snape insisted, not wanting to let go. "In both cases the reaction was violent but not fatal. What if there was never an attempt on her life? What if she administered the poison to herself? What if this is all part of a publicity stunt that was started four years ago?"

"You can talk until your jaw drops off, Master Snape. I can't tell you what you want to know because I don't know it, and if I did, I still wouldn't tell you. Now run along and bother someone else."

The next step had to be planned carefully because Snape didn't know how Professor McGonagall would react. If she was like Pomfrey, any hint of what he was doing would remove forever any hope of assistance from her. He waited until the middle of the month to make his move.

_Friday, February 11, 1983_

Valentine's Day that year was a Monday, and the staff was discussing the decorations the Friday evening before. That Saturday was a Hogsmeade excursion.

"Just not too much pink," said Kettleburn. "Ghastly color, pink, and not really a Valentine's color at all."

"No?" said Sprout. "I thought pink was very Valentiny. I've always seen it."

"Red and white," rejoined Kettleburn. "That's Valentine colors. Red and white."

"And brown," added Dawson. "For the chocolates, of course."

"Where would I go," Snape asked incongruously after a moment's silence, "if I wanted to find out something about a student's family?"

"You have the Slytherin files," said Flitwick. "If it's a Ravenclaw student, you ask me."

"No," Snape said, "I mean further back than that. I have a student – you know Kate Digby? – who's killing herself because both her parents got Outstanding in all their OWLs, and I want to find out if it's true. Because if they're lying to pressure her into trying to match them, I think I should know about it."

"Archives are on the fifth floor," said Flitwick. "The wall just past the statue of Gregory the Smarmy. You identify yourself as a teacher, and the wall should let you in."

That evening Snape went up to the fifth floor. He spoke to a couple of non-responsive walls before he found out what 'just past' the statue of Gregory the Smarmy meant, but he eventually made it into the archives.

From there it was easy. Graduating class of June 1957, file of Valeria Messalina Aurifosser. Snape's hands were trembling a little as he opened the rather large file folder. What he found made him settle into a quiet, deadly calm.

_Aurifosser, Valeria Messalina. NEWT Results: Ancient Runes: Acceptable; Arithmancy: Exceeds Expectations; Charms: Acceptable; Defense against the Dark Arts: Outstanding; Potions: Exceeds Expectations; Transfiguration: Disqualified for cheating._

Snape studied the page carefully until he was sure it was committed to memory then, with a feeling of intense guilt, as if he were carrying out some heinous crime, he found the file of Marcellus McGonagall.

It was a thick file, for the boy seemed to have been constantly defying authority. Looking at the incongruous disparity between Outstanding and Poor grades, Snape couldn't help but have the feeling that young Marcellus had been deliberately failing exams, and wondered if it hadn't been to avoid a future he didn't want, for those failed exams were ones that would have helped him the most in a Ministry job.

_So Carmichael was lying and telling the truth at the same time. And what of McGonagall? She hasn't lied because she hasn't said a word about either Carmichael's school career or her son's, except for the incident that ended it in his seventh year. But why would Dumbledore hire a Professor who'd cheated on a NEWT?_

Back in his own rooms pondering the question, it occurred to Snape that Dumbledore hadn't been headmaster at the time, and was therefore not involved with the cheating incident, which had been in Transfiguration. But what subject did Dumbledore teach?

Saturday morning at brunch, Snape asked Flitwick.

"Dumbledore? He taught Transfiguration for decades. I believe he has the longest teaching career in Hogwarts history. Except for Melusine FitzMarmaduke in the 12th century, of course. And Gertrude Hexenmacher in the 18th and 19th. And how could I overlook our own Professor Binns? And then there was Cantilupe Smith…"

"But if Professor Dumbledore was teaching Transfiguration, why did they hire Professor McGonagall?"

"Oh, that! And in the middle of the school year, too. Such a shock. Poor Armando. That was when Professor Dippet had his first attack. Took us all quite by surprise when he showed up like that right in the middle of the fountain court… Dear, dear. Well, Albus was Deputy Headmaster, and he had to take over Armando's duties for a while, until the attack subsided, of course, and they brought in Minerva to handle Transfiguration since Albus had so much to do."

"What was wrong with Professor Dippet?"

"At first they said it was jeranculus fever, but then it turned out that it ran in the family. They had to institutionalize his maternal grandfather, you know. He'd be fine for a long time, then have these spells that lasted for months. Dumbledore covered for him – wouldn't let the Board of Directors dismiss him – it wasn't dangerous or contagious so it didn't bother the rest of us. But poor Albus certainly had his hands full."

_Full enough so that minor things like a student caught cheating wouldn't attract his attention? Very possible. So I can accept the probability that Professor Dumbledore didn't know. And what is important for Carmichael's job now, of course, is Dark Arts. Not just that Outstanding she got but, even more important, all the experience since._

The Hogsmeade excursion promised to be easy on the teachers. It was cold enough at the beginning of February that most of the students would stay indoors somewhere, and in any case the main attraction was Honeydukes Sweetshop, where they were buying Valentine treats for girlfriends, boyfriends, and just friends. Snape went to the Three Broomsticks.

That turned out to be something of a mistake, since shortly after Snape settled into a booth at the back of the main room, a shadow covered his table.

"You been trying to get me into trouble, haven't you?" growled Moody as he joined Snape in the booth. "Don't get up now. This is just going to be a 'friendly' chat."

"I haven't done anything to get you into trouble."

"No? It's not bad enough you lose me an eye and near get me killed, you've got to be spreading tales that I give Ministry information to outsiders."

"I don't understand."

"You told Robards that I was telling Carmichael about the results of an investigation into possible criminal activity. Now where'd you get that idea?"

"The remarkable expansion of the extent of her knowledge following a Quidditch match. Quidditch doesn't increase that kind of mental acuity, and you were the only one talking to her during the game."

"How would you know that?"

"When I'm in the water, I always keep my eyes on the predators. A confluence of sharks is a sign of danger."

Moody leaned forward and spoke in a low, conspiratorial tone. "A lot of Death Eaters are walking free, but most of them blame their slips on Imperius spells. You're the only one who claims to have double-crossed your lord. That's Top Secret right now, but it won't be forever. Maybe Azkaban isn't the worst place for you to be." Then he rose and stumped out of the Three Broomsticks.

Moody's arrival and departure did not make Snape change any of his own plans for the day, nor did it cause him any great concern, which was a matter of some interest to him. _A year ago, he would have had me locking myself in my rooms in the castle just by his appearance. What's changed?_

It didn't take long to identify. Moody was alone. Scrimgeour had forgotten Snape completely, it seemed, and neither Robards nor Judge Bones trusted Moody. Or at least they distrusted him enough to check out Snape's allegations in his deposition. _I don't have the whole Ministry against me. Just one disgruntled auror. True, he could be dangerous, but still... It's one on one now._ It was a satisfying thought.

_And he can't threaten me with Azkaban anymore. That's interesting. He'd like to, but it isn't as immediate a possibility as it was last year. That's why he's threatening me with the revenge of other Death Eaters. But who do I really have to worry about? Malfoy? Avery? Neither one wants more trouble. The Carrows? They're not a threat to me. Everyone really dangerous is in Azkaban, and no one escapes from Azkaban._

The afternoon wore on without any further problems, and shortly before supper Snape assisted the other teachers in shepherding the last of the students through the Hogwarts gates and up the hill to the castle. Snape was, in fact, so calm about the incident that he didn't even mention it to Dumbledore.

_Tuesday, February 22, 1983_

The last week of February brought Gawain Robards back to Hogwarts on Tuesday the twenty-second just before lunch. Dr. Carmichael was called to Dumbledore's office first, and some little time later Snape and McGonagall together. The only unpleasantness was that Carmichael was on the second floor in front of her rooms as if waiting for them, but when they passed on the stairs she did nothing more than wrinkle her nose, turn abruptly, and slam the door shut behind her.

Robards brought good news. "We're suspending the investigation. Other than her symptoms, we've been unable to uncover any evidence that she was poisoned at all. Nothing showed up in lab analysis. Your own meticulous records, Professor Snape, proved invaluable in showing that no school poisons are unaccounted for, and even Alastor Moody helped your case, though he hated doing it."

"How was that?" Snape asked, more curious than he would have admitted.

"He's been having you followed. We can trace every moment of your time off Hogwarts grounds since you learned that Dr. Carmichael was going to be teaching here. At no time did you have an opportunity to purchase or gather poisons. Everything on the grounds has been accounted for.

"So this whole ridiculous thing is over?" McGonagall asked.

"No. Not over. Suspended. Should new evidence come to light, or should another incident occur, it will be reopened immediately."

Snape and McGonagall followed Dumbledore and Robards down as Dumbledore escorted Robards out of the castle, and thus witnessed a scene on the second floor, for at the sound of feet on the stairs, Carmichael came bursting out of her office, a book in her hand.

"I want you to know this isn't over," she snarled at Robards. "They tried to kill me, and I'm not going to rest until they're jailed for it!"

"We understand that you might be upset," Robards replied calmly, "but as we have no concrete proof that poisoning took place…"

"Because you couldn't detect it? That means nothing!" She waved the book under his nose. "When I was in South America, I wrote a whole treatise on undetectable poisons, and if you'd ever read it…"

"I assure you, Dr. Carmichael, that your expertise in undetectable poisons was one of the things we examined closely in our investigation."

Carmichael froze, her eyes glittering dangerously. "How dare you!" she spat, venom in her voice. "I risk my life every day in this place, murderers sitting at the same table with me…"

"Valeria," Dumbledore interjected, "I understand that you are upset, but has it not occurred to you that you have been mistaken…"

"Mistaken! I am being denied justice! And if I can't get justice from the Courts of the Ministry, I'll get it from the Court of Public Opinion!"

"I wouldn't advise that," said Robards calmly. "All sorts of things can come up in a libel suit, nasty little things from the past. It isn't one-sided, you know."

"I don't care! I want the people who tried to kill me! If you won't do it, I will!" Carmichael stormed back into her office.

"I apologize, Gawain," said Dumbledore. "I really must see that Valeria is all right. You can see yourself out, I am sure." And then Dumbledore went into Carmichael's office as Robards continued down the stairs.

March started with intense disappointment and went downhill from there. The Slytherin - Ravenclaw game was on Saturday the fifth. A Slytherin win would put Slytherin in first place, since Gryffindor had beaten Hufflepuff the previous month, and it would shut Ravenclaw out of any hope of winning the cup. The Snitch, however, put in an early appearance, and was caught by the Ravenclaw Seeker. Snape was now immensely grateful for the high-scoring game against Gryffindor at the beginning of the season, as was McGonagall. Only the winners of each of the next two games would have two wins for the season. The Quidditch Cup would go to whichever of them had the overall highest score.

The seventh of March brought more trouble. Tuesday's _Daily Prophet_ contained another interview with Val Carmichael.

_Reporter: Is it true that you've moved into a place in London? That you're not living at the school anymore?_

_Dr. Carmichael: It was a necessary precaution. There's a limit to how much protection one can be given in an environment where potentially dangerous people are under little supervision or control._

_Reporter: Are you saying that there are people at Hogwarts who are a danger to you?_

_Dr. Carmichael: I have been attacked twice, and despite my offers of assistance in evaluating the evidence, the Ministry has been unable to locate the agent involved. At least that's what I've been told. I thought it best to limit my time on the grounds and look out for myself._

_Reporter: Do you have any idea who's behind these attacks?_

_Dr. Carmichael: I hesitate to say. I've even been threatened with legal action for speaking of my doubts, and by the Ministry, no less. But there are people there who still have connections to You-Know-Who, and who are still loyal to him and bound to carry out his death order against me, perhaps even the children of his followers. And of course, a person in my position is the subject of jealousies and false accusations, so there are those who bear grudges, however unwarranted..."_

_Reporter: Well, we all certainly hope you stay out of harm's way, and that the perpetrators of these attacks are discovered and stopped._

The whispers started again with the appearance of the interview, and Snape became aware that it was common report that he'd tried to ingratiate himself with Carmichael in order to have an opportunity to poison her. Outside of Slytherin house, it was considered fortunate that she'd discovered his nefarious intentions before he succeeded.

There was nothing Snape could do. Any attempt to squelch the rumors only intensified them. Every aspect of his private life was suddenly under a microscope again – his appearance, his past, his mannerisms, his relationships or the lack of them – the students dissected them with relish. He hated them all, and a longing to knock their heads together raged in him. The sheer physical effort of controlling his actions was taking its toll. It found release in a cold, bitter manner and in his tongue.

"Fascinating, Carmody, that you should consider yourself better qualified at Potions than the author of the book. Tell me, when you reversed the order of the ingredients, did you intend to produce green slime?"

"Thought you would hurry things along by adding a catalyst, Palmer? Gryffindor always did have a tendency to mistake reckless stupidity for brains. Now you get to clean it up and start over."

"A remarkable essay, Saltensall. It would never have occurred to me that one student could make so many errors in such a short piece of writing. You've set a personal record, possibly a school record."

One result of _The Daily Prophet_ interview and its aftermath was that Dr. Carmichael no longer came to the Great Hall for any meals. Students speculated that it was from fear of poison. Another result was that Snape no longer left the school grounds on his evenings off. Every time he went somewhere, students began discussing what he might be up to.

It was at the height of this unpleasantness that the spring term ended and Easter break began. Students swarmed to leave the school, and it appeared that for two blessed weeks Snape would not have to close his ears to murmurs and innuendo. There was nothing he wanted more than to escape the very sight of Hogwarts.

"Leave the school for the Easter break, Severus? That is rather unusual. Normally the heads of houses stay." Dumbledore and Snape, along with the rest of the staff, were walking up the hill from having seen the students safely onto the train.

"I just have to get away from here, sir. A change of scenery, a chance to relax. I was thinking of going home for the break if you permit it."

"Very well, Severus. You have permission to spend the break at your home, as long as someone else is empowered to watch over the Slytherin students who are staying."

The someone was Sprout, and by mid afternoon everything was arranged. Snape walked back down the hill around three o'clock, feeling more lighthearted than he had in weeks, and apparated to Lancashire.

Mrs. Hanson saw him walking in from the moors and called out, "Hoo, dearie, that school of yours out so soon? I didn't know you'd come back."

"I just got in this morning, Mrs. Hanson. I thought I'd walk from the station. It's a nice day's outing and a good change from books and papers. I'm on Easter holiday."

"The exercise is good for you, too, Russ. Eileen 'd be pleased t' know her son was caring for his health. How long will you be with us?"

"Two weeks, if all goes well."

"Then you'll be coming to take tea with me."

"I will, and with pleasure."

"Good. Tomorrow, tea time, and we'll have a chat."

"I look forward to it. Have you taken to using a cane now, Mrs. Hanson."

"It's the arthritis, child, the arthritis. If you've got healthy joints, thank the stars for them."

"Let me know if there's anything I can do for you."

"You've always been a good lad."

Snape bade her 'good afternoon' and went to his own home, throwing all the windows open to the April breeze and fixing himself a cup of tea. For a couple of hours he just cleaned and straightened things that were already clean and straight, then began to think about supper.

_I don't want to go shopping, not now. Maybe a light supper at the pub._ It turned out to be an excellent idea. Many of the regulars were already there, some with their missus, and a dart game was in progress. Snape was greeted with 'Lookie here, it's young Snape back from that posh school!' and his first pint was on the house. He ordered steak and kidney pie, just to spite Carmichael, and enjoyed it thoroughly as he finished his pint.

Sunday evenings tended to be jolly in a quiet sort of way, most of the men having to work the next morning. They hauled Snape from his table to join the dart game, and this time he managed to hit the board more often than the wall, to good-natured cheers and laughter. Then he got a dart actually in the center ring, which earned him pats on the back, another pint, and the accolade 'maybe there's a bit o' ol' Toby in you after all.'

That evening Snape got home about ten o'clock. He went right to bed and slept soundly.

Monday Snape wandered up to the top of Pendle Hill just to survey the surrounding country. It gave him a sense of peace, and the order of things. In a way, he could sympathize with the wizard distrust of the muggle world in the past, but he was beginning to have trouble understanding the reluctance of muggle-borns and half-bloods to acknowledge their muggle roots. Now, at last, after the turmoil of the last few years, he was beginning to realize once more how much strength and stability it gave him.

At tea time Snape appeared punctually at Mrs. Hanson's door, to spend a gentle hour and a half listening to all the gossip with a willing ear. It was good to know whose bird hound had just dropped a litter of fine pups, and which of the neighbors had spent three days in lockup for drunk driving, and how Mrs. Jackson's Mary and Mrs. O'Shay's Catherine were both after the same young man. There was an innocence to it that was worlds away from the rumor mill at Hogwarts.

For the next couple of days, Snape was lazy. He roamed the countryside, took tea with Mrs. Hanson, and supped at the pub where he was beginning to really improve at darts. Then, on Wednesday, he decided to start cooking at home.

Shopping was a pleasure. He was now somewhat familiar with different kinds of foods and spices, and had a particular dish in mind when he looked for meat, vegetables, and condiments. He was debating which of two quite nice pork chops to buy when he was greeted by Mrs. Hanson.

"It's good t' see a young man shopping for himself, and doing the cooking, too, by the looks of it."

"I'm trying some new things, Mrs. Hanson. Perhaps if I'm successful I'll invite you over for supper one of these days. I don't want to subject you to an experiment though."

"That's all right, dearie. I've subjected myself to enough of my own."

Snape moved on to the fish and seafood counter. They didn't carry shrimp, not that day at least, but there were mussels and oysters.

"Best buy them now while you can," said Mrs. Hanson. "This is the last until September. You're not supposed to eat them in months without an 'R', you know."

Snape made his selection of oysters then asked, "Aren't you going to get any, Mrs. Hanson?"

"Me? Love you, dear, but I can't. Five hours after I eat them, I'm as sick as a dog. I got me one of them allergies."

"That's too bad," Snape replied. "to be deprived of something you enjoy because of a reaction. Can I help you with your bags? I'm on my way home now, too."

Mrs. Hanson handed him her bags, chatting briskly now that she was free of their weight. "You always were the politest little thing, even late at night when you got hauled out of bed t' get you out of your dad's way. Always 'yes, ma'am' and 'no, ma'am' and no backtalk. And I won't pretend it's not harder with the cane, getting all unbalanced and all. I saw one of them walker things in a magazine. I wouldn't normally go with a walker, not being ninety, and half in my grave, but this one had a grocery basket on the front so it was more like having a little wheeled cart, and wouldn't that be grand for shopping with no bags to carry..."

"Mrs. Hanson?"

"Yes, dear?"

"I don't mean to be rude, but what happens to you five hours after you eat oysters?"

"La, child! You don't want t' know. I get sick out both ends and shaking like to have the ague. You don't want no particulars."

Snape's mind was working out the time difference between appetizers and late glasses of sherry. "On the contrary, begging your pardon, Mrs. Hanson. I think I know someone who would be fascinated. He's writing a treatise on allergic reactions, and I think he'd love to talk to you. Maybe even as soon as tomorrow tea? I could let you know for certain as soon as I give him a ring."

"Someone wanting my allergy for a tree-tis? Love you, dearie, that's one for my old age! But it's good t' have company for tea. If he wants t' come, he can come."

Snape saw Mrs. Hanson home and her bags onto the kitchen table, then he went to his own home and apparated to London from the area yard. In the atrium of the Ministry of Magic, he asked to speak to Gawain Robards. Once again he was directed to a waiting room.

"I didn't expect to see you here," was Robards first comment as he entered the room fifteen minutes later. "Has something happened?"

"Maybe, but I'd rather not color your viewpoint by telling you too much. Do you think you could talk to an old muggle woman tomorrow around four o'clock? I believe she has information that could assist you in your case."

"A muggle?"

"A lady I have known from my childhood. She mentioned something today that might interest you."

"And it concerns a certain author of our mutual acquaintance?"

"Most likely."

Robards met Snape in Manchester the following afternoon at three, and they apparated together to the moor land outside Snape's home town. Even before going to his house, Snape insisted that Robards alter his choice of clothing.

"The tweed jacket and the plus fours aren't too bad if you pretend you're a golfer, but the bowler hat has got to go."

"I thought it was required for a businessman."

"Twenty years ago with a three-piece suit. Take my word for it. No bowler hat."

They arrived at Mrs. Hanson's at precisely four. Mrs. Hanson was arrayed in a flowered dress from about two decades earlier, and appeared to have taken more than usual care with her hair and makeup, which Snape knew was a tribute to the special nature of the occasion. It was not every day that perfectly mundane little Mrs. Hanson was interviewed for a tree-tis, and Snape was immediately on his guard that Robards treat her with the proper respect due her.

"Mrs. Hanson," Snape said, "thank you for your kindness in allowing us to visit. May I present Dr. Robards, who holds a government position and is researching allergic symptoms. Dr. Robards, Mrs. Hanson."

"Charmed, Mrs. Hanson," Robards said as he took her hand. "I hope we are not inconveniencing you too much."

"Not at all. Not at all," she replied, ushering them into her small house. "Please come in. Sit yourselves down in the parlor, and help yourselves. I'll pour tea."

Inside the parlor was a brave little show of watercress, cucumber, and egg salad sandwiches, the crusts trimmed and cut into triangles. Mrs. Hanson had baked scones as well, and splurged her pension on clotted cream. One little plate even held a half dozen petits-fours. Snape wished he'd thought to fill Robards in on the widow's relative poverty, but could only trust for the moment to Robards' good sense.

They ate sandwiches and sipped tea for a quarter of an hour, engaging in local gossip that Robards added the occasional comment to, then Snape took over. "I hope you'll excuse me, Mrs. Hanson, but I thought it might be a good moment to bring up Dr. Robards' research. He's studying allergies, and I mentioned yours to him."

"Ah, yes," said Robards. "I am most anxious to hear of your symptoms."

"Well, it don't seem quite right t' be talking about it while we're eating…"

"Do not worry, Mrs. Hanson," Robards said quickly. "I am quite used to it, and it will not bother me at all. What are you allergic to?"

"Oysters, love you. Didn't Russ tell you?"

"And what happens to you when you eat oysters?"

"Nothing for five hours. Fit as a fiddle. Then I start t' get nervous and anxious, then a bit queasy, and then I'm sick as can be. It happens all sudden like, from one moment t' the next."

There followed a detailed account of diarrhea, vomiting and chills, but Robards made it all sound very official and flattering, as if Mrs. Hanson's answers would solve the riddles of disease and poverty on the earth. He wanted to know everything, and the sordid little details of nausea and toilets became, in his handling, the clinical wonders of modern science.

"And for how long did you suffer these extraordinary chills, ma'am?"

"Nigh on forty-five minutes, but when they got better, I knew I wasn't going t' be sick any more."

"So when the chills abated, the allergic attack was basically over."

"Yes. I'd say that was it."

"Now ma'am, if you'll excuse me, there are one or two details…"

On the way back to Snape's house, Robards was more skeptical. "Wizards and witches don't have allergies."

"Do you think she's lying?"

"That old woman? She's as innocent as the day is long. I don't think she understands the word 'lie.'"

"You'd better be respectful, because 'that old woman' has taken care of me since before I knew I was a wizard. Though you're right about her honesty."

Robards stopped right there in the street and regarded Snape with some interest. "I don't usually think of wizards as growing up in muggle communities. You mean everyone here knows you, what you are?"

"They know me, but they know me as a person, not as a wizard. They knew my mother and father. I think Mum and I were the only wizard folk here, but no one knows about that part of it. At least I don't think they do. There's a village east of here where my grandmother lived, and they knew she was a witch. She was the local healer."

Robards shook his head in wonder. "I guess some of the old tales about this country are true." He didn't elaborate on what those tales might be. "The point being, however, that whatever Mrs. Hanson's allergy may be, witches and wizards don't have them."

"How do you explain that the symptoms are identical, right down to the period of time after eating oysters? And remember, Dr. Carmichael is muggle-born." Snape got some satisfaction out of seeing Robards pause to reflect on that bit of information.

"You have a point. She isn't pureblood, and that might make a difference. I'll check with St. Mungo's. I might be visiting Hogwarts in the near future."

"I'd appreciate it if you'd wait until Easter break was over."

Nothing else of moment happened for the rest of the break. Snape read, worked on potions, experimented with cooking and asked Mrs. Hanson to dinner. He collected plants specimens and got marginally better at darts. The holiday was over far too soon.


	31. Chapter 31 – Counter Charge

**Severus Snape: The Middle Years 1982-1983 – Counter Charge**

_Monday, April 18, 1983_

On April 17, Snape apparated back to Hogwarts feeling more relaxed than when he'd left, though the sight of the great castle on the hill did cause some of that good feeling to evaporate. _One more term to go, and I'll be free of this place for a month. I can hardly wait._

Monday classes were as routine as they could be for students who'd just woken up to the fact that they had less than two months before their OWLs and their NEWTs. Snape announced that special tutoring sessions would be arranged in the Great Hall for those who wanted the extra help.

During his last class of the day, Snape received a message asking him to go to Dumbledore's office before supper. Gawain Robards had come up from London.

Snape met McGonagall on his way up the stairs. They were both clearly going in the same direction. When they walked together into Dumbledore's office, they found not only the Headmaster and Mr. Robards, but also Madam Pomfrey, Dr. Carmichael, and a plump little man with wispy brown hair and watery eyes who was introduced to them as Tristan Platt, Carmichael's publishing agent. From the moment Snape entered, Carmichael glared at him with undisguised loathing.

Dumbledore began, "Mr. Robards has just been explaining to us the nature of a certain condition called an allergy. He believes Dr. Carmichael may have one. His says you brought this to his attention, Severus. What have you to tell us?"

Surprised by the directness of the question, Snape hesitated, then considered there was nothing wrong about speaking in the present company since either they already knew of his muggle blood, or they had no reason to hold it against him.

"I went home for the Easter break, and while shopping one day I chanced to speak to a neighbor lady about the seafood for sale. She said she couldn't eat it because of an allergy, and described her reactions. They seemed identical to Dr. Carmichael's, and since no trace of poison was ever found, I thought the information opened up another line of inquiry for the Ministry."

Carmichael jumped in immediately. "You already knew about this allergy business, and you deliberately selected an undetectable poison that mimics the symptoms. Admit it, Death Eater. I'm a witch! I do not have muggle ailments! You're trying to get away with poisoning me!"

"Madam Pomfrey?" Robards said.

The nurse cleared her throat. "It is true that muggle-born witches and wizards do not generally suffer from the common diseases of the muggle world, so that we have a very low incidence of things such as measles, chicken pox, et cetera. But it is also true that from time to time a case will crop up. Even half-bloods and purebloods occasionally catch colds. My understanding is that this allergy is not a disease, however. It is something that originates in the body itself as a malfunctioning of the immune system. St. Mungo's has records of a few cases…"

"I am not allergic to oysters!" Carmichael shrieked. "I'm being poisoned!"

"There is a way to find out," said Snape. "Bring in a bowl of oysters, and we all eat some. Then we wait five hours. If they're poisoned we all get sick. If you have an allergy, only you get sick."

"I refuse to engage in a barbaric and humiliating test as if I were a guinea pig or something. The two of you are working together, from vindictiveness and a loyalty to the dark forces, and I'm going to let the whole world know."

"Then," said McGonagall very primly, "I shall sue you for slander."

"Wait a minute," said plump little Mr. Platt, his cheeks growing pale, "I'm sure we can arrive at a more amicable solution."

"I think not," said McGonagall. "If she slanders me, I shall sue."

"You've hated me ever since your son fell in love with me. From the moment I came here, you've been trying to thwart me, to hurt me. You even tried to stop me from being friendly with him just for spite." Carmichael gestured wildly at Snape.

"If I was trying to hurt you, why would I want you to stay away from someone who wanted to poison you? Wouldn't I have encouraged it? And Marcellus did not fall in love with you. You went out of your way to lure him."

"He saw me in Hogsmeade and came to my table."

"You waited for him in Hogsmeade and called him to your table."

"How would you know?"

"He told me. After it was all over, he told me. You waited until he was of age so that you couldn't be accused of misleading a minor, and then you pounced."

"Why would I do something like that? Answer me! Why?"

Light that had already been glimmering on the horizon suddenly dawned. "Your NEWT," Snape said. "You considered Professor McGonagall responsible for your failing the exam."

Dr. Carmichael stared at Snape for a long moment, then stormed to the door. Her hand on the latch, she snapped at Platt, "Come on! We're leaving!" The little man followed her down the stairs for all the world like a pet dog at heel.

The others stared at Snape. "What do you know about Dr. Carmichael's NEWTs?" Dumbledore asked quietly.

"She told me that she got low marks on an important one because of the incompetence of a new teacher. She didn't say, but I assumed she meant Professor McGonagall. But when I checked the archives I found she'd been disqualified in Transfiguration for cheating."

"Oh, really?" Robards said. "I think I should hear about this."

Snape briefly told them Dr. Carmichael's version of the NEWTs, how her chances for success with the Ministry had been destroyed by lack of proper preparation for the exams, how she had married her first husband and accidentally met Marcellus McGonagall in Hogsmeade during the period of the divorce. Professor McGonagall remained silent the whole time.

"Well, Minerva," said Dumbledore when Snape had finished. "What is the other version of this? The part Dr. Carmichael did not tell Severus."

McGonagall sat stiffly on Dumbledore's sofa, her hands folded in her lap. "Valeria," she said, "was not a good student at Transfiguration. The only subject I think she really excelled at was Dark Arts. I didna know her well, as I was there only during her last year, but she had that reputation with the instructors. Almost as soon as we arrived at Hogwarts, she took a fancy to Marcellus – he was in first year – and adopted him. She'd help him with his studies and his assignments – she was very motherly. She professed great surprise when she found out that I was his mother. Her favorite teacher and her favorite little kid, she said. It wasna until the end of the year that I found out why.

"Just before the examiners came, she asked me if I could give her a hint of what the questions and tasks would be. I told her that I'd given as much information as I could in the class, and I couldna give her any more. She said she thought we had a special relationship, and I said that what she asked went beyond what was proper. Then she came 'round again saying that she'd done me a favor, taking care of Marcellus, and it had cost her study time. It was my responsibility to make that up to her by helping her out with the questions. At about the same time Marcellus began acting up, and I found she was feeding him a story about how wicked I was.

"When the examiners came, she tried once more, and once more I turned her down. I went to the examiners and reported what had happened. One of them, d' ye remember Dr. Prudhoe, asked me to give her wrong information, but I refused. He then asked me to put a folder into my desk where only a student searching for information to cheat would find it. I did, and Valeria gave the planted answers on the test. She never even bothered to check if they were right or not. She accused me of telling her the false answers on purpose to make her fail, but the examiners bought none of it."

"Why did I know none of this, Minerva?" Dumbledore asked.

"Och, Albus! That was the June that Professor Dippet decided he was a canary bird and kept trying to fly. Ye were a wee bit busy."

"Ah, yes. I remember it now. But I do recall that Marcellus's dislike of your plans for him postdated Dr. Carmichael's time at Hogwarts."

"I fear ye may be right there, Albus. I did so want him to have a good career, but he's happier now. But that woman, when she came back, she was trying to lead him out of Hogwarts and out of a Ministry career to spite me."

"Are you sure of that?" Robards asked.

"Aye. Marcellus told me, after it was all over. It was something she harped on. That and her conquests. The way she could twist young men around her finger, lead them down the primrose path, and play with them like a fish on a hook. So when she started casting flies at our Severus here… Well, hasna he had enough troubles this past year?"

"And yet, Minerva, your interest may only have made matters worse."

McGonagall looked up at Dumbledore. "I see that now. I didna see it then."

"Who can witness to this besides you?" Robards asked.

"Marcellus can. Dr. Prudhoe has retired, but I'm sure he's still alive. Professor Tofty did the OWLs that year, but Dr. Marchbanks was administering NEWTs. 'T is all in the records."

"Excellent," said Robards. "I have a feeling this is one case we can solve to almost everyone's satisfaction."

"Mr. Moody's?" Snape asked.

"I said almost everyone's. Don't worry about Alastor. We can keep him in line. He's even mellowed a bit since last year."

"Funny," said Snape, "I hadn't noticed."

"That's because you don't have to live with him on a day-to-day basis. Believe me, he obsesses on you a lot less than he used to. When he finds he put his money on a losing horse, he'll back off from the pure shame of it."

"I suppose that should make me feel better."

"It should. I actually once witnessed Alastor admit that he'd been wrong. It was several years ago, and the circumstances were admittedly traumatic, but miracles do happen. Albus, I need to return to London now, but I'll keep in touch. Professor McGonagall, a pleasure as always. Madam Pomfrey. Professor Snape." Then Robards was gone, heading out to Hogsmeade where he could apparate back to the Ministry.

Two big contests were looming, Slytherin against Hufflepuff in Quidditch, and Snape against Carmichael in public relations. Carmichael struck first.

_The Daily Prophet_ article contained a subtitle – "Prejudice at Hogwarts?"

_Reporter: And so, Dr. Carmichael, in spite of your fame, your credentials, you have found yourself the subject of anti-muggle-born prejudice even at an institution as venerable as Hogwarts School?_

_Dr. Carmichael: It is so difficult to accept. Of all places where I thought the accidents of my birth and ancestry would not be held against me, Hogwarts rated the highest, especially under the guidance of Professor Dumbledore. But even the best of us may be swayed by clever subterfuge, and the still-loyal agents of You-Know-Who are working their insidious mischief even there._

_Reporter: Can you give us any particulars?_

_Dr. Carmichael: Do you realize that I have been threatened with legal action, with public hounding in the courts, just for speaking the truth? And yet there is a teacher there, a teacher whose connections to You-Know-Who and his minions have already been documented, who is allowed to slander me with impunity and prejudice even the Department of Magical Law Enforcement against me. And I am not allowed to defend myself. He is joined by another professor, one who hopes to hide behind a mask of propriety, who has hated me ever since she began teaching because I had the temerity to fall in love, something her prudish narrow-mindedness could not accept. And this vindictive harridan and her Death Eater partner have marked me for death, hiding their machinations behind the facade that it can all be blamed on the impurity of my muggle blood._

_Reporter: That is monstrous, Dr. Carmichael. And you can't identify these miscreants for us?_

_Dr. Carmichael: If I do, I shall be forced to face the full might and power of both Hogwarts and the Ministry on my own, without any other defense but my poor protestations of innocence. And we all know how much good that does. No, it is the great, fair-minded public of the wizarding world that is my only defense. If they can demand the resignation of these two villains, then justice will have been done._

"Well?" McGonagall demanded, shoving the newspaper in Snape's face. "What are you going to do about it?"

Snape glanced through the interview, his face and mind closed. "It seems to me," he said, "that since you are the vindictive harridan, and I am only the Death Eater, you should have the honors."

"Don't get cheeky with me, boy. I can still deduct points from Slytherin."

"Not for a teacher, you can't." Snape turned to Flitwick. "She can't, can she?"

"Just because I've never seen it done doesn't mean it can't be," replied Flitwick, burying his face in his breakfast plate and fizzing slightly. Beyond him Sprout was also hiding her expression.

"I think," Snape said determinedly, "that we should file a grievance and have her summoned to respond to a libel suit."

"Since when did you become a legal expert?" McGonagall huffed. "And wouldn't that put our names on the front page?"

"All the better," replied Snape. "How many witches and wizards have you taught in the last, what, twenty-six years? They can't all have hated you. I didn't hate you. Do you realize that once you're identified as the teacher Carmichael is referring to, she may lose support rather than gain it?"

"Well…" said McGonagall.

"Let me at least contact Robards. Maybe he can talk to that publishing agent. They have to see reason at some point."

"All right. You go ahead."

_Friday, April 22, 1983_

The day before the Slytherin-Hufflepuff Quidditch match, Robards returned to Hogwarts. With him was plump little Tristan Platt. Dr. Carmichael was the last in, having followed Snape and McGonagall up the stairs.

"I have here," said Robards, "a summons issued in answer to a petition filed by Minerva McGonagall and Severus Snape asking that Valeria Messalina Carmichael, née Aurifosser, be called to answer for certain slanderous statements publicly made in an instrument of the media known as _The Daily Prophet_. Before I serve this summons, I'd like to know if you, Dr. Carmichael, have anything to say that might stop this action."

"Serve away," said Carmichael.

Platt coughed slightly. "You know, Valeria, that might not be wise."

The temperature in the room dropped by about fifteen degrees. "Are you implying, Tristan, that I am not capable of defending myself in this matter?"

"But, Valeria dear… Will you excuse us for a moment?" Mr. Platt asked Dumbledore, and when the headmaster nodded, he led Carmichael to one side and whispered in her ear. Carmichael went livid, muttered something about finding out what they wanted, and left the office.

Platt was apologetic. "I am sorry. She gets terribly single-minded sometimes. I think we can agree, however, that this is best settled amicably, with a minimum of publicity."

"I thought she wanted publicity," said McGonagall. "I thought she was calling on the power of public opinion."

"Dear Valeria believes in the basic goodness of the public, but doesn't always realize that once awakened it isn't easy to control. Things could get out of hand, emotions being what they are, and we don't necessarily want that."

"So she'll retract her words and stop attacking us in the news?"

"Well, Professor McGonagall, it might be hard to accomplish the retracting part, especially since she never mentioned anyone by name. I hope the stop attacking part is easier. I think she can be brought around to that."

"What do you think?' McGonagall asked Snape.

"It's true, no names were mentioned. I doubt that it's occurred to anyone yet that she was even talking about you. The description didn't fit. If it's never mentioned again, it'll die away and little harm done."

"Very well." McGonagall turned back to Platt. "We'll be content if she never refers to it again."

"Thank you, dear lady, gracious gentleman! You won't regret this generosity." And then Platt was gone, too, leaving the others puzzled.

"I wonder what they know that we don't," said Robards, "that makes him so anxious to avoid a libel suit."

The next day was the last Saturday in April, and the Quidditch match between Slytherin and Hufflepuff. Snape sat with the Slytherin Quidditch team at breakfast that morning and discussed overall strategy. Or rather, he listened while they discussed, adding only an occasional comment.

"It's Gryffindor in the best position," said Lionel, the Seeker. "They scored enough against Hufflepuff in their last game that even if they score nothing before catching the Snitch, we'll need 40 Quaffle points before the Snitch just to tie them. And Hufflepuff needs a hundred Quaffle points for a tie."

"Which means," said the seventh-year Chaser Rhonda, "that Ravenclaw has to beat Gryffindor. Ravenclaw is weakest in points and can't hope to beat either us or Hufflepuff. But they can come in second with a simple Snitch victory. So if we or Hufflepuff score high, Gryffindor will be looking for Quaffle points while Ravenclaw will be Snitch hunting. But if we both score low, Gryffindor will be Snitch hunting, too."

"So it's a Quaffle game, and pray Ravenclaw finds the Snitch in May."

Hufflepuff had the same strategy, and the Quidditch game quickly became a battle around the hoops. Both teams excelled at defense, and the score stayed low. After an hour of play, Slytherin had thirty and Hufflepuff forty.

It was at that point that the Gryffindor stands began to heckle the Hufflepuff players.

"What's the matter, Badger-boys? Scared of the Snitch?"

"Hufflepuff, not fast enough! Hufflepuff, not fast enough!"

"Snitch! Snitch! Snitch!"

Flitwick, sitting between Snape and McGonagall, looked at Gryffindor's head of house. "What are they doing that for?"

Snape leaned over, his voice raised against the noise. "If either Slytherin or Hufflepuff gets the Snitch now, Gryffindor won't need to score before it goes for the Snitch. They could win outright in minutes. But if we score one more goal and then win, Gryffindor will have to play the Quaffle to get first place. They want Hufflepuff to be content with second place and catch the Snitch before we score again."

But it seemed that neither Hufflepuff nor Slytherin was to be controlled by Gryffindor. Both teams kept doggedly to their game plan, and the score stood 60 for Hufflepuff when Slytherin scored its fifth goal and began to hunt the Snitch.

No longer willing to chance it, Hufflepuff placed its hopes in Ravenclaw and went Snitch hunting, too. The gods favored Hufflepuff, and after furious feints by both Seekers, Hufflepuff claimed the Snitch and won. Slytherin would have no Quidditch Cup that year.

Slytherin faced defeat again in the media competition on the following Monday. _The Daily Prophet_ ran another interview.

_Reporter: But Dr. Carmichael, you were so strong last week. You came out a fighter._

_Dr. Carmichael: Even the strongest of us have our limits. I'm facing the full weight of Hogwarts and the Ministry. I can't fight anymore._

_Reporter: How can you let this happen?_

_Dr. Carmichael: They're hitting me from several sides at once. First, since You-Know-Who targeted me for death, I haven't been able to do as much research and writing. So now they're threatening my publisher with exorbitant legal fees in a civil suit whose primary purpose is to drain my funds. Moreover, they're trying to blacken my character by taking a misunderstanding with my seventh year Transfiguration teacher and expanding it into a character issue. Then there's the other one, who everyone knows used to work for You-Know-Who, but they won't protect me from him. I'm so beleaguered, I don't know where to turn anymore._

_Reporter: Is there anything our readers can do?_

_Dr. Carmichael: Yes, though I hesitate to say it for fear of reprisals._

_Reporter: Please, Dr. Carmichael, confide in your supporters._

_Dr. Carmichael: If they could just let Headmaster Dumbledore and the Ministry know that I'm not alone, that if something happens to me, it will be noticed in the wizarding world, and that evil deeds will not go unpunished. Then I think I could find the strength to go on._

McGonagall slapped the paper in front of Snape. "Look at that!" she snapped.

"Do I have to? I'm eating. You know if you destroy my appetite now, I'm lost for the rest of the day."

"Even if you don't, others will. Albus has gotten three owls already this morning. If parents start calling for resignations again, we'll have to take it to court."

"I notice," Snape said, glancing at the interview, "that she still hasn't mentioned any names."

"I presume that will be her defense, that we can't actually prove that she was talking about us."

"And she has an eye to public opinion." Snape looked at the paper more carefully. "She hasn't said that the Transfiguration teacher and the harridan are the same person. Maybe she felt that not everyone would be on her side if they knew it was you she was complaining about."

"Well," McGonagall said, "there is some comfort in that."

Snape seldom even saw Dr. Carmichael at the school anymore, since she commuted daily to London and no longer took meals with the rest of the staff. He continued to monitor the progress of his house in Dark Arts, but everything there seemed to be going well.

Dumbledore came to Snape's office Wednesday afternoon. He was carrying a large packet of letters. "Most of them assume it is you," he told Snape. "They are more reluctant to name Professor McGonagall. Do you intend to respond to her attack."

"I wish she would just let it drop. The Ministry knows no one tried to poison her, even if she won't believe it. Everyone else will forget about it in a few weeks. But if it goes to court, it'll be all over Britain for months."

It didn't stop. Dr. Carmichael arranged a series of talks about her books, and the subject of her near-escapes was brought up during the first two by her audiences. The incidents made it into articles in _The Daily Prophet_. On Monday, May 16, Minerva McGonagall and Severus Snape filed a request for an injunction against Valeria Carmichael and submitted papers to start a civil suit.

The first hearing on the injunction was set for the following Monday, May 23. Dumbledore accompanied Snape and McGonagall to the Ministry, where Judge Bones had taken the case. Both Robards and Moody were in the courtroom, and a few minutes later McGonagall was joined by a tall man with gray eyes and dark brown hair, probably in his late thirties.

The introduction was whispered and brief. "Severus, I'd like you to meet my son, Marcellus." The two men shook hands, and then waited quietly.

Dr. Carmichael's entrance was more showy. She was preceded by a photographer, accompanied by her agent, who looked decidedly uncomfortable, and followed by two reporters.

Robards stopped them before the little procession had gotten halfway into the court. "You shouldn't have the press here. This is just a hearing to review the facts of the case."

"There!" Carmichael announce to the reporters. "They don't want you to know the facts!"

Robards sighed. "We'll let the judge decide." He sent word to Judge Bones that all were assembled.

Judge Bones went first to the bench, then bade them all be seated. She glanced around, then crooked a finger at the clerk. "There are people here unconnected with the case," she said.

"Yes, your Honor. The Defendant brought them."

The judge looked through her papers. "Valeria Carmichael, step forward." Carmichael approached the bench. "For what purpose, Dr. Carmichael, have you brought representatives of the media to this hearing?"

"I understand the action has to do with remarks I made in _The Daily Prophet_. This lady and gentleman are from that paper, and are here as witnesses for me."

"I see. And the photographer?"

"To take pictures."

"The photographer will wait outside the courtroom. And you will take no pictures without obtaining prior consent. I see any pictures of this proceeding, and you go to jail for contempt."

"Yes, your Honor," said the photographer, and left.

"Now, Gawain," the judge continued, "do you speak for the plaintiff, the defendant, or the court?"

"For the court, your Honor."

"This is for an injunction of cease and desist, and so far no damages are involved. What is the material in question?"

"Four interviews in _The Daily Prophet_," Robards laid the papers in front of the judge, "and statements made at two book-reading events."

Judge Bones scanned the evidence. "No names are mentioned. Why do you think the public will connect the statements to you?"

McGonagall answered first. "She speaks of a female teacher who started at Hogwarts while she was a student. That can only be me. She confirms it later by mentioning a problem with her seventh-year professor in Transfiguration. That again can only be me."

"Thank you. Professor Snape?"

Snape didn't look at Carmichael. "She talks of a male professor who's known to have links to You-Know-Who. I'm the first male professor to be hired in fifteen years, and there have been previous questions about my connections to the Death Eaters. There is no other professor that it could be."

Handing a paper to Robards, the judge said, "There has been a previous complaint about poisoning and attempted murder. What were the results of the investigation?"

"Your Honor, no trace of poison was found either in the glass, the bottle that supplied its contents, any other bottle or glass, or in the expelled body fluids."

"That's because it was an undetectable poison," interrupted Carmichael.

The judge peered over her glasses at Carmichael. "Who is our foremost authority on undetectable poisons?" she asked.

"I am."

"Where did you study these poisons?"

"Mostly in the jungles of South America… Brazil, Venezuela."

"Can you identify for the court a poison that causes these symptoms?"

"No, but…"

"Professor Snape, have you ever been outside Britain?"

"No, your Honor."

"How do you acquire poisonous material for your classes?"

"I order it through school channels."

"Has an inventory been made of your supplies?"

"Yes, your Honor."

"Alastor Moody," the judge smiled at the auror, "was Professor Snape anywhere, during the time before the alleged attacks, where he might have purchased suspect materials?"

"No, your Honor," Moody was forced to admit.

"Has anything else surfaced in your investigation?" Judge Bones asked Robards.

"The defendant's symptoms match certain symptoms experienced by muggles who have a condition called an allergy to certain types of food. We have asked the defendant to cooperate in tests to determine whether or not she is suffering from such an allergy. She has refused."

"Why would you refuse?" the judge asked Carmichael.

"I don't have an allergy," Carmichael replied.

"How do you know?"

"I would know if I had an allergy."

"What is this allegedly an allergy to?"

"Oysters, your Honor," Robards responded.

"Dr. Carmichael, how many times in your life have you eaten oysters?"

Carmichael hesitated. "Twice," she said at last.

"Were each of these times also a time when you claim to have been poisoned?"

"Yes, your Honor."

"Have you ever been poisoned on a day when you haven't eaten oysters or eaten oysters on a day when you haven't been poisoned?"

Carmichael jumped on the question. "Yes!" she exclaimed. "When You-Know-Who tried to poison me the first times."

From behind Carmichael came what sounded like a small moan. It seemed to come from Mr. Tristan Platt. The judge turned gently to the self-effacing little man. "Mr. Platt," she said, "are you the agent mentioned by Dr. Carmichael in her books who helped save her from the attacks by Lord Voldemort?"

"Yes, your Honor."

"Mr. Platt. You are aware, of course, that testimony in front of a judge is under compulsion of perjury?"

"Yes, your Honor." Behind Mr. Platt, Carmichael had grown suddenly pale.

"Please describe Dr. Carmichael's symptoms after she was poisoned by Lord Voldemort."

There was a long period of silence.

"Mr. Platt, do you understand my instructions?"

"Be quiet!" snapped Carmichael to Platt. Then she turned to the judge. "My agent isn't here as a witness. I just asked him to come for moral support."

"He nevertheless appears to have been the witness of something," the judge replied, "and I shall decide whether or not it is relevant. Now, Mr. Platt, will you describe the symptoms?"

"I can't," Platt replied.

"Why not? Didn't you see them?"

"Uh, no. I… uh… didn't."

"Who did?"

Carmichael hissed, Platt sighed, and Judge Bones drummed her fingers on her desk. "I am waiting, Mr. Platt. We do have one or two nice cells where you would have leisure time to consider your answer if you feel under too much pressure here and now."

"You wouldn't!" Carmichael exclaimed. "You couldn't!"

"I would, and I could, and you will be silent. Mr. Platt, who witnessed the symptoms?"

Platt glanced woefully at Carmichael, but his choices were few. "No one did," he answered. "There were no symptoms. The poisoning by You-Know-Who never took place. It was a publicity stunt to cover her move to America and was made because of slumping book sales."

"You're sacked as of this moment!" Carmichael shrieked, but no one was paying attention to her anymore.

The two reporters looked at each other, and one rose and headed for the door. "Where are you going, Madame?" Judge Bones said, and the reporter stopped.

"I need to send an owl," she answered.

"No you don't, not about business that's before my court." The reporter sat down again, and the judge turned her attention back to Carmichael. "Dr. Carmichael, you have alleged that someone has been trying to poison you, and you have accused Professor Snape in this attempt both formally to the Ministry of Magic and by implication to the media, claiming as his motive that he was trying to fulfill Lord Voldemort's sentence of death against you, thus leading the public to the supposition that he was at some time a Death Eater. We now find that the designs against your life were nonexistent, that Voldemort never marked you for death. How could Professor Snape be trying to carry out an order that was never given?"

"He was really acting out of a spirit of revenge, since I had rebuffed his romantic advances. I didn't want to embarrass him by telling everyone that he was turned down by someone of my experience."

Judge Bones peered at Carmichael over her glasses. "You felt that being pilloried as a former Death Eater was somehow preferable to being ridiculed for being attracted to older women? Do you have a shred of evidence that Professor Snape was ever a Death Eater?"

Carmichael glanced back at Moody, but Moody was very subtly shaking his head. Looking back at the judge, Carmichael replied, "No, your Honor."

"And what of your allegations against Professor McGonagall?"

"She has resented me for years because her son and I fell in love, and he was ready to leave Hogwarts and his family for my sake."

The judge's gaze swept the front bench. "It would appear, Mr. McGonagall, that your testimony has suddenly become pertinent." Marcellus rose, and as he did Carmichael gasped. She had clearly not recognized him after the passage of twenty years.

"What do you need from me, your Honor?" Marcellus asked.

"Simple narrative would suffice, I think."

"I was already in my first year at Hogwarts when my mother was hired at the end of the autumn term to take over the Transfiguration classes. Almost at once, Mrs. Carmichael – she was Miss Aurifosser then – began to single me out for treats, help with my assignments, general attention. I thought this was great, and she told me it was because I was so smart, good-looking, and personable. The only time I ever heard anything unpleasant from her was at the end of the year, in June, when she seemed angry and told me my mother was an ingrate. I didn't find out the truth until more than six years later."

"Under what circumstances did you discover this 'truth'?"

"In my seventh year, after I'd turned eighteen in fact, I encountered Mrs. Carmichael in Hogsmeade. One thing led to another, and we became involved. So involved that I left Hogwarts to be with her all the time. Our relationship turned sour not long after that, and in the course of the breakup she threw several things in my face. One of them was that I was an obnoxious little brat and the only reason she'd befriended me was to get the NEWT exam questions from my mother. When mother refused, she decided to get even by ruining my chances the same way hers had been ruined."

"How much of this do you know from your own experience, Professor McGonagall?"

"This is outrageous!" Carmichael shrieked.

"And you will be silent or I shall call a guard."

"Well," said McGonagall, "she did ask me for the questions, and I reported it to the examiners. They investigated and disqualified her."

"What have you to say in this matter?" Judge Bones asked Carmichael.

"They're lying! They're both lying!"

Snape diffidently raised his hand.

"Yes, Professor Snape?"

"Wouldn't it be in the school archives?" Snape asked innocently. When the judge nodded, he added, "I wouldn't want to speak for Professor McGonagall, but I for one would be willing to drop the petition for an injunction." McGonagall stared at him, then shrugged and agreed.

"You're a fast learner," said the judge. "The case is dropped," she announced, "and you are all free to go. Since there is no longer a case before this court, no restrictions can be imposed."

The two reporters exchanged glances again, and raced for the door.

It hit _The Daily Prophet_ headlines the next day – 'Author Hoodwinks Public!'

"Look at this," McGonagall said, tossing the paper in front of Snape at breakfast. "I guarantee it will improve your appetite."

Snape skimmed down the page. It was primarily an account of the publishing agent's admission that the You-Know-Who poisoning claim was false, together with commentary about the impact of this on Carmichael's more recent allegations. Of particular interest was the section that spoke of Carmichael's 'less than admirable school career' and her confession to the judge that she had no solid evidence about any former Death Eaters at Hogwarts.

"Well," Snape said, "that certainly seems to cover everything." McGonagall was right. His appetite did improve.

The rest of the day was remarkably pleasant. All of Snape's students were well-behaved, even studious, and the Slytherin students positively glowed. Many of them congratulated him throughout the day, and copies of _The Prophet_ were being read quite prominently at the Slytherin table during lunch and dinner.

Dr. Carmichael did not return to Hogwarts. Luckily, the term and the year were nearly over – she had covered her entire curriculum and was reviewing in all her classes. The students appeared very well prepared for their exams.

"In fact," Dumbledore confided to Snape and McGonagall, "were it not for the little personal problems that surfaced, she was quite the best Dark Arts professor we have had in many years. In that respect I am sorry to see her go."

"I'm not," said Snape, and McGonagall sided with him.

_Friday, May 27, 1983_

On Friday, the last Friday in May, there was another interview in _The Daily Prophet_. Carmichael was still fighting.

_Reporter: How do you explain that your own publishing agent stated in court that the so-called attempts by You-Know-Who to kill you were fabrications?_

_Carmichael: They were not fabrications. My life was in danger before we released the story about the poison. Mr. Platt, who is no longer my agent, never denied that. He merely commented on the poisoning story that we used as a cover to conceal the true information we had about other attempts. And there are Death Eaters running around free today who know this to be true._

_Reporter: You implied that a teacher at Hogwarts was one of these Death Eaters, and yet you said in court that you had no evidence to support that._

_Carmichael: My information came from the Ministry itself, from the aurors. But they've been instructed not to back me up._

_Reporter: Why might that be, since the aurors more than anyone want to incarcerate as many of 'his' former servants as possible?_

_Carmichael: Because the Ministry wants to discredit me. They are out to get me, too._

_Reporter: To the extent of allowing Death Eaters to go free just to embarrass you? Come now, Dr. Carmichael. Isn't that a little far-fetched? Isn't it more likely that you have a common muggle condition called an allergy..._

_Carmichael: There! You're working for them! You're part of the plot to discredit me! Which master do you serve? The dark one, or the Ministry?_

_Reporter: It seems, Dr. Carmichael, that you have a habit of throwing these accusations at anyone who contradicts you. Your readers might start to think that your earlier accusations are just as baseless as your present ones._

"Just as baseless," said McGonagall, allowing Snape to read over her shoulder. "That has a good sound to it."

"A most excellent sound. Now maybe all of this will go away."

"Don't hold your breath, Severus. Nothing ever completely goes away."

McGonagall's words came true at the Quidditch match between Gryffindor and Ravenclaw the next day. Once again the visitor stands were packed, Weasleys prominent in the crowd. In fact, there were more people than in November, and it was not just the good weather.

The outcome of this match affected all the houses. If Gryffindor won, Hufflepuff would be second, Slytherin third, and Ravenclaw once again on the bottom. If Gryffindor scored before Ravenclaw won, it would be Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, Gryffindor, and Slytherin. If Ravenclaw caught the Snitch before Gryffindor scored, Gryffindor would be last.

It was not often that all three of the other houses were united against Gryffindor, and the mood in the stands and on the pitch was raucous, to say the least. Even reporters from _The Prophet_ were there, though as it turned out, they were more interested in McGonagall and Snape than in the game.

"Excuse me," a reporter said as Snape crossed the field on his way to the teachers' stands. "Could I trouble you with a few questions?"

At a loss for what to do or say, Snape took the coward's way out and postponed the encounter. "I'm sorry, I have to be on the other side in two minutes."

"Perhaps after the game?"

"Perhaps."

In the teachers' stand there was another awkward moment, for while it was a given that McGonagall and Flitwick would sit farthest apart, it was not clear who would sit next to McGonagall, all three of the others being in the embarrassing situation of hoping her house would lose.

"I think I'm strongest for Flitwick," said Sprout, "seeing that if he wins the game, I win the Cup."

So Snape sat next to McGonagall. That having been decided, he mentioned the reporter. "I haven't a clue what to say to him," he admitted.

"Simple," McGonagall snorted. "Tell him it's about time that horrid woman got what she deserves. And you no longer trust _The Daily Prophet_ for believing her in the first place."

"I don't know," Sprout interjected. "You don't want to make enemies, you know. If you're nasty to the newspaper, they'll be looking for another chance to strike at you. If you're nice and pleasant, they'll leave you alone."

"I doubt that," said McGonagall.

"Did I mention boring?" added Sprout. "If you're boring, a newspaper always leaves you alone."

"You do make a valid point," Snape said. "How do I manage being both polite and boring?"

Flitwick laughed. "Usually the two go together anyway. Just be polite and let boring take care of itself."

Don't make enemies. It was an old lesson, one of the first his mother had taught him, but Snape had somehow always managed to annoy someone. _It's just that I always seem to say or do the wrong thing._ In any case, he had the whole Quidditch game to think about it. _Assuming they don't catch the Snitch in the first minute, that is._

They didn't catch the Snitch in the first minute, or the first five minutes, or the first fifteen minutes. By then Ravenclaw's strategy was clear. Gryffindor wanted to score twice before Snitch hunting, so if Ravenclaw could keep the Quaffle away from the hoops, they could delay a Gryffindor bid for the prize. Since no amount of scoring could help Ravenclaw, they didn't even worry about it, dedicating all their players except the Seeker and one Beater to the task of keeping the Quaffle out of Gryffindor hands and protecting their own hoops. If Ravenclaw never scored, Gryffindor would never be given the Quaffle.

It turned into a running comedy for everyone except McGonagall and the Gryffindor stands, both students and visitors. For the first time, Ravenclaw revealed a stunning series of lateral passes that they'd been practicing in secret. Every time a Gryffindor Chaser came close to seizing the Quaffle, it was gone. The red and gold stands were chanting 'Fly high, Gryffindor!' but the answering chant from the other houses was 'Fly blind, Gryffindor!' Tempers were getting short in one quarter of the field.

Snape had a good half hour to think of what to say to the reporter that was polite and dull. Then the Snitch appeared, and Ravenclaw went into action. Two Ravenclaw Chasers stayed just outside their scoring area to keep the Quaffle busy and deflect scoring attempts by Gryffindor while the third Chaser and the second Beater moved in to distract Gryffindor's Seeker. Two minutes later, Ravenclaw had the Snitch.

Hufflepuff went wild at their first undisputed Cup in years. Ravenclaw exploded at the first time in two decades that they were one of the top two. Slytherin was just glad they weren't last. The only house that nursed unmitigated disappointment was proud Gryffindor. Vows of vengeance the next year were already circulating in their stands.

"Professor Snape!" the reporter called, falling in next to Snape as he left the field. "What do you think about the recent developments in the Carmichael business?"

"We're sorry she's leaving us. She was an excellent Dark Arts teacher."

"But what about her poisoning charges?"

"I sympathize with her. It must be frightening to be suddenly so ill for no apparent reason."

"What is your opinion of the boycott of her books that some readers are threatening?"

"I think it's unwise. She is still one of the foremost authorities on the Dark Arts in the wizarding world today. I have read her books; they are excellent. Now, if you will excuse me."

"Thank you, Professor Snape," the reporter sighed, and went off in search of more promising game.

Then, as if without warning, the exams were on them. One day everyone was studying and reviewing, and the next the examiners, first for the OWLs and then for the NEWTs, had taken over the Great Hall, while the lower years were diligently writing foot after foot of parchment in their classrooms.

No more was heard from Dr. Carmichael, at least not during that term, and as June itself reached its peak and began sliding towards its end, the students started packing to return home for the summer. Snape visited the common room to say goodbye to the seventh years.

"Don't mind me," he said as the students in the common room rose at his entrance. "Just keep on talking." Snape crossed over to the fireplace where the two Chasers, Lionel and David, were mourning the loss of Rhonda. Settling into a chair near them, he asked Rhonda, "Have you anointed a successor yet?"

She laughed. "Sergey would be furious if I did. He takes his job seriously."

"Of course I do, my dear," chimed in Sergey from a nearby conversation. "How else are we going to clobber Gryffindor next year?"

"This time next year," Rhonda said dramatically, "everyone in the wizarding world will be wearing a Rhonda Cordonnier designed robe."

"Who's Rhonda Cordonnier?" David asked.

"May I hazard a guess that it's French for Shoemaker," said Snape.

"Naturally," said Rhonda. "Who'd pay top galleon for a robe designed by someone named Shoemaker? Cordonnier just sounds better."

"It must be nice knowing what you're going to do after you leave here," sighed David. "I haven't worked it out yet."

Lionel swatted him. "You've only just finished fourth year. Nobody knows in fourth year. Me now, I know. I've finally worked it out and started making contacts. Well, my father has anyway. I'm planning on working for Golden Cauldron. They need travelers."

"What's that?" David asked.

"They provide exotic potions ingredients, mostly to the apothecaries…"

"And to Hogwarts," Snape added.

"Right, a lot to Hogwarts. They need people to travel to places like Papua New Guinea or Suriname to inspect shipments and keep in touch with suppliers. It should be fun. All I have to do is get good marks in Herbology and Potions on my NEWTs."

After a few minutes, Snape left the common room, having said something to each of the departing seventh years. The experience on the whole left him terribly depressed.

_They all know where they're going and what they're going to be doing. Their parents have contacts with wizard companies, and they've planned their studies to match. At the end of my seventh year, I didn't know that Golden Cauldron even existed. All I knew was that I was going to join the Dark Lord. I don't even remember making the decision. Even if Dad and Mum were still alive and there were no Dark Lord, I probably wouldn't have been looking further than coal mines and factories. And now that I know about other possibilities, I'm forbidden to try for them._

Dumbledore sent for him, and Snape climbed the long staircases up to the seventh floor. He was greeted with a warm smile and a goblet of mead.

"I just wanted to tell you," Dumbledore said, "that the examiners were very impressed with your students' performances on the OWLs and NEWTs. A high number of Outstandings and Exceeds Expectations. Nothing lower than an Acceptable on the NEWTs. That's two years in a row that the scores have been impressive. Congratulations."

"Thank you, sir," said Snape, his heart not quite in the words.

"You do not sound pleased. Here I am telling you that you are an excellent teacher with a good future here at Hogwarts, and you act as if I was about to sack you."

"It's nothing, sir. I've just come from the common room, and the seventh years are talking about the jobs they have lined up, and… I suppose we just have to play the cards we're dealt, but sometimes…"

"I understand. Our lives are shaped by accidents of birth and by events outside our control. Some are born rich, others poor, some into a time of openness and freedom, others into a time of fettered choices." Dumbledore placed a hand on Snape's shoulder. Snape looked away, not meeting Dumbledore's eyes. "It is not good to be bitter, Severus. I know that happiness here at Hogwarts may be asking too much, but do you not think you might be content?"

"I'll try, Headmaster," Snape said, and returned to his rooms.

_Saturday, June 25, 1983 (the full moon)_

The students entered and left the Great Hall for breakfast that morning like migrating flocks of different species of birds, swooping through in tightly huddled groups to rest and feed, and totally ignoring the other flocks. Within each group they laughed, hugged, exchanged small tokens of friendship and even promised to write. There was almost no intergroup contact, for this was the last day they would be together until the next September, and there were both priorities and proprieties to observe.

The oldest students apparated home. Some parents arrived to apparate side-by-side with their children. Snape joined the other teachers in escorting the rest to the thestral carriages, after which they became the responsibility of Hagrid and the Hogsmeade station attendants. Snape watched them down the hill, then went to his own rooms to pack.

There wasn't much. There was never much. Snape generally told himself that it was because there wasn't any room, but he had occasional lucid moments when he opened those mental doors usually closed even to himself and acknowledged that he was afraid of spending the money.

Books were permitted, for they fed the mind. The theater was permitted for the same reason, and dinner of course was part of the theater experience. Beyond that and food when he was at home, it was a long time since Snape had bought anything for himself. Certainly nothing like clothing, household items, or things to personalize his rooms.

That was something else to think kindly of Dr. Carmichael for. She hadn't pinched pennies, but had graciously picked up the tab when Snape confessed his relative poverty. And since December he'd bought nothing at all, for he hadn't left Hogwarts.

It occurred to Snape that with his pay deposited in Gringotts, and his long term muggle account earning interest, he might be substantially better off financially than he'd been in August. It was a sudden, unexpected, pleasant feeling.

It was in this vulnerable frame of mind that he uncovered the lararium that had remained unnoticed since the investigative team had pushed it into the nook by the fireplace during their search in November. It was in this vulnerable frame of mind that he came face to face with the fact that he had remembered neither his parents' deaths nor Lily's more recent death all that year.

Holding the picture of his mum and dad at Blackpool in one hand, and the framed note from Lily in the other, Snape sank into the chair behind his desk. _What a disgustingly self-indulgent person I am! Here are the three most influential people in my life, and I couldn't spare a moment for their memories? And that was before the first 'attack' on Halloween. Even before the trouble, I stopped thinking about them. What a toad! What an absolute toad!_

There was nothing he could do. It was like remembering that you had an appointment five hours after you'd missed it. You might be able to apologize and pave the way for the future, but you could never go back and remove the original damage. Three of the most important persons in his life, and Snape had forgotten them, not just for a day, but for months.

_You are such a basket case, Severus. It's not bad enough you have a blighted past and a nonexistent future, you have to mess up the bit in between, too._

At lunch the teachers wished each other a pleasant holiday. McGonagall especially cornered Snape and thanked him for the little discoveries that had finally exploded Carmichael's case against them. "It was only a matter of deciding which lady I would prefer to spend time with over the next few years," said Snape. "After that it was easy." McGonagall's mouth got all prim and pursed as she swatted him with her wand, but both of them understood that it was only because there was nothing else she could say.

After lunch, Snape got his Gladstone bag with his muggle clothes – he left the wizard robes in the wardrobe for the next school year – and a small bundle of books that included the Shakespeare he'd bought the year before, and apparated to the moors of the Pendle district in eastern Lancashire. He had five weeks of freedom, and he needed to make the most of it.

The first person Snape met after arriving home, stashing his things, and going out for a walk and some fresh air was, of course, Mrs. Hanson.

"Russ, child! Are you back for the summer, then?"

"I am, Mrs. Hanson, and glad to be here. How have you been these several weeks?"

"Love ya, dearie, what with the arthritis and the back and the knees, not to say, mind you, that it might not all be the same problem, I've been a bit under the weather, and one of them colds to keep me company, too. But I ought not complain. The alternative is worse, if you get my meaning. How is your friend, that Mr. Robards I think it was?"

"He is well, and I'll tell him you inquired. You've no idea, in fact, how pleased I am to see you, for your information helped us solve a most baffling medical mystery. I was going to pop round and tell you, but since we're here, may I invite you to tea at Mrs. Lewes's shop? It's a most interesting story."

"A medical mystery? Do tell! I am all agog, Russ Snape, all agog. And you will tell me all the particulars?" Together the two went to Mrs. Lewes's for tea.


	32. Chapter 32 – Suspended Sentence

**Severus Snape: The Middle Years Part II – Suspended Sentence**

_Monday, August 1, 1983 (1 day before the last quarter)_

Packing his Gladstone bag to return to Hogwarts on the first of August was becoming a routine action for Professor Severus Snape. This was now the start of his third year teaching and, despite his continued feeling of being trapped in the job, he was beginning to think of it as at least 'normal.' He'd said his good-byes to Mrs. Hanson, the crowd at the pub, and the clerks at the stores he patronized so now, as he stood prepared to disapparate from the area yard behind his little house in the little town in the Pendle district of Lancashire, there was no reason to delay.

Professor Snape did not disapparate. Instead he left his Gladstone bag in the area yard and went back into his house and fixed another cup of tea.

_I don't want to go to Hogwarts. I hate Hogwarts. I hate teaching. Why don't I just take off for Mallorca? Bariloche? So what if I don't know how to ski? I can learn. Or Acapulco? Ditto swimming. Anything but Hogwarts._

In the end, it was not what he would face at Hogwarts, but what he would face if he didn't go to Hogwarts, that decided the question. Draining the last cup of tea in his own home for the next four and a half months, Professor Snape returned to the area yard and disapparated.

"Bit late, aren't you?" The familiar gruff voice spoke practically into Snape's ear.

"It's still summer," Snape replied. "We're not punching a clock yet."

"Me," said Alastor Moody, "I wouldn't want to punch a clock at the best of times. Besides injuring your hand, it's got to do damage to the clock. That could be a whole new reason for going to Azkaban, you know. Damage to ministerial timepieces."

"Did you have another reason for accosting me on a public street?"

"No." Moody grinned a rather predatory grin. "Just a vested interest in whether or not you follow your orders. I'm still waiting to welcome you to a cell in Azkaban. Even if it takes until a certain judge retires, I'll still be waiting. There's a debt yet to be paid."

And with that, Moody disapparated.

_Routine_, Snape thought bitterly. _It's all becoming routine. Even Moody. Maybe getting hauled into the Ministry of Magic for interrogation will become routine, too._ He thought about that on the way up the hill to the castle, and was forced to admit to himself that he hadn't been hauled into the Ministry of Magic the previous year. He'd gone there of his own volition – once to try to help Professor McGonagall, and once because he was asking the court for an injunction. Both voluntary. And the questioning at Hogwarts had not been some form of blatant harassment, but actually required by the circumstances. _Maybe I won't be bothered by the Ministry this year. That would be nice._

Another part of his routine greeted Snape in the dungeons – potions ingredients and requisition forms. The first year it had been a challenge. Now it was routine. Next year it would be boring. He thought of the classes. They wouldn't be boring, they would be infuriating. Starting the first of September, he would have three and a half months of unremitting irritation. It was too much to bear.

Locking his rooms, Snape left the dungeons and headed for Dumbledore's office.

"I want a change of job," Snape announced without preamble as soon as he was admitted.

"Good morning, Severus," said Dumbledore mildly. "I trust you had a pleasant summer break. I myself went snorkeling in the Bahamas. A most refreshing and invigorating holiday."

"I stayed home," said Snape. "It was all right. I want a change of job."

"But you are admirably qualified to teach Potions. To what other job would you bring so much knowledge and expertise?"

Snape had the answer all ready. "Defense against the Dark Arts. I've been studying it since I was four. I got Outstandings on my OWL and my NEWT, I've worked under the darkest of dark wizards of our time, and I know all about defending myself from just about anything. And not from books, either. I could teach the course blindfolded."

"That would be amusing, but I would hesitate to make it part of the job description. I do, however, get the feeling that there is some other major but unmentioned consideration. I have an inkling of what it might be, if you would be so kind as to confirm my hunch." Dumbledore peered at Snape over the top of his glasses, a twinkle in his eyes.

Snape sighed. "Dark Arts doesn't mix the houses. I'd never again have to teach Slytherin and Gryffindor together except at NEWT level. My life would be so much more pleasant."

"I see," said Dumbledore. "Have a seat, Severus. Tea perhaps?"

Snape sat in the chair in front of Dumbledore's desk and accepted a cup of tea. _At least he's willing to talk about it and not just turn me down flat._

"Now, Severus," Dumbledore said calmly. "What is your philosophy about the Dark Arts?"

"Philosophy? Why do I need a philosophy? You never asked if I had a philosophy about Potions." Snape sipped his tea, but was already not liking the turn of the conversation.

"Even you must admit that the Dark Arts are in rather a different league from Potions. In order to teach defense against them, you must teach how to recognize them. So what, in your opinion, are the Dark Arts?"

"Everything and nothing. Constantly changing, What we call Light one moment can be Dark the next and vice versa. Shifting and mutating like a kaleidoscope."

"So in other words, you would teach Defense against Everything? I can see where this could become an interesting class."

"Sir, I know that you and I disagree on this, but anything used for evil purposes, even something as seemingly innocent as a Lumos spell, becomes at that moment Dark Magic. And any normally Dark thing, used for a good purpose, becomes at that moment Light. It's a matter of recognizing the purpose rather than the thing."

"We shall postpone for the moment any discussion on your assumptions about me and focus on the practical aspects of your comments. Can you expand on your opinion? How can Dark creatures become Light?"

"One of the Darkest there is, is a Dementor. But Dementors are serving the wizarding world as guards at Azkaban. Would you accuse the Ministry of practicing the Dark Arts?"

"Point well taken. And the Unforgivable Curses? Can you envision any situation where the Killing Curse or the Cruciatus Curse might be used for good?"

"Headmaster," said Snape with a rueful half-smile, "I can envision a number of such scenarios. And I remind you that the aurors were given permission to use exactly those spells to combat the Dark Lord. Again, would you accuse the Ministry…"

"No, Severus, I would not. Certainly not under the circumstances, though I must point out that not all of the aurors took advantage of that permission. Now, why do you believe that I do not agree with you?"

Snape paused to weigh his words carefully. "Because, sir, there were students in this school who used Dark Magic on a regular, almost daily basis, and not only were they not punished for it, they were allowed to assert to the rest of the school without contradiction that they hated the Dark Arts and anyone who practiced them, despite the fact that they themselves were the worst practitioners."

"Ah, Severus," Dumbledore replied with a sigh, "we cannot censor everything a student says. More to the point, did you ever hear a teacher support that statement?"

After thinking for a moment, Snape said, "No, sir."

"And they were punished. We just did not think it necessary to inform you, a student in another house, every time James Potter and Sirius Black were placed on detention. The student who was never punished for his hexes, curses, and jinxes was you."

"Sir?"

"Were you ever placed on detention for anything you did?"

"No, sir, but…"

"Do you think we never noticed? Do you think that every time you were brought before me and insisted that you, Potter, and Black were having a perfectly amicable conversation that I believed you?"

Snape blushed at this, realized it, and cursed his own lack of emotional control. "Actually, sir, that's exactly what I believed."

"Why ever did you believe that?"

"Because you never punished me. I assumed you never punished them."

"My dear Severus. Filch has boxes and boxes of files with detailed descriptions of every detention and its reason since the school started to give detentions instead of corporal punishment. James and Sirius figure prominently, as do Aaron, Evan, and Aloysius, and to a lesser extent Remus, Peter, and several lesser lights of all the houses. Your name is not on those cards either as perpetrator or as victim."

"Why not?"

"Because you alone never initiated an exchange. You alone acted only in retaliation – in self defense as it were. And with the sole exception of a certain incident involving a werewolf, you alone never appealed to authority to get anyone else in trouble."

"I don't think it was wise to do that," Snape said quietly. "Leave me alone, I mean. I always got the feeling that I had to look out for myself because no one else would."

"And who first gave you that idea?"

"My mother, I suppose. But it was reinforced the first day at Hogwarts."

"I am intrigued. How so?"

"Day to day discipline is handled by the prefects. The prefects are supervised by the Head Boy and Head Girl. They're always Gryffindors, so Gryffindor house rules the other houses. We were warned about that on the first day by our prefects."

"I see. I must confess I had not looked at it in quite that way. There is nothing at this moment that I can do, as the new Head Boy and Girl have already been named – and yes, they are from Gryffindor house – but I shall keep it in mind for next year. Now, as for your request, there are three reasons why I cannot grant it. The first is that I need you in the Potions position. Our students' performance has improved immensely in the two years that you have been here, and I do not wish to lose that. Secondly, I have already found and hired a Dark Arts professor. Third, I do not think that I can defend to the Ministry of Magic the placing of a known (at least within the Ministry) Death Eater in the Dark Arts slot. It would raise too many fears, and quiet none."

"So the answer is no."

"That is correct, Severus. The answer is no. Did you honestly expect any other?"

"Not really, sir," said Snape. He rose and left the office, placing the cup of tea unfinished on the desk behind him.

_It will never end_, he thought on his way back down the long staircases to his rooms in the dungeons. _You can live out your life in harmless work, you can even try to make amends through sacrifice and service, and all they'll ever remember is the mistake you made when you were eighteen. You're supposed to be able to atone for your sins. Potter never atoned for his, but they'll forgive him anything because he died. I bet if I died for them, they still wouldn't forgive me. The world is like Slughorn. If you're rich, good-looking and pureblood, you can do anything you want…_

August slipped into comfortable routine. Snape ordered, received, and unpacked his stores. He played cribbage with Flitwick, planned a kitchen herb garden with Sprout, discussed Quidditch with Kettleburn, and sparred lightly with McGonagall. Hagrid clucked over his meals, and the new Dark Arts instructor benefited from advice that Snape would apparently never be allowed to use himself in a classroom.

On Thursday, September first, as the moon began its slide to new, the train arrived with its cargo of old-new students, and after a day and a weekend of orientation and unpacking, the school year began. Snape had almost forgotten what an incredible collection of dunderheads he was doomed to teach.

"Clockwise, Ridgebit! Clockwise! Don't pretend you've never seen the face of a clock before. Or if that's too complicated, try right, down, left, up. Ah, I see left and right are mysteries as well. Are you sure there's no troll blood in the family tree?"

"Could I trouble you, Chittock, to look at the top of the page? Do you see where it says 'Herbal Infusion?' Now I distinctly recall having seen you in this same seat last year and the year before, and I know that we covered the difference between herbs and toad bile. Kindly explain why you took it upon yourself to make the substitution."

"You dare drop that vial of Bundimun secretion on the floor, Lufkin, and you'll be cleaning it up with your tongue!"

With the first day of classes, Snape was exhausted every evening. If anyone had asked him to bet on his chances of surviving the term, much less the year, he'd have wagered every penny and knut he possessed on an early demise.

It was with the desperation of an already drowning man that Snape contemplated the evening of Thursday, the eighth of September, the day after the new moon, and Snape's first official evening off. His last class ended at four o'clock, and he determined to leave immediately. He had no desire whatsoever to spend dinner supervising students.

Dumbledore agreed without demure, so shortly after four o'clock, his rooms secured for the evening, Professor Snape walked down the hill from the castle in the full light of a September afternoon to apparate to the Leaky Cauldron. It was an eminently suitable starting point, being on Charing Cross Road and in the heart of London's theater district. He was hoping to buy books, have dinner, and take in a play or movie.

What Snape saw upon walking into a busy London street was a news vendor. What he saw in the headlines made him purchase a paper and slip at once into the Leaky Cauldron to read it over a glass of mead. He barely noticed Alastor Moody sliding into the chair opposite until Moody asked, "What are you reading that for?"

For answer, Snape showed him the front page, the article about a Korean passenger plane being shot down by Soviet military aircraft a week before.

"So?" Moody asked, clearly puzzled. "A muggle airplane goes down. It's happened before."

"Not like this," Snape answered. "The American president and the Soviet premier are rattling swords and calling each other inhuman and brutal. If this blows up – and it could, tempers are high – the wizarding world would be in just as much danger as the muggle world. We have nothing as big as they have. We're ants."

Moody stared at Snape for a moment. "You're serious," he said. "You really think this could be dangerous."

"All you need is one glitch on one tracking computer at a time like this, and the whole world goes up in smoke."*

"What's a glitch?" said Moody. "And what's a tracking computer?"

"A glitch is a mistake, an unexpected problem. A computer is a machine that muggles use to do high-speed, complex calculations. Why are you following me? Why don't you just leave me alone?"

"A missing eye gives you a long memory. Give me one good reason why I should leave you alone."

Snape looked at his hands, inspiration dawning. "Last year you helped get me off a poisoning charge because you had to testify that I hadn't gone anywhere near any poisons on my days off. Your following me kept me out of Azkaban."

Moody leaned back in his chair and roared with laughter, then lowered his voice. "So you're trying to lose your alibi! First you tell me the world's coming to an end anyway, so what's the point, and then you tell me I can get you into Azkaban faster if I stop tailing you."

"Something like that," said Snape.

Draining the glass he'd brought over with him, Moody rose and patted Snape roughly on the shoulder. "I didn't think you could do it, but you came up with a reason I can't fault. You realize this now leaves me free to concoct charges that you don't have an alibi for?"

"I'll take my chances," Snape replied calmly.

Moody left, and Snape went out into muggle London to buy a book, enjoy a meal, and watch a movie. As the weeks, and later the years went by, it was a routine that he found impossible to break. A new book, dinner, and a movie or a play, always alone, always too drained by a week of frustrating contact with a couple of hundred teenagers to want anything more than emotional isolation. On the plus side of things, he learned a lot.

Hogwarts, too, was an unchanging routine. Cribbage with Flitwick, the herb garden with Sprout, discussing muggles with Dawson and astronomy with Sinistra, conspiring with Kettleburn and exchanging barbs with McGonagall… There were times when it was immensely comforting, like having a big family, and then there were times…

"…and I was so eager to show him how much I'd learned…" Dawson was gushing after dinner in late January…

"That she took the second curve too wide, hung up her skis, fell over sideways, and slid halfway down the slope on her nose, which is why it looks that way now."

The staff room was suddenly quiet as the teachers turned to glare at Snape. "That was my story," Dawson said accusingly in the stillness. "You should have let me finish it."

"Oh, I am sorry," Snape replied, his voice dripping sarcasm. "It's just that you've told it so often I was certain you wanted us to get it by heart. I merely wished to let you know you'd succeeded."

"Severus!" McGonagall snapped, but Snape was already on his feet, his untouched glass of wine forgotten on the table beside him.

"If you'll excuse me," he said icily, "I believe it's time to go watch the spiders spin webs in the dungeons. At least down there they do it differently each time. It provides spice to life, the variety."

"You know," Dawson said, her arms folded across her chest, "if you'd stop pinching pennies and go out and do something in your life, maybe you'd be able to tell us some of your own stories instead of living vicariously off of others. If I'd locked myself in a dungeon I'd have been an octogenarian at the age of twenty-four, too."

Snape didn't reply. He turned on his heel and swept out of the staff room heading for Dumbledore's office. Behind him the others heaved a collective sigh of relief.

"He's the only one who never left the school during the whole Christmas break," Flitwick told Dawson. "I don't think he's ever been anywhere."

Up in Dumbledore's office, Snape was pacing like a caged tiger. "I want to leave. I want to get out of Britain. I want to at least try to be a normal human being, if even for once in my life!"

Dumbledore sighed. "You know that's impossible."

"Why does it have to be impossible?" Snape's voice was rising, angry, building to an explosion. "I'm supposed to stay under your authority, not chained in a kennel! Keep me under your authority – just send me somewhere!"

"The terms of your parole are rather strict. You are to remain where the Ministry of Magic has jurisdiction. You are not allowed to leave Britain. That is in addition to the requirement to be under my authority."

"For how long?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"For how long? For the rest of my life? Even after I die? Is that why Professor Binns is still here?"

"May I ask, Severus, what brought this on?"

Snape turned to stare into the fireplace. It seemed silly now that he had to put it into words. "Professor Dawson has been talking about skiing in the Alps for the past month. Do you realize how frustrating it is to have to listen to everyone talking about their holidays when you're not permitted to go on one of your own. Even you do it. Snorkeling in the Bahamas." Snape mimicked Dumbledore, not hiding the note of bitterness. "And how was your summer break, Severus? Did you enjoy comparing laundry powder prices with the ladies in the market? Such a scintillating life you lead."

Dumbledore steepled his fingers, peering over the tips. "There are places in Britain where you could go, are there not? The Lake District is beautiful any time of year."

"Where my every move would be watched by some auror or other."

"Has Alastor been following you again? He is supposed to stop that."

"Just one time. As long as I stick to my London routine, he's content to leave me alone. But if I go somewhere else, I'm pretty sure he'll check on me."

"And there is no… eh… other person in your life?"

"Right," said Snape. "Who am I supposed to be dating now, Sinistra? Or maybe I met someone at one of those fancy balls I'm always being invited to at the Ministry." He paused for a few seconds. "It isn't that I need someone, at least I don't think I do. What I need is a change. I need to go somewhere, do something, not be caged all the time. I need something besides Hogwarts."

"And I suggested the Lake District."

"Headmaster," Snape said suddenly. "What would the Ministry do if I left Britain and went to, say, Canada? Or New Zealand?"

"I should very much like to discourage you from making any such plans. You still have promises to keep, you know."

"What promises?"

"To protect a certain young gentleman as he grows and matures."

"Gentleman. I like that. So we're going to hire the half-blood working class stiff out for domestic service to nursemaid the rich pureblood's 'gentleman' son. I think I will run away to sea."

"He's Lily's son, too, Severus. Please do not forget that."

"Right. Which means he'll hate me already. Tuney will have seen to that."

"Tuney?"

"Lily's sister Petunia. 'Ew, Lily, he's that Snape boy from Spinner's End. You don't want to dirty yourself talking to trash like that…' Because I was poor, and from the wrong side of the river. She might even have become reconciled to the magic as long as it didn't include me."

Dumbledore sighed. "I had not realized there was bad blood between you and Petunia."

"Would it have made a difference?" Snape watched the flickering fire, trying to keep the images of Lily out of his head.

"No. What makes a difference is that the boy, Lily's boy, is still in danger, and you have promised to stay here, to help me, and to protect him when the time comes. I shall hold you to that promise, and I shall hold any attempt on your part to leave – be it to New Zealand or to Azkaban – as a violation of that promise."

It was Snape's turn to sigh. "It's been well over two years, sir. Why are you so sure that he's coming back?"

"There was no body," Dumbledore said quietly. "It was as if he'd vaporized. And then there is the testimony of the Lestranges. You yourself admitted to the strength of that."

"You're right. That was disturbing. But it's been more than two years and no sign of him The evidence grows stronger every week that dear Bella and company were wrong. Don't you think?"

"But then there is the matter of the curse." Before Snape could respond, Dumbledore asked, "Do you remember your Dark Arts instructor, Severus?"

Puzzled, Snape thought for a moment. "Instructor, Headmaster? There were several. A new one every year as I recall."

"Yes. The winter before you started, he came here himself and requested the Dark Arts position. I turned him down, of course. Things had not yet gotten bad, but there were enough rumors. The position has been cursed ever since. No professor stays longer than a year."

"Surely now that he's gone…" It was Snape's turn to peer at Dumbledore. "The last two years don't count," he blurted out. "Scrimgeour was only here because of him, and maybe a little because of me, and he left because the Dark Lord had been defeated. He's Ministry. He never intended to stay."

The way Dumbledore raised his eyebrows was, Snape knew, intended to be infuriating, so he plowed forward. "And Carmichael. It was temporary from the first moment. She was divorcing her husband and never meant to stay here longer than the year. And this new one. Isn't she supposed to depart next June?"

"Which means?"

"It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. You only hire people for a year, and then claim the position is cursed because they only stay for a year. Excuse me. Case not yet proven."

"How often did you see him?"

"A few times," said Snape, surprised at the question.

"What did he look like?"

"Slate tiles."

"I beg your pardon?"

"I was just a potions maker, not inner echelon at all, well not 'til I got this job." Snape self-consciously rubbed his left arm. "If I got called in, I had to kneel in the chamber, and then he would enter. We didn't look at him, not unless he wanted to read us and then we only saw the eyes. They were red. No, we looked at the floor. Which was paved with slate tiles. When we witnessed punishments, he wore a mask…"

"You never saw him?"

"Well, just glimpses. He… he looked like a snake with red eyes, but that may have been a mask."

"Did you know he attended school here at Hogwarts?"

Snape stared at Dumbledore. The surprise combined with a lack of personal threat meant that for once he was, relatively speaking, open. Dumbledore turned away after a moment, as if unwilling to push his advantage. There was a pause, and then Snape said, "I can't imagine him ever being… young enough to be a student."

"Not only young enough, but exceptionally handsome. A very personable young man when he wanted to be. And yet on that winter day there was almost no trace of that handsome young man left. He had been practicing some very dark magic indeed, and it had taken its toll."

"What kind of dark magic, Headmaster?" Snape's voice dropped to a whisper.

Dumbledore shrugged. "I do not know," he said, and he was not whispering. "All I know is that it had diminished him in some way. That, an old man's hunch, and the lack of a _corpus delicti_ (if you will pardon the pun) are in and of themselves grounds for suspicion. When you add to that the testimony of the Lestranges, it is practically an ironclad case. Moriarty is out there somewhere, and at sometime in the future, I am certain he will come back. When he does, it is logical to assume he will still be after Lily's son. You, Severus, have promises to keep, and miles to go…"

"…before I sleep," Snape finished. "Miles to go before I sleep. Do you think that's what she meant? That I would tire, and want to stop, but that I had to keep my promises?"

"If you think she was the one speaking to you. But if not, then it was your own brain speaking to you. How much sleep will you get if even your own brain is concerned about the promises?"

There was nothing to refute the line of argument. Snape thanked Dumbledore and returned to his own rooms to ponder the nature of self-imposed obligation. He ended up deciding that he would prefer not to disappoint Lily.

And then, of course, there was Quidditch and the House Cup. From the moment he became head of Slytherin, Snape had formed an understanding with his Quidditch team. It was principally a matter of letting them do what they did best – play Quidditch. The Slytherin team opened up for Snape the mysteries of the game, which turned out to be mathematical as well as physical. It did no good, for example, to catch the Snitch early on in the last game against Hufflepuff if Gryffindor was ahead by a hundred points in cumulative scoring.

The backbone of a Quidditch team were its Keeper and Beaters. Far more than the hotshot Seeker and Chasers, they controlled the pace of the game and its strategy. They also understood more how each game fit into the seasonal pattern, and they were the ones who struggled to keep the glory-hunters, the Seekers, in line. Slytherin lost more than one game to a brain-dead Seeker who couldn't cope with the fact that catching the Snitch was not always the best thing to do.

Snape developed his best relationships with the Beaters. Steady and reliable, they always placed the welfare of the team ahead of their own. Two of Snape's favorites were the Beaters of his second and third year: Sergey Duval and Josh Van Zandt. Not children of Death Eaters, they nevertheless took it upon themselves to back Snape up in a series of small confrontations both in Hogwarts and in Hogsmeade, and were instrumental in seeing that the Death Eater children of Slytherin were protected from reprisals. They saw Slytherin as a team in much the same way they saw the Quidditch team, and did their job as Beaters in both places.

Together, in the 1983 to 1984 season, Sergey and Josh led Slytherin to its first Quidditch Cup and House Cup in decades. McGonagall was more miffed than at her loss to Hufflepuff the year before, Kettleburn was delighted, and Snape was fired with a pride of house he'd never known as a student. The sad part was that it was Sergey's last year at Hogwarts, and Josh left the year following. That year, with Josh breaking in a new Beater, Lorelei Deverill, Gryffindor came from behind to once again won both Cups.

In September 1985, Gryffindor unleashed its secret weapon on an unsuspecting Hogwarts – a short, stocky, freckled second year student with flaming red hair named Charlie Weasley. Built like a Beater, Charlie was quickly revealed as possibly the greatest natural-born Seeker Hogwarts, perhaps the world, had ever seen. Blessed with a Beater's understanding of strategy, a Keeper's appreciation for defense, and a Chaser's determination to keep fighting, Charlie also had the speed and vision of a hawk, and never once came up empty after he'd spotted and targeted a Snitch. Even at the age of twelve, it was understood that he would play for England.

Gryffindor swept all its Quidditch games that year, but it was also the year that the Slytherin Beater team of Lorelei Deverill and Sancho Folkenstone was formed. And it was Sancho, watching Slytherin beaten into the dust by the Weasley hammer, that utterly changed Slytherin's attitude toward the Cups.

"Why do we have to assume that winning the House Cup is tied to winning the Quidditch Cup?" Sancho asked in the common room, having been in a state of shock for three days after the pummeling he received at Gryffindor's hands. "We're a good house, an intelligent house, a hardworking house. We can rack up points all over the place. We don't have to depend on winning at Quidditch!"

The Slytherin juggernaut was born that day. When Pamela Pucey balked at tutoring William Higgs in Charms, Sancho yelled at her, "Don't you want to win the House Cup?" and the sentence became a rallying cry for the whole house. Slacking students were encouraged to succeed by the admonition 'Don't you want to win the House Cup?' and rule-breakers were reminded that what they did affected the welfare of everyone. Slytherin's spirit of competition was on fire. Snape didn't have to do anything but watch as the emeralds in his house's hourglass rose higher and higher.

In June 1986, Gryffindor was the proud possessor of the Quidditch Cup, but the Great Hall was decorated in green and silver for the Farewell Feast. Green and silver would be the June color of the hall for many years to come.

That was when Snape played a card that McGonagall would never forgive him for. He discovered that Charlie Weasley was interested in dragons, introduced him to Hagrid, and suggested he take Care of Magical Creatures in his third year. Charlie abandoned Quidditch for Welsh Greens and never looked back. Kettleburn was thrilled, as were Flitwick and Sprout for quite different reasons, but it was a whole year before Snape stopped watching his back when McGonagall was around.

From then on, the Quidditch Cup was up for grabs between Slytherin, Ravenclaw, and Hufflepuff. Sometimes one house won it, sometimes another. The only constant was that it never again went to Gryffindor during the eighties. Snape put it down to the fact that Gryffindor was now a prisoner of the 'Charlie Weasley complex.' Instead of relying on overall teamwork, they kept looking for that one shining star, that one miraculous player, who would single-handedly snatch victory for them. For years, they didn't find one.

The passage of time alters all things. As the innocent pastimes of Quidditch and inter-house competition gained in importance, so the memory of the bad times receded. Death Eater children graduated, the Dark Lord did not return, and by the second half of the eighties, it seemed no one remembered that Snape had ever been accused of being a Death Eater. Except for Quidditch, life had become a deadly, stultifying routine.

In August 1988, the Hogwarts staff was joined by two new teachers – Charity Burbage in Muggle Studies, and Quirinus Quirrell in Defense against the Dark Arts.


	33. Chapter 33 – Quirinus Quirrell

**Severus Snape: The Middle Years, Part II – Quirinus Quirrell**

_Monday, August 1, 1988 (three days after the full moon)_

The greeting that fine August morning was a bit different than usual.

"You'd better get hopping up that hill quick-like. You're being supplanted."

Snape didn't even turn around, not the slightest bit surprised by the gruff voice. "Am I to understand that you're expecting me to be taking off for parts unknown in the very near future?"

"Unknown to you, maybe. Not to me. Not to a few dozen dementors. But I didn't mean in your job."

That was intriguing. "If I'm not being replaced in my job, Moody, how can I be supplanted?"

"You're being supplanted in preferential status. You're not the baby any more."

"A younger teacher!" The wry expression might have been what, on Snape's face, would pass for a smile, or it might have been merely a grimace of sarcasm. "You have no idea how ecstatically happy you've made me with that news. Now they can patronize someone else for a change."

"You wait a couple of days. You're going to miss the attention."

"About as much as I'll miss you for the rest of the school year."

The two men parted, Moody back to the Ministry and Snape up the hill. Despite his studied lack of interest while in Moody's presence, Snape was curious to see what this younger teacher looked like. He assumed it was in the Dark Arts position, and he was thinking of scathing things to say about it to Dumbledore.

It turned out, as Snape joined the assembling teachers for a late breakfast and the first staff meeting of the year, that there were two new teachers rather than one. The first was a woman, probably in her early thirties and therefore a few years older than the twenty-eight-year-old Snape. She was introduced to the staff as Charity Burbage, who would be taking over Sapientia Dawson's job in Muggle Studies.

The second newcomer was a very young-looking man, though Snape suspected he was in his mid-twenties. He was pale and mousy looking, and his name was Quirinus Quirrell.

"Well," said Flitwick proudly, "I know you're not teaching Care of Magical Creatures because Max is still here, so I assume it's Defense against the Dark Arts." He looked around the table. "Quirinus took an Outstanding in his NEWTs in both subjects, you know, not to mention Charms." He smiled at Quirrell. "I thought you'd gotten a job at the Ministry. Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, wasn't it?"

"Yes, sir," Quirrell said politely, and Snape was reminded of how he, too, had spoken to the others when he was first hired, as if he were still a student. "But after a while I thought I'd prefer something less strenuous. I fear I'm too much of an academic for creature wrestling."

"What sort of creatures were you wrestling?" Snape asked blandly.

"Trolls."

It was unfortunate that Snape had chosen that moment to take a bite of sausage. When he could breathe again, he apologized. "I'm not usually that inept with my food."

"That's all right," Quirrell replied. "A lot of people have had that reaction. Apparently it's an unusual combination."

"Do you remember Quirinus from school, Severus?" asked McGonagall. "He was about three years behind you as I recall, and in Ravenclaw."

"Not really," Snape admitted. "Slytherin tended to stick to its own."

"I recall you," said Quirrell. "Not that I knew you personally, of course. I was in fourth year when you were approached about the possibility of tutoring Sigfried Thurifer. He was a year ahead of me. We all remember your reply."

"Oh really," said Flitwick. "And what was that? I don't think I ever heard of a Ravenclaw going to a Slytherin for tutoring."

"It was in Potions," Quirrell explained. "Nobody could touch Snape in Potions, and Sigfried wanted the best."

"What was Severus's reply?" McGonagall asked.

Snape stepped hastily in. "He didn't need tutoring," he said quickly. "He just needed to reorder his priorities and use his resources more efficiently. I sent him back to Ravenclaw."

Across the table, Snape's eyes met Quirrell's. Quirrell was clearly sizing him up as well.

There was no way to escape Quirrell after the meeting because Dumbledore, predictably, asked Snape to show Quirrell around and get him settled into the Dark Arts position.

"You resent my being here, don't you," Quirrell said as the two ascended to the first floor Dark Arts classroom.

"Not at all," Snape replied. "I find it highly amusing when a brand new colleague tries to put me on detention. What were you going to tell them, anyway?"

"I didn't have anything planned," Quirrell admitted. "I was more interested in what you'd do. You got out of it nicely. They always said you had a quick brain."

Snape waited until they were inside the classroom, away from all possibility of McGonagall coming across them on her way to her own office, and then spun on Quirrell. "You didn't have anything planned, but you did your best to embarrass me anyway. You're going explain, and you're going to do it now."

Quirrell didn't back down, even though he was an inch or two shorter than Snape. "I wanted you to know that I was ready for you. You're not going to push me around. The others may not know you were the kind to string people up by their heels for no reason, but I do. You won't take me by surprise."

"No reason? Thurifer played innocent, then? Why didn't he go to Flitwick if he was so innocent?"

"He was afraid of you. I'm not, though." Quirrell thought for a moment. "What was he doing if it wasn't just asking for tutoring?"

"He was taking money from a couple of Gryffindors to lead me into a trap. I trusted him and went, too. I was lucky someone was watching my back that day. We figured hanging Thurifer upside down in a girls' lavatory was a lot nicer than what they planned on doing to me."

Quirrell tilted his head to one side. "Taking money for stabbing someone in the back does sound like something Sigfried might do," he admitted. "Still, you must agree I had some cause for antagonism."

"No," said Snape, "I don't. And if you always make it a habit to walk blindly into things you only half understand, you're going to get yourself into serious trouble one of these days." That being said, Snape looked around the office. It was full of boxes and crates, all opened but none unpacked. The boxes were full of books. "What did you do? Raid a library?"

"Yes," Quirrell replied. "My own. These were just the ones I thought would be useful here. For the class, of course."

Snape picked up a couple of the books. _One was Seven Steps to the Mountain of Darkness_, and the other _When Light Fails in the Depths of the Mind_. Both were books of the darkest philosophy. A glance at the other boxes showed Snape they were full of tomes on dark creatures, dark objects, and dark spells. "You believe in a thorough grounding in your subject," he commented.

"How can you instruct others how to fight it if you don't understand it yourself?"

_I understand it_, Snape thought. _I lived with it for three years, and I don't see one book here that talks about the lust for power that sends people down the dark path. There may be ivory-tower types who are fascinated by the Dark Arts just because they're there, but the dangerous ones are after power, and the Dark Arts are just a means to an end_.

"You certainly have a good theoretical background," he said to Quirrell, and headed for the door.

"Were you supposed to give me some kind of orientation?" Quirrell asked.

"Do you know what you're supposed to teach?" Snape asked.

"Yes, of course. I took these classes for seven years."

"Do you know where your supplies are?"

"Yes."

"Then you already know everything I could possibly tell you." Snape nodded once in farewell and walked out the door.

At first he headed for the great marble staircase down to the entrance hall and thence to his own office, but after a moment's hesitation, Snape changed his mind and went up instead. Up to Dumbledore's office.

"Why did you hire him?" Snape demanded the moment he was inside.

"Good afternoon, Severus. I trust you are well. I see we are about to have our usual annual discussion." Dumbledore waved Snape into one of the chairs and went to pour a glass of mead.

The conversation between Snape and Dumbledore went quickly, mostly because they'd had the same conversation at the beginning of the previous five years.

"And in this case," Dumbledore pointed out, "he is exceptionally well qualified. He is a brilliant scholar, very well-grounded in his subject on a basic level, and with a depth of knowledge that few much older people ever achieve. I might venture that he could teach you something about the Dark Arts."

Snape opened his mouth, then closed it again. He couldn't refute Dumbledore's statement since he had no information on the extent of Quirrell's studies. The only thing he could offer was a technicality. "But he's not supposed to teach the Dark Arts, he's supposed to teach Defense against them. What practical experience does he have?"

It was not a strong argument since the school would never engage teaching aids such as real ghouls and vampires, so the course was of necessity mostly academic anyway. Snape returned to the lower levels of Hogwarts defeated.

Quirrell soon began to grate on Snape's nerves in more ways than one. The first was that Quirrell did, in fact, know more about the Dark Arts than Snape did. Snape's familiarity with the subject was on a highly practical level regarding the magic, with the actual creation and use of spells, with real combat against them in controlled but nonetheless physical situations, with poisons and their antidotes, but his knowledge of dark creatures and enchanted objects was book learning and more limited.

Quirrell, on the other hand, had amazingly detailed knowledge of all aspects of Dark Magic – spells, creatures, objects, poisons – the only thing he was short of was the physical experience. Snape quickly became wary of even bringing up the topic of Dark Arts in any casual situation, since Quirrell would begin to expound based on the vast range of his studies, and it would soon become apparent to anyone listening that Snape was out of his league. Snape started spending more time in the library.

To be honest, Snape was certain he could best Quirrell in a duel, but dueling on school grounds was frowned on, and it certainly wasn't part of the curriculum.

Another source of irritation, though Snape would have been incensed if anyone else mentioned it, was that Snape had gotten used to the position of being the youngest teacher in the school. It meant he was asked to do things that required greater speed or agility, but it also meant a certain amount of leeway was given him in terms of behavior, and a certain amount of coddling. Now Quirrell was usurping Snape's place, and the specter of jealousy raised its ugly head.

And then there was the matter of Quirrell having been a lower level student aware of Snape and his activities as a fellow student – things the other professors could never know.

"How did you manage to stay free?" Quirrell asked one evening at dinner, shortly before Halloween. Snape and Quirrell sat next to each other at the staff table, and it was impossible to completely avoid conversation, though Snape tried.

"Free? Free from what?"

"Come now. You were hand in glove with the Blacks, the Lestranges, Avery, Mulciber, Rosier, Wilkes… The reports of deaths, roundups by the Ministry, and convictions read like a class reunion for your friends in Slytherin house. How did you manage to slip out of the noose?"

"What makes you think there was a noose to slip out of?"

"Let me see," Quirrell cupped his right elbow in his left hand and laid his right index finger on his jaw in a parody of thought. "When I left Hogwarts, I got an internship in the Ministry – Department of Magical Creatures. Then I worked my way up the career ladder for a few years before I applied for this job. You graduated in what? Seventy-eight?"

"Is this leading to a point?"

"I was just wondering what you did during those three years before you joined the teaching staff at Hogwarts. No one seems to know."

"Is that an admission that you've been nosing around trying to find information on me?"

"No. Not at all. It's come up once or twice in chats, nothing specific. I was just curious."

"Tutoring and potion brewing. All for private clients. Satisfied?"

"I suppose I shall have to be. I was hoping for something more colorful and exciting."

"Sorry to disappoint."

On Halloween Snape kept his annual day of quiet reflection to remember Lily. He never mentioned it to anyone, and yet he had the feeling that Quirrell noticed even this. All in all, Quirrell was becoming an insufferable busybody.

It was shortly before the Christmas break that Charity Burbage did what Snape had been expecting her to do ever since August. She settled herself into the seat next to him one snowy day in December. "We haven't really had a chance to get to know each other," she said.

"Barclay's," Snape replied, "and yes I do have a bank card."

Professor Burbage was not put out in the slightest. "Would you mind if I, if I touched it?"

Relieved that she was at least direct about it, Snape reached into a pocket in his robes and drew out an honest-to-goodness muggle wallet. Burbage went into ecstasies. Snape was ready to stand up and leave the Great Hall right there, but restrained himself, pulled the little plastic card out, and handed it to her. She examined every detail with great eagerness.

"How does it work?" she asked, adding a few seconds later, "If you don't mind my taking up your valuable time."

"Not at all. Do you see this dark stripe on the back? It's a magnetic strip that can be read by some kind of computer. I can insert the card into a computer terminal in a wall, enter a secret code, the computer checks whether or not I have money in my account, and if I do, it will give me some of that money, deducting the sum from my account. Instant cash, twenty-four hours a day. The whole process takes less than two minutes. Much nicer than a nasty rough ride in a nasty old cart through dark underground passages."

Burbage studied the card with greater respect. "What's the secret code?" she asked.

"A secret," Snape replied, retrieving his card and replacing it in his wallet.

She blushed crimson, a rather attractive color on her otherwise plain features. "That was rude of me," she said. "Do you think I might ever watch you use it?"

"You'd have to visit London with me. There aren't any bank teller machines in Hogsmeade."

"They say you… frequent restaurants. And go to… movies."

"From time to time. Plays and bookstores, too. If you joined me one evening, you could probably claim the whole excursion as work-related and get overtime for it."

"What's overtime?" Burbage asked, then giggled at the expression on his face. "Seriously though, I may take you up on the trip to London some time."

Christmas with its trees and snow came and went. Snape finally managed to take Professor Burbage to London in March 1989 to see not only how a bank teller machine worked, but also to explore the intricacies of cash registers, elevators, and the peculiar etiquette of black taxicabs.

"But the fare was only five pounds twenty, and you gave him…"

"It's called a tip. It's expected that you pay a certain percentage above the fare…"

"But why don't they just raise the fares?"

"It's supposed to ensure better service if it's voluntary. In America, I hear, it's fifteen percent for waiters in restaurants, while in certain eastern European countries you tip with cigarettes."

"You can't be serious!"

"Marlboros in Hungary, and Kents in Romania."

"Now I know you're joking. Not even muggles would do that!"

Burbage was enchanted by the movie. It dealt with a young muggle man who felt himself cheated of an inheritance only to find that the money had gone to a brother he never knew he had, a brother with a curious mental deficiency. After kidnapping this brother to claim the inheritance, the young man found himself growing fond of the strange, handicapped sibling, finally realizing the brother's needs were greater than his own.

"That was so touching," Burbage exclaimed as they left the theater. "Do muggles really have ailments like that?"

"Yeah," said Snape, imitating Raymond Babbit. "Yeah." Burbage giggled, but Snape had just noticed on one of the posters the name of the actor who played Raymond – the same one who had played Tootsie so many years before. The wonder of the acting profession filled him again. _Merlin, I wish I could do that, he thought_.

Then it was June, and Snape was once again in Dumbledore's office. "He's staying isn't he? This one is staying, and it proves the curse you've been fobbing me off with is a fraud!"

"Well, no, not exactly," Dumbledore replied. "He has asked for a year's leave to do field research. Even if he does return, it will not be two consecutive years, and it will therefore prove nothing."

It was just like the old charlatan to clutch at a technicality as evidence of what Snape had now long regarded as an unsubstantiated hypothesis. What did they have to show that the Dark Lord was not utterly destroyed? The Dark Lord's appearance? Even Dumbledore admitted that he did not know what kind of Dark Magic would have caused that transformation. The fanatic actions of Bella Lestrange and a few friends? It was the sort of thing that Bella would do. The continued sensitivity of the dark mark on his arm? It could be inherent in the mark itself and unrelated to the presence or absence of the man. The only other thing was the pattern in the tenure of the Defense against the Dark Arts position, and Snape had long ago pointed out that it was a pattern artificially extended by Dumbledore's selection of teachers he knew were temporary.

"They all decide to leave at the end of one year for some reason or other." Snape was continually insisting. "Not one opts to stay on. Now it might be proof of something if one of them was intending to come back for a second year and mysteriously came down with dragon pox, or was crushed by a crowd at a late-August performance of the Weird Sisters. Then I might agree that there was something in the idea. But maybe the problem lies with the Headmaster. Maybe you just hire unstable people."

Now, with Quirrell, the matter was about to come to a head. They were about to discover once for all if there was a curse. Quirrell would go on his year of field research, would return for a second, nonconsecutive year, and then would want to stay for a third. That would be the moment of truth! Even before the students boarded the train to London at the end of June, Snape was obsessing on the whole idea of Quirinus Quirrell.

Then, over the summer, it finally hit Snape how diabolical Dumbledore was. There would be no proof of the nonexistence of the curse until Quirrell started his third year. Only then could Snape go to Dumbledore and say, "See how wrong you've been!" but by then Quirrell would be so firmly ensconced in the position that Dumbledore would have no excuse to dismiss him. He would stay on, the permanent Dark Arts instructor. In the moment of victory, Snape would face total defeat.

Snape was really beginning to hate Quirinus Quirrell, and the man wasn't even going to be there for Snape to lash out at. He was going to be in Africa, or South America, or Eastern Europe. Snape would have hoped that Quirrell would have an unfortunate encounter with a dragon in Romania, except that that would prove that Dumbledore was right about the curse.

It was thus in this mood of sublime discontent that Severus Snape returned to Hogwarts in August 1989. The presence of Alastor Moody was of no more significance than a gnat that Snape could swat aside. The ordering of supplies was routine. The new Dark Arts professor was an intentional stopgap, and Snape, more than ever before, was dreading the resumption of his teaching duties and the classes from hell.

Then, on the morning of the first Friday in September, Snape found out what hell was really like.

_Friday, September 8, 1989 (the first quarter)_

It did not register at once on that day when Snape walked into the classroom to meet the brand new first years from Gryffindor house. Everything seemed perfectly normal. There was that little trick of vision that had Snape wondering for a moment if he should ask Madam Pomfrey to check his eyesight, that sudden impression that maybe he was seeing double. He glanced down the list of students. The Slytherins were already known to him. It was only McGonagall's sweet charges who were new. There was no sense of foreboding as he went down the list, not even when he got to –

"Jordan, Lee."

"Here, sir."

The name at the bottom seemed at first to have been copied twice, but it was in fact –

"Weasley, Fred."

"Here, sir."

"Weasley, George."

"Here, sir."

There was no mistaking them. It had been no trick of vision or seeing double. There before him were two Weasleys as like each other as peas in a pod, if anything so flamingly red could ever be compared to a pea.

Even then, Professor Snape continued blithely with his lesson. He was unconcerned, unwary, totally and serenely unprepared for what was about to be unleashed on an unsuspecting world. After all, he'd already taught Weasley children. Bill was steady and dependable. Charlie was fiery, but focused. Percy was studious, polite, and a joy to teach.

Fred and George were going to be just like their older brothers, of that Professor Snape was absolutely certain.

Nothing happened during that first lesson to disabuse Snape of this pleasant dream. The Friday morning Potions class was usually a little hectic, sometimes even tense, because it was the only class the first-year Slytherins had with the first-year Gryffindors, and the Potions class was the first time the two groups met together since the Sorting. There was always posturing, the trading of rude gestures, and _sub rosa_ insulting between the boys, and frequently between the girls as well. Snape's big job was to keep them focused on the task and away from each other.

The first lesson went reasonably well. Only one Gryffindor sprayed wart remover at a Slytherin counterpart, and only three out of twenty potions were utterly useless. At lunch, when McGonagall asked Snape how the morning had gone, he told her it was one of the better classes of first years, and that he hoped for a fairly uneventful year. She raised her eyebrows, but otherwise said nothing.

The following Friday, Snape realized that he had no trouble telling Fred and George apart. True that in form and feature they were identical, and that their studied uniformity of hair, gait, and expression operated to keep them confused in the eyes of their fellow man, but there was an indefinable difference in the sparkle in the eyes of each that Snape caught at once. It took him half the class to realize he was reading them, and the rest of the class to decide that he wasn't going to tell them about it. It isn't every day that the ordinary mortal has the advantage of identical twins, and Snape wasn't about to give it up. He did use the right names, and Fred and George were clearly impressed.

On the third Friday, the skunk made his appearance. As Snape opened the door of the classroom for the morning double Potions lesson, his olfactory senses were assaulted by something that seemed no more nor no less than a combination of garlic, rotten eggs, and burning tires. The students held their noses and fled to the entrance hall. Snape, being in a position to have to deal with the problem, entered the room.

There was no mistaking the plump black and white-striped animal's intent. It hissed, it stamped, it turned its back and lifted it hindquarters – and Snape was out of the classroom and on the other side of a good, thick door in a shot. He dismissed his class. He needed backup.

"It's a what?" Max Kettleburn was practically rolling on the floor with mad laughter.

"A skunk," replied Snape with as much dignity as he could muster.

"That's a North American animal!"

"It is, nevertheless, in the Potions classroom. What are you going to do about it?"

"Why me?" Kettleburn chuckled, then burst out laughing again.

"You're the Care of Magical Creatures instructor."

"Severus," Kettleburn howled with glee, "a skunk isn't a magical creature!"

Then there was Hagrid.

"Well, I don't know as that's my business, seein's it's not a native creature. More of an import, like. Shouldn't you be checking with the Ministry? Control and Regulation."

But Control and Regulation was also for magical creatures, not garden variety skunks. Snape detected very little sympathy among the officials that he contacted. By this time the afternoon classes had been canceled as well.

"Tomato juice," was Professor Burbage's contribution. "The muggle literature I've researched says that bathing in tomato juice will help take away the smell if you, eh, get sprayed."

"Thank you ever so for that contribution," Snape told her. "It happens to be an eventuality I'm trying to avoid."

By this time the skunk had been in the Potions classroom for more than four hours. Its presence was evident in the passage outside the room, and was beginning to permeate the upper areas of the dungeons. Slytherin students heading for the common room and the dormitories held their noses, but the time was fast approaching when even that would not be enough.

Snape went to Dumbledore for help.

"Well clearly," Dumbledore said, "someone must go in and immobilize the skunk. Then we can transport it… to the proper authorities."

"Will you go in, sir?"

"It is not my classroom."

Many gallons of tomato juice were brought in to the teachers' bathroom. The students were arbitrarily restricted to their common rooms and dorms. The teachers assembled at a respectful and safe distance. Snape managed to restrain and encage the horrid beast, giving it to Hagrid in a sealed cage. Snape then hurried up to the teachers' bath to immerse himself in tomato juice. He clothed himself in new robes after that, having burned the old ones.

They had to fumigate the teachers' bathroom.

The next day, Saturday, brought the revelation that the perpetrator's of Friday's dastardly deed were possessed with neither the sophistication nor the sense of self-preservation necessary for a life of successful crime. At breakfast, a significant number of Gryffindors, mostly boys, sported little glowing badges that read "Slytherin Stinks." A very brief application of Professor McGonagall's well-honed interrogatory skills uncovered the guilty, and Fred and George Weasley found themselves doing a string of detentions in the dungeons with the result that by the weekend before Halloween, the Potions classroom and the stairway down to within one level of the Slytherin common room were spotlessly clean.

During the enforced servitude of the Weasley boys, Snape learned a couple of things about them from bits and pieces of conversation they made no attempt to hide, almost as if it never occurred to them that he might overhear. The first, more disturbing thing was that they harbored a deep, almost passionate sense that Slytherin house was their enemy. Not any individual Slytherin, but Slytherin as a cosmic entity, an overarching concept.

There was, if Snape went hunting through the compartments of his mind looking for it, a vivid recollection of a Quidditch game, and of Molly Weasley's fanatic partisanship not only for Gryffindor but against Slytherin. Snape suspected then that Fred and George may have been named for their uncles, Fabian and Gideon Prewett. They would have been about two years old when the Prewett brothers died. Fred and George would have grown up on stories about the dark times, and the role Slytherin house played in the Dark Lord's rise to power.

The second thing was that, anti-Slytherin prejudice aside, there were scarcely any boys at Hogwarts who were as open, cheerful, and optimistic as the Weasley twins. The world was a game, a challenge of their wits and creativity, and they expended a great deal of intellectual energy looking for ways to exercise their talents. But through all the whispers and eleven-year-old giggles, Snape caught no hint of malice. Even the crusade against Slytherin was more of upholding family pride than actual personal dislike.

Fred and George Weasley were as unlike James Potter and Sirius Black as any pair of pranksters could be, and for that Snape was immensely grateful. He went so far as to quiz them about their deed on the last day of their detention.

"By the way, Weasleys, where did you get the skunk? It isn't the sort of creature one keeps in the family as a pet."

George glanced at Fred, and two stifled giggles turned into a pair of snorts. "Do you know about _The Quibbler_, sir?" George asked.

"I am acquainted with the name. I do not read it."

"Well, old man Lovegood lives near us, and he thinks skunks are related to jarveys. So he brought a couple in to breed. He expected them to keep the gnomes out of his garden. They did. They kept everyone else out of his garden, too. Now he's sending them all back, so we borrowed one."

"I see. A pretty prank, but if you ever do anything like that to me again, I shall nail your shoes to your feet with your own toenails. Do you understand?"

It may have been the wrong thing to say, for the eyes of both boys lit up like Christmas trees.

"Would you, professor?" gasped Fred.

"Could you, professor?" whispered George.

"Will you teach us how?" both boys chorused.

Now Snape had the measure of the twins and knew exactly where he stood. "If you never bother me again," he said sternly, "I'll consider it."

"Yes, sir!" The boys were out the door and up into the Great Hall like two bolts of lightning, for Saturday lunch had just been served, and food was a major motivating force in their lives.

The following Saturday was November 4, and the first Quidditch match of the season – Slytherin against Gryffindor. Snape kept a close eye on the Weasley twins during the whole match, but other than wear their "Slytherin Stinks" badges, they did nothing. Nothing that affected the game at any rate. Snape had his doubts about the sudden fit of sneezing that affected the Ravenclaw student who was the commentator, but there was nothing he could prove.

Fred and George Weasley confined their pranks to Gryffindor house except for one or two excursions against students of the other houses, and Snape lapsed back into his normal patterns of life. By Christmas break, he'd almost forgotten the skunk incident. All the Weasleys, Charlie, Percy, Fred, and George, went home for the holidays, and Hogwarts was at peace.

There must have been something about the Weasley home that fired Weasley children in unique ways. Bill had always arrived back from his breaks with renewed determination, Charlie with increased fire, and Percy more dedicated than before. It was no different with Fred and George, who seemed to have imbibed nothing of a practical nature from their brief sojourn at the family hearth.

"Smell? No, I don't detect any…" Snape began in response to Sprout's outraged question as they met in the entrance hall one Friday morning in early February on their way to breakfast. Then it hit him. It was either some unfortunate soul suffering from a gruesome gastrointestinal disorder, or it was a stink bomb.

"Oh, that is foul," said Snape, backing away from the entrance to Hufflepuff house. "And here I thought your house was always so neat and tidy."

"This had better not be Slytherin!" Sprout hissed at him.

"Hardly," Snape assured her. "Slytherin tends to be up close and personal. If it was a student who was targeted, I'd worry, but not the whole house." He considered the question for a moment. "You remember my September house guest, don't you?"

Sprout nodded.

"Well, aren't you playing Gryffindor tomorrow? I don't think they'd be dumb enough to sport 'Hufflepuff Stinks' badges, but you never know with Gryffindor."

Together the heads of Slytherin and Hufflepuff approached the head of Gryffindor house.

"What makes you think it's the Weasley boys?" McGonagall chided them. "It could have been anyone."

"I've been here eight and a half years," Snape said, "and Pomona longer, and we've never had a stink bomb set off in the entrance hall or dungeons before. Now, suddenly, we have it twice. It points to a newcomer, and that points to the first years. Not only that, Hufflepuff gets attacked the day before their Quidditch match with Gryffindor. Coincidence piles on coincidence."

"I still believe you're jumping too quickly to con…" – McGonagall paused – "…clusions." She was looking over Snape's shoulder.

Snape turned. Sure enough, 'Hufflepuff Stinks' badges flashed on Gryffindor robes. McGonagall rose majestically, sailed across the Hall, seized Fred and George each by an ear, and hustled them both up to her office. That evening the twins began a month of detentions scrubbing down the corridor outside the kitchens, and were barred from viewing the next day's Quidditch game, neither of which seemed to depress the two in the slightest.

It was an easy thing to accost the pair as they started up the marble staircase to their dorms in Gryffindor tower. Crossing his arms on his chest, Snape regarded them with something like a sneer. "Rank amateurs," he said. "You don't deserve my toenail hex. Imagine pulling the same trick twice."

"No," Fred insisted, "it wasn't the same. Last time it was a skunk. This time…"

"It was directed against a group and it involved a stench. It was the same trick. Face it. All that children your age can think of is falling down, bad smells, and embarrassing noises. Pathetic."

"We can do better next time," George pleaded. "Give us another chance."

"All right." Snape had intended to concede if they asked. "But something creative this time. And don't hurt anybody." He watched coldly as the two promised results then scampered upstairs. He was rather hoping they would come up with something good, because he had plans.

It was a matter of priorities. Snape wanted Quirrell to come back to his job to counter the curse theory, but he didn't want Quirrell to establish tenure in the position. A young professor entrenched in the Dark Arts position was more of a threat to Snape's own dreams than battling Dumbledore over the curse year after year. At least in the latter situation, Snape could keep up his hopes from year to year. But if Quirrell could hold on, Snape's dream of getting out of Potions was doomed for decades to come.

If they could live up to their potential, Fred and George were the best weapon Snape was ever likely to find. It was just a matter of proper prior planning.

All that spring, the Hogwarts students were subjected to a series of bizarre occurrences. Several Ravenclaw students developed severe cases of warts, a condition finally traced to a particular stone in the wall of their tower staircase. Almost immediately afterwards, some Gryffindor students contracted a painless purple rash that was discovered to come from brushing the railing on their own tower's stairs. Snape commented rather publicly that it looked like a pattern, and the hexes stopped. It took three weeks for the next one to come, but it was a beauty.

One March morning at mail call, a nearly imperceptible shimmer in the air over the Great Hall caused every single mail owl to lose control of its bowels and defecate onto the tables at practically the same time. Students were leaping up everywhere, and Snape was pleased to note that Fred and George were also splattered by the incontinent owls. It was a sure way to deflect suspicion from themselves.

As the end of the year approached, Fred and George confronted Snape. "What about the toenail hex, Professor," said Fred. "You promised."

"You have not demonstrated yourselves to be worthy," Snape replied. "You'll have to wait until next year – if you've improved."

"I don't think there is a toenail hex," George told his brother. "He's been conning us."

It was a challenge not to be ignored, especially since Snape had been casting nonverbal spells since he was a child. George had already turned and was walking away when he stopped, a triumphant smile spreading across his face as he stared at his feet. "You gotta teach me that one, Professor. You just have to."

"Come back with something creative in September, and we'll talk," Snape said. The boys agreed.

That summer flew by in a burst of creative energy such as Snape had not felt since the days when he battled Black and Potter. He pulled out his old Advanced Potions book and reviewed all the curses he'd invented all those years ago, then began the long, careful process of refining and tailoring them to fit one specific target. In the process, he came up with several new ones as well. A major priority was the reworking of the toenail hex, since Snape didn't feel he should give the Weasley twins the full-powered one. He didn't trust them to use it with any discretion.

There were moments, odd reflective times, usually just before falling asleep, when Snape realized that what he was doing was childish and petty. Worse, if Dumbledore ever found out that one of his teachers was planning a hex campaign against another, he might withdraw his protection and give Moody what he wanted. But at this moment, Snape didn't really care. The only thing that had kept him sane over the last nine years was the hope that Dumbledore would finally relent, take him out of the Potions position, and give him Dark Arts. Now that hope was about to be dashed, and it was Quirrell's fault. Nasty, stuck-up, snide, opinionated Quirrell.

For years Snape had felt as if he were going to explode from pure frustration. This year he had the satisfying feeling that it was finally going to happen.

_Wednesday, August 1, 1990 (three days after the first quarter)_

"There he is, the second-youngest teacher at Hogwarts! Looks like Albus plans on keeping this one."

"Good morning, Mr. Moody. No invitation to Azkaban today? Don't tell me there are no vacancies this year." Snape managed to meet Moody's normal eye, but still couldn't bring himself to look into the spinning blue one.

"I can be patient. My sources tell me this Dark Arts teacher gets under your skin like a case of hives. I'm just going to sit back and watch you square off against each other. If Albus gets tired of you, I may get my wish after all. Enjoy your year."

_How does he know about me and Quirrell?_ Snape thought as he walked up the hill to the castle. _Is Quirrell here already? Did he say something to Moody?_

Quirrell was indeed already there, seated at the table in the center of the Great Hall where the teachers usually met for breakfast on the first day. Snape walked quietly up behind him and said, "How was your sabbatical?" To Snape's surprise, Quirrell jumped at the sound of his voice, as if startled. "Sorry," Snape said. "Didn't mean to surprise you like that." _If I make a point of being nice to him now, no one will suspect me when the fun starts._

"You d… didn't surprise me. I was just concentrating on something else."

"So, how was your sabbatical? Did you manage to get everything done that you wanted to?"

"Most of it. It was… Have you ever done field work before?"

It was an odd question, especially coming from Quirrell who'd claimed to have worked with trolls for the Ministry. "Yes," Snape replied cautiously. "after a fashion. But only in Britain. I've never had the chance to go abroad. Why?"

"Just wondering. I was in A… Albania last month. Before that in the mountains in Transylvania. Brasov, Castle Bran. V…ampires, you know." Quirrell stopped.

By this time the rest of the teachers had gathered, and Snape joined the other heads of house. Dumbledore welcomed them all, and they began eating and discussing summer vacations and the routine of starting school again. No one particularly remarked on Quirrell's presence except that Flitwick commented that it was nice to start the year with all familiar faces for once. Quirrell, deep in a discussion with Sprout about mandrakes, barely noticed.

"By the way, Severus," Quirrell said as they rose from breakfast, "I brought back a few souvenirs. Would you like to see them?"

Snape was surprised, but agreed, and followed Quirrell up to the Dark Arts office on the second floor. There were some crates on one side of the room, but the thing that caught Snape's attention at once was a small cage on Quirrell's desk. It contained a snake, grayish brown with a thick, dark, zigzag marking along the length of its back. It was about twenty inches long.

The snake raised its head as the two men walked in, and seemed to be watching them.

Snape examined the snake in its cage as Quirrell rummaged through his crates. Quirrell seemed to be taking an inordinate amount of time, but since Snape found the snake fascinating, he didn't really mind. The little reptile was quite active, rolling in liquid coils and darting its tongue. It made no attempt to strike at the sides of the cage, contenting itself with moving its head up and down as it regarded the man.

"Ursini's Viper, isn't it?" Snape asked. "They're native to that part of Europe."

Quirrell lifted his head from a crate, a crate from which he had yet to extract a single item. "Yes, intelligent little thing. Poisonous, too, so don't touch."

"Hemotoxin," Snape retorted, just for the pleasure of showing Quirrell he wasn't totally ignorant about snakes. "Rarely fatal, though there have been cases… What are you looking for?"

"Here," Quirrell gasped, pulling several wrapped objects that proved on unwrapping to be gris-gris bags from Haiti, voodoo dolls from New Orleans, Santeria drums from Cuba, and minkisi from the Congo. It looked for all the world like the collection of Snape's great-grandfather Wensley. "Do you know what these are?"

"I have my own," Snape said. "I've had them since I was a child. What are these?"

"This," said Quirrell, holding up a twelve-inch fang, "is the tooth of a Kulshedra. It starts as a Bolla, a great snake, then after twelve years undergoes a metamorphosis into a dragon with nine tongues. I brought some of the tongue for you – dried and pickled – for the potions store." He fished in the crate and brought out six jars, three of each kind of preserved tongue.

"Why, thank you," said Snape, suddenly ashamed of his own meanness regarding Quirrell, for the tongue was rare and expensive. "I hope you didn't spend…"

"N… not to worry. Since it's technically for school stores, I'll submit a voucher to Dumbledore." He took a little box and opened it, holding up a fine golden chain with a bit of cloth pendant in the middle. "There's a sickle inside that I soaked in the blood vomited by a Shtriga. It protects you from Shtrigas permanently."

Another crate held African magical items, mostly fetishes, including a very beautiful monkey paw, and claws from various beasts of prey.

Snape took several of the articles over to one of the windows to study them more carefully in better light. He looked up to find Quirrell staring at him intently. "What?" Snape asked.

"I still find it hard to imagine that someone so close to the Blacks, and the Lestranges, and all those others was never interested in joining You-Know-Who. Especially one with your knowledge of the Dark Arts."

"We've had this discussion before. I have never been accused…"

"That's not true. I graduated the June before You-Know-Who fell. I remember there was a lot in _The Prophet_ about rounding up Death Eaters, and I know I saw your name."

"That was only because several of the students in my house had parents who were being arrested, and I defended the students. Naturally _The Prophet_ would jump to the wrong conclusions. You never saw any Ministry confirmation of the charge, did you?"

"No… How long have you been here, anyway?"

"I was hired at the beginning of the autumn term in 1981, and if I hadn't been squeaky clean, Dumbledore would never have taken me on."

Quirrell protested, "But how could you have continued when so many people you'd known, been friends with, were being hunted, arrested, imprisoned?"

It was beyond belief. It was as if the man knew he'd been a Death Eater, even though that information was still considered secret by the Department of Magical Law. Snape was furious, and now thoroughly convinced that any action he took against Quirrell was more than justified.

"Why," Snape demanded, "would the arrest of someone I'd gone to school with years before, someone I no longer had any connection with, induce me to abandon my position at Hogwarts? The illogic of the action aside, you have a pretty poor opinion of my sense of duty if you think I would run just because former colleagues of mine were being arrested. Excuse me, Quirrell. I have work to do in my own office."

Snape left. Halfway to the stairs he clenched his fists in anger and was rewarded with a stab of pain. Looking at his hands, he saw he was still carrying one of the claw fetishes. Returning to the Dark Arts office, Snape put his hand on the knob, but paused as he heard Quirrell inside, talking to himself.

"Yes, yes, he stayed. Stayed while everyone was being rounded up and sent to Azkaban. But does that really mean he was on the right side? Does it really mean I can trust him?"

Snape kept the fetish and went down to his office. More than ever he was convinced that he had to get rid of Quirrell. Not just for himself, but for the school. The man was a looney tune.

_Thursday, September 6, 1990 (the day after the full moon)_

August turned out to be a much bigger trial than Snape could have imagined because Quirrell was always watching him. And there was nothing Snape could do about it. Action had to wait until the students returned. With three hundred people in the castle, and with spells coming at times when it couldn't possibly be the Weasley twins, and at other times when it couldn't possibly be Snape, Quirrell would crack. Snape knew Quirrell would crack, and then he'd be sacked and the Dark Arts job would be up for grabs again.

Snape made no contact with the Weasley twins until after the first second-year Slytherin-Gryffindor Potions lesson on the first Thursday morning of September. He signaled to them to wait until the rest had gone to lunch. When there was no one else in the dungeon corridors, he led them down a passage and into an empty storeroom.

"All right," Snape said when the door was closed and an illumination spell lit, "what've you come up with?"

George ticked things off on his fingers. "We've got dungbombs, and firecrackers, and…"

"I don't believe this!" Snape cried to the ceiling, then rounded on the boys. "I ask you for creativity, and you bring me Zonko's and Gambol and Japes. I might just as well ask Percy. He at least can follow instructions."

The sudden fire this brought to the twins' behavior was noted and logged for future reference.

"No, sir! No! We can do it!"

"Loads better than that prat Percy can!"

"Just give us a chance, sir!"

"Fine. Another chance. What do you have in the way of locomotor impediment spells?"

"Loco who, sir?" George looked at Fred, who shrugged.

"Things that get in the way of movement. Tripping spells are among them, but they're too crude. Things that make you feel you've accidentally hit your elbow against a door jamb, or got the hem of your robe caught on a twig. Or as if there was a flagstone sticking up a quarter of an inch right in front of your toe. Things that'll make the victim feel awkward and ungainly, and maybe not immediately suspect it was a spell at all."

The twins were speechless, as if a whole new and marvelous world had just opened in front of them. "You're wicked, sir," Fred breathed, and George nodded agreement.

"Who do you want us to use these spells against, sir?" George asked.

"Professor Quirrell," Snape replied.

"Yes!" Fred exulted, his fists pumping air. "Charlie said it! He said you fancied Quirrell's job! He said you'd be better at it, too!"

"I thank Charlie for his sterling support. Do not, however, breathe a word of this to him. There are other body parts I can affect besides toenails. Now, about these impeding spells…"

He showed the twins several, and then the Weasleys went first to lunch with Snape three minutes behind. There was nothing remotely unusual in their aggregate behavior except that Fred and George seemed more interested than usual in the teachers' table, where Snape was now approaching Quirrell.

Quirrell was reading a book and eating soup. Snape said a perfunctory, "Good afternoon," as he sat in the chair on Quirrell's right and reached for a piece of bread. Quirrell murmured, "'Noon," without taking his nose from his book, misjudged his distance, hit the side of the soup bowl with his spoon, and sent soup flowing across the table. Neither the book nor his robes were soiled in any way.

"Drat!" Quirrell exclaimed, rising quickly and grabbing a table napkin to stem the tide of soup. "Cleanup please," he called, and the house-elves below cleared the mess away. Quirrell brushed the front of his robes with the napkin and turned to Snape, who was regarding him with some concern. "Sorry about that Severus. Terribly clumsy of me."

"Not at all," Snape replied as the two calmly continued their meal. It was another minute before Snape glanced at the Gryffindor table, but there was no mistaking the admiration that gleamed from two identical pairs of eyes.

From that moment, Quirrell became a klutz. He caught his sleeve on chair arms and stepped on the hem of his robes going up the marble staircase. He hit his shoulder against the oaken front doors, snagged his books on the corners of desks, and fumbled with his quills, pointer, and wand. Sometimes it happened when Fred and George were in their common room or the library. Sometimes it happened when Snape was in Dumbledore's office or in conference with McGonagall. No one person could ever be said to have been present on each occasion, and indeed, Quirrell seemed not to suspect that it was spell induced.

That was the part Snape found hard to explain. Quirrell was nervous, more nervous than could be accounted for by the pranks, and he even seemed to feel that the awkwardness was caused by his nerves rather than the other way around.

The absolute truth of the matter was that Quirrell was getting downright twitchy, which only made him more irritating. He began rubbing his hands in an odd, twisting motion, and the slight hesitation in his speech that Snape noticed at the beginning of the school year was developing into a pronounced stammer. Snape had no direct personal experience of what was happening in Quirrell's classes, but the Slytherin students said he alternated between one moment telling them how wonderful and fascinating the Dark Arts were, and the next moment jumping, starting, and emitting strange squeaking sounds at the slightest noise.

It was Michael Bole, the latest in the line of Slytherin Beaters, who gave Snape the news that after Halloween Quirrell had started bringing the viper to class and placing its cage so that the snake could see what was going on.

"He fair talks to that blooming reptile, sir, like it was his mum or something," Bole was obviously disappointed in his Dark Arts teacher. Not that Bole wasn't disappointed in most of his teachers, Bole being far from academically inclined.

"What does he say to it?" Snape asked, intrigued.

"Weird stuff. Little things like 'yes, yes, of course' or 'it's harder than you think.' Then sometimes it's like he's talking about a person – 'he's suspicious whenever I bring it up,' and once he said, 'I don't think you can count on him anymore.' It was like he was planning something with that blooming snake."

"Thank you, Bole," said Snape and went straight to Dumbledore.

The interview went about as well as could be expected, which meant that from Snape's point of view it didn't go well at all.

"I understand your concerns, Severus, but the fact remains that Professor Quirrell is a highly qualified Dark Arts teacher. Both his OWL and his NEWT candidates did very well in his first year with us, and I expect them to do equally well or better this coming June. I do not think that the acquisition of a nervous tic or two is grounds for dismissing a teacher. You do know what would have happened if I had taken every complaint about a teacher's behavior seriously, don't you?" And Dumbledore peered at Snape over the rim of his glasses.

McGonagall was more on Snape's side. "I don't know where that boy went last year, or what he did, but he's gotten as jumpy as a cat in a room full of rocking chairs. It makes me twitch just watching him. Could you brew him something to make him calm down, Severus? Immobilize him, maybe?"

"Do you think it's affecting his ability to handle his classes?" Snape suggested, wondering if he could influence Dumbledore via McGonagall.

"I know it's affecting my digestion," McGonagall replied. "I marvel you can stand to sit next to him at dinner. Your appetite was never good at the best of times."

Shortly before the Christmas break, Quirrell brought the viper to dinner, setting the cage on the table in front of him.

"Whatever is that thing doing here?" Snape asked, not only irritated, but somehow no longer hungry with the cold reptile eyes regarding him unblinkingly.

"I j…just wanted to g…give it a change of sc…scenery," said Quirrell. "It seems more a…ctive and in…telligent than your average sn…ake."

Hagrid passed by them and noticed the newcomer. "That's Ursini's ain't it?" he said, stopping to watching the coiling and uncoiling viper. "Pretty little thing." He laid a huge hand on Snape's shoulder. "Now you don't go letting this fellow put ya off yer feed, Professor. Ain't no snake 'd ever take away my appetite, 'n if you let it get t' ya, lad, I'll come down this end 'n feed ya meself."

Others came to look as well, and to exchange the normal pleasantries and conversation. Pomfrey asked about restocking the clinic, Kettleburn wanted to know about the Slytherin Seeker and whether an injury in November's game would affect the one in January, McGonagall had a question about an order of supplies for the spring term, and even Dumbledore came over to look at the snake, which flicked its tongue and hissed at him.

Then it was Christmas, and most of the staff and students went home, including Quirrell. When they returned in January, the snake was gone. When Snape asked about it, Quirrell merely shrugged. "It was getting t…iresome. I s…old it."

Snape did notice, however, that Quirrell had developed a sudden interest in the Forbidden Forest, and could be seen at least twice a day, and sometimes more frequently, hovering about the fringes of the trees, or actually disappearing into the forest's shade for a half hour at a time. He had by now acquired a tic in the muscle next to his left eye that made it difficult to look at him for longer than thirty seconds at a time.

The Weasley twins were given permission to step up their campaign, and everywhere Quirrell went, things had a tendency to fall, or break, or slam. Quirrell's repertoire of little squeals and shrieks whenever this happened was quite amusing. Dumbledore still refused to consider a change of staff until after the results of the OWLs and NEWTs showed what kind of job Quirrell was doing with the students.

The key, Snape had learned during his days as an infiltrating spy, was to have your cover story ready in advance. It was thus that when Hagrid caught him sneaking into the Forbidden Forest on Quirrell's trail around mid February, Snape knew exactly what to tell him.

"Snowbells."

"Come again?"

"Alpine snowbells. They're beginning to stick their little heads out of the snow about now, and its the perfect time to gather and dry them for Frostbite Salve."

"Ain't never heard of 'em around here."

"Alpine snowbells and evergreen lichen. An unbeatable frostbite combination."

"Lichen ain't evergreen. Not in winter, anyways."

"Of course, it isn't the fungus I'm after. It's the cyanobacteria. That can only be isolated under laboratory conditions. But then, you know that."

Hagrid was one of those rare people whose attitude toward science was that if he didn't understand it, it must be true. He didn't argue the point. Instead he redirected it. "If ya got a minute, come inside and have a cuppa. I want t' ask ya about Quirrell."

It was impossible to tell if that boded good or ill, but as at that moment Snape couldn't think of a good reason why not, he accompanied Hagrid to the cabin. "What about Quirrell?" he asked once they were inside.

"He's fidgety. Ya got somewhat t' do with that?"

"Why ever would you think…" Snape started to protest, when Hagrid cut him off.

"First I got to ask meself what the head o' Slytherin house's got t' do with a pair o' redheaded rascals who'd curl up 'n die before they'd put on a green 'n silver badge, 'n then what the same two rascals was doing stalking the Dark Arts professor up t' the fourth floor, 'n then when Professor Trelawney was coming down, what coulda made her cards jump outta her hands 'n hit Professor Quirrell in the side of the head, when I seen exactly the same kinda trick performed in the entrance hall 'gainst Sirius Black by a scapegrace Slytherin some seven years ago."

Snape stared, opened his mouth, closed it again, narrowed his eyes, and said, "And the miracle is you got that all out without taking a breath. Are you accusing me of something?"

"You know," Hagrid said quietly, though there was no mistaking his ire, "you ain't the first runt I ever mollycoddled, 'n you ain't going t' be the last, 'n in between I get t' know a lot of the students. He weren't a bad lot, Quirrell, 'n I ain't going t' see him bullied just 'cause you ain't satisfied with the job you got."

Snape drew himself up in offended dignity. "You presume, Hagrid. I am offended." He turned and left, marching with straight back and squared shoulders up the hill to the castle.

Once there, however, Snape sought out the Weasley twins. "Excellent news," he told them. "Your mission has been accomplished. All we have to do now is sit back and watch the target deteriorate on his own. It's much more subtle that way."

The boys didn't want to give up, having, it seemed, enjoyed the escapade thoroughly. Snape had to resort to threats of grievously embarrassing curses to induce them to concur. That, and he gave them the promised toenail hex.

The fortunate part was that Snape turned out to be right. Quirrell was by now so jumpy and jittery that he became accident prone and a danger to be around. Hagrid accused Snape, Snape protested his innocence, Hagrid maintained surveillance, and eventually Hagrid was forced to admit that neither Snape nor the Weasleys were hexing Quirrell. Hagrid even apologized for his earlier suspicions.

In mid June, with exams over and the year coming to an end, Dumbledore called Snape into his office.

"I wanted to tell you first, Severus. Better straight from me than on the rumor mill."

Snape could guess. "The OWL and NEWT results were excellent and you've engaged Quirrell for next year."

"You always did have a quick mind."

"You know," Snape said bitterly, "this means I was right all along. If there ever was a curse, it's gone. The Dark Lord isn't coming back."

"I prefer to watch for a while longer," Dumbledore responded, "though even I must admit it is a reassuring piece of evidence. I did also wish to remind you to prepare yourself over the summer break."

"What for?"

"It is 1991. Eleven years. Next September, if all goes well, begins the wizard education of Lily's son Harry."

Snape stared at Dumbledore, pain forming behind his eyes. "What's that to me? One more Gryffindor brat among so many others."

"You promised to help me protect him."

"That was when it looked like he might need protection. Look around you, Headmaster. The Dark Lord hasn't been seen or heard from in nearly ten years. His followers are incarcerated or trying their best to forget they ever knew him. Every shred of evidence we had that he wasn't truly gone is being proven false. Bella didn't know anything, she was just crazy. The mark is nothing more than a brand designed to respond to certain syllables. If there ever was a curse on the Dark Arts position, it's gone. What is there to protect Potter Junior from?"

"Humor me. Pretend I might be right, and be ready to jump in if it turns out I am."

Snape paused, thought, and then said, "I'm willing to do that as long as you remember your promise."

"And that was?" Dumbledore cocked his head to one side.

"Never tell him. Never tell anyone. It's bad enough being reduced to nursemaiding James Potter's son, but to have it noised abroad…"

"I shall renew my vow, Severus. I shall never…"

"Thank you, sir," Snape said, and turned, suddenly overwhelmed by images he'd thought forgotten, and strode from the office.

"…reveal the best of you." Dumbledore finished, watching the disappearing back as it fled down the spiral staircase. The look in his eyes was one of tenderness and concern, though he had to be careful never to show it to Snape, who would have been mortified even knowing it existed.

Lancashire was not the haven it had once been. Freed from school and once again in his own home, in his own bed, Snape dreamt of emerald green eyes. Waking, he saw nothing but reminders. There was the bridge that separated business town from laboring town, the mill whence his father had brought back venom reserved for managerial scum like Lily's father, the local where Tobias Snape had proven himself, and by extension his family, no more than common lowlife. Worse, there was the tree on the opposite bank of the river from the mill where he and Lily had met so often in those now-magical years before they went to Hogwarts.

Life was a lesson in might have been, a long trail of 'if-onlies.' _If only Mercury hadn't been retrograde, if only she'd been sorted into Slytherin, if only I hadn't fought back, if only Potter'd been content with the girls he had, if only there hadn't been an Invisibility Cloak… if only the Dark Lord had realized that the prophecy referred to… the other one, the auror's child._

Restless, Snape walked past the house that had once been Lily's almost every time he left his own. He haunted the school yard, empty for the summer. He sat under the tree trying to remember every scrap of conversation…

And then, mercifully, he met Mrs. Hanson in the market, Mrs. Hanson who'd been visiting her sister in Manchester. He chatted about rheumatism and arthritis and the best way to cook asparagus. He carried packages, and offered his arm across the bridge, and remembered Dr. Who and the Avengers. He went to tea and learned all over again why the Conservative Party was the worst thing that had ever happened to Britain.

Thanks to Mrs. Hanson, Snape was feeling his usual self – not normal, but usual – as July trickled its way through the great glass of time. When July merged with August, Snape had even forgotten to remember its import in the cosmic scheme of things. He only remembered it was time to return again to Hogwarts.


	34. Chapter 34 – Enter Harry Potter

**Where Your Loyalties Lie: Enter Harry Potter**

_Tuesday, July 30, 1991_ _[JKR says that it is Monday. This is an error.]_

Severus Snape looked around the sitting room in his small house in Spinner's End, reviewing his mental checklist. Windows closed. Fire out in the grate. Everything breakable packed away in the workroom. Spells to protect the house and shield the cul-de-sac from notice by muggles all in place and strengthened. He'd probably not have a chance to return until the next June, and it wouldn't do to leave the gas on. Not that there'd been any gas since 1974, but the principle was the same.

Stepping out into the area yard behind the kitchen, Snape locked the last door. He carried a battered old Gladstone bag with just a few personal things, since everything he would need for the coming school year was already at Hogwarts. _Rotten luck that Dumbledore's calling us back two days early, just as that new potion was coming together. No help for it._

Snape concentrated on Hogsmeade. The incoming teachers usually picked spots on the outskirts of town to apparate to, it being considered bad form to materialize into one of the local citizens. Destined, determined, and deliberate, Snape disapparated and reemerged in Hogsmeade, so used to the action that he no longer noticed the discomfort.

Almost immediately, a large man with a misshapen face and a mane of long gray hair stepped out from a doorway to accost him. Accustomed to these encounters, Snape glanced away to avoid the other's constantly shifting eye.

"Good morning, Professor," the man said, with sinister good humor. "Still teaching, I see."

"Good morning, Moody," Snape replied. "Arrest anyone yet today?"

"Was kind of hoping it would be you. Disappointed again. You be sure to tell me if you ever decide to retire. The guest room's been ready for some time."

"You will excuse me. I have a meeting."

As Snape walked away, he heard behind him the 'pop' of Alastor Moody returning to London. _How did he know we were starting two days early?_

"Severus! Do wait a moment."

Snape turned and paused to allow the older witch to catch up to him. "Good morning, Minerva. I see the clans are gathering."

"Was that Mad-Eye Moody? What would he want here?"

"He takes off a half an hour from his busy schedule every August to wish me a pleasant school year."

"He's not still after you? After all these years?"

"The phrase 'Statute of Limitations' does not exist in an auror's vocabulary. If I didn't know better, I'd think Professor Dumbledore put him up to it, just to avoid the trouble of hiring another Potions teacher."

Professor McGonagall suppressed a grin. "Did Professor Dumbledore tell you why he's summoned us? I've been working on registering all the new first years, and suddenly I find we have a meeting."

"I fear I'm not so deep in the Headmaster's confidence."

They stopped at the gate while the caretaker released the shielding spells to admit them, then wished him a polite but restrained, "Good morning, Filch," as they entered.

"Good morning, Professors. Getting an early start this year, eh? Others are already up there waiting on ye."

Snape and McGonagall climbed the hill to the castle and entered the enormous entrance hall. Professor Dumbledore was there to welcome them.

"Wonderful. Wonderful. We are all here, I see. I have taken the liberty of preparing a brunch for all of us in the Great Hall. Much more comfortable than my office, and just as private with no other staff or students here. Come, come."

They were seven, Professor Dumbledore, groundskeeper Hagrid, Professor Quirrell, the Dark Arts teacher, and the four heads of Houses, Professors McGonagall, Flitwick, Sprout, and himself. Snape acknowledged them all with his usual reserve, his coldest greeting being for Quirrell. _The curse really must be broken if he's back in his old job. First Dark Arts teacher in two decades to last two consecutive years. Wish he hadn't gotten so twitchy, though. Makes my skin crawl._ Snape chose to overlook the fact that he himself was in part responsible for the twitchiness.

They sat around the center table on the dais. Dumbledore clapped his hands, and the table was loaded with food. On a whim, Snape helped himself to eggs Benedict and coffee. Then Dumbledore coughed and spoke in the resulting silence.

"We have an auspicious year ahead of us, ladies and gentlemen. First, it will be the first year of a young man we have been awaiting for some time, Master Harry Potter. Second, I have asked you here early because I have received a request from a very old and very dear friend of mine, Nicholas Flamel, and I need your assistance. Nicholas Flamel is an old friend in more than one sense of the word. He is now about 660 years old. I think most of you have heard of the secret of his longevity."

"The Philosopher's Stone," interjected McGonagall, and the others nodded.

"Yes, well. Those of you who have been on the staff longer," here Dumbledore nodded towards Flitwick, McGonagall, and Hagrid, "will know exactly what I am asking, but the newer and younger staff will need some background.

"Nicholas does not keep the Philosopher's Stone about his person. In fact, it is locked in a vault in Gringotts Bank and is only brought out when Nicholas needs to brew more of the Elixir of Life for himself and his wife Perenelle. Sometime during the coming year, they will have need of the Elixir, but Nicholas is not certain when. He has asked me to get the Stone out of the vault and safeguard it at Hogwarts.

"Now safeguarding the Stone is a serious business, and I am asking each of you to contribute something of your own talent to the task. Where one device might be foiled, seven would be almost invincible. Each of you should choose something at which you excel, but which might be difficult for someone else to circumvent."

"Professor," said Snape, trying to hide the exasperation in his voice, "why not simply leave the Stone in the vault until Flamel needs it, then bring it out for the Elixir, and immediately put it back?"

"Ah, I fear that Nicholas has become less than precise as he grows older. He has been known to doze off for up to twenty minutes in the middle of an otherwise scintillating conversation, and recently he has begun confusing me with his great-uncle Pierre who, I regret to say, died at the battle of Crecy. I told him that I could not require my staff to spend their valuable time concocting ways to guard the Stone while at the same time conducting classes and grading assignments. I said it must be done before the students arrive, or it will not be done. He concurred.

"Later today we shall go to the underground area where the Stone is to be housed, and you shall each see the section I shall ask you to defend. Are we agreed?"

They all nodded assent

"Good. Since we are all here, why not kill two birds with one stone (no pun intended, I assure you Minerva) and continue with our regular staff meeting? Minerva?"

Professor McGonagall shifted uneasily. "I have been registering all the students as the confirmations come in, and we seem to have a perfectly normal class of first years. Except… well except that we have as yet no response from Harry Potter, and the deadline is tomorrow. I have sent hundreds of owls, with no luck. I am not certain what to do."

_That does seem odd._ Snape thought. _On the other hand, this is Lily's son, and maybe he would rather pursue another career. I for one would not blame him._

Dumbledore seemed to have other ideas. "His muggle relatives are notoriously opposed to his training as a wizard. Hagrid, I should like you to visit them tomorrow and make sure that all is in order. Now, as to the class schedules…"

They sorted out classes, evening patrols, Quidditch practices, use of the teachers' staff room, and the supervisory duties for Hogsmeade excursions. Professor Sprout requested that barrier tape be put around a new planting area that had just been set out with seedlings. Professor Flitwick wanted the temperature on the third floor adjusted, as he had recently begun feeling the chill more than usual.

Finally, Dumbledore turned to Snape. "And what is the forecast in the muggle world? Are we looking at any pending catastrophes?"

"On the contrary, things are looking good. The early spring war in the Middle East caused much less disruption than we feared. South Africa has repealed its apartheid laws, the Warsaw Pact dissolved earlier this month ('Where do they get these outlandish names?' McGonagall stage whispered), the Russians have their first freely elected president, and even as we speak the American President is in Moscow to sign a treaty tomorrow limiting long-range weapons. I would say it's quite optimistic." Snape was the only part-muggle at the meeting, and had a better grasp of these matters than the others.

"Excellent!" responded Dumbledore. "Shall we adjourn now and go look at the chamber where the Philosopher's Stone will be housed?"

The entrance to the chamber was on the third floor, not far from the Trophy Room, but its trap door led to a several story drop that had to be negotiated with serious levitation spells. In what was a truly gratifying display of his trust in Snape's abilities, Dumbledore gave the Potions master the task of guarding the last antechamber. "I want something that no wizard, even one able to get through all the other tasks, would be able to accomplish. Think long and hard, Severus. Yours could be the deciding barrier."

Back in his own office in the dungeons, near enough to the entrance to Slytherin house to be able to oversee its activities during the school year, Snape pondered his assignment. _Something no wizard would be able to accomplish. That should be easy. Simple logic_. Rather than waste his talents on too much magic, Snape began to design a logic problem worthy of his muggle grandmother, Gra. He started with seven bottles: three with poison, two with nettle wine, one to go through purple fire, and one to go through black flame. Then he began to write the logic problem.

An hour into refining the problem, Snape decided he needed to rest his eyes. He walked out onto the lawn and stretched his back and shoulder muscles in the warm afternoon sun. Down the hill from the castle, Quirrell was leaving Hagrid's hut, and Snape wondered why the Dark Arts teacher was talking to the groundskeeper.

The sun glinted off the water of the lake where he and Lily had skipped stones, a memory softened by distance for many years now. _How will I react when I see her son? Does he take after his mother? Or his father? Her talent for potions, or his for mayhem?_

Two other boys were arriving in a month. One was Narcissa's son. Snape had held baby Draco on his naming day. Little scrunched up nose and tiny fingernails. _Don't be an idiot; he's eleven. He'd better still be a source of happiness to his mother._

And then there was the auror's child, the one Snape would have sold to the Dark Lord without remorse, except that Lily and her son were chosen instead. _What will it be like to actually see Neville Longbottom?_ Not a pleasant thought at all.

The afternoon sun brought too many memories, few of them good. The only way out of a difficult emotional situation was to turn it off. Snape shut out and locked down the problem areas of his mind the way he would close a closet door. Time enough to deal with the three boys when they arrived. It would have been so much easier, though, if they weren't all coming to Hogwarts at the same time.

_It's going to be a terrible year…_

"What'cha thinking about, lad… Sorry, Professor Snape."

Snape turned from his contemplation of the lake. "Old times. Old faces. How was your summer, Hagrid?"

"Short, truth be told. All this Flamel business, and this Potter business."

"What've you to do with the Potter boy?"

"I got t' go down an' find out why he ain't answered his letters. Professor McGonagall says they've taken off for the coast, and Quirrell says there's a storm coming in. I'm like t' take his advice an' hunker down 'til it's past, then go get him tomorrow afternoon an' take him t' London for his things on Thursday. Thursday'll be when I go t' Gringotts, too."

"Quirrell suggested that?"

"He did. 'T ain't good traipsing hither and yon in a storm."

It was a sound idea, but suddenly Snape resented the fact that Quirrell was offering unsolicited advice about anything. _Twitchy little busybody_. "You could go down tonight."

"What good'd that do?"

"Well, if you were there tonight, then you could leave with the boy for London as soon as the storm let up. You wouldn't have to wait for Thursday. You might have it all done tomorrow. I agree about not taking the boy out in a storm, but when has a storm ever bothered you?"

"That's the truth of it, lad! I'll be off tonight an' greet him on the stroke of his birthday, I will! Maybe even take him a birthday cake, though it won't be much next t' what his family'll do t' celebrate. That's a good idea, that is."

"Do me a favor?"

"Sure."

"Don't mention it to Quirrell. It'd bend his nose out of shape if he thought I was going behind his back."

"I got ya, Professor. What he don't know…" Hagrid went up to the castle to find a birthday cake for Harry Potter.

Snape watched him go. _This year is going to be one of the low points of my life. Here I am feeling superior because I got Hagrid to not listen to Quirrell when Quirrell is probably right. How petty can one get?_

Snape went back to his logic problem. Setting up the classroom could wait, especially if Hagrid was coming back early with the Stone. Supper in the Great Hall was pleasant, since the teachers had all known each other for several years and knew what not to talk about.

"Prospects for Quidditch, Minerva? I didn't want to place a bet until I'd spoken to you."

"I fear this year may be another washout, Severus. Our last Seeker was a seventh year, so we don't even have a full team. You can't put just anyone in. I may bet on Slytherin this year. Seems the only certain money there is."

"Have you considered Wood for a Seeker? He's a superb Keeper, but he might make a passable Seeker. It'd be easier to find a new Keeper."

"'T is an idea. I shall suggest it to Wood in any case."

Around eight o'clock Dumbledore mentioned charades, and immediately everyone had something else to do. Hagrid rose and stretched. "I'll be off now, I'm thinking, Professors. Early start an' all. You all be ready for me when I get back." He lumbered out of the Hall, winking slyly at Snape on the way.

"Where's he… going so soon?" muttered Quirrell, standing at Snape's elbow.

"Probably to bed. I believe he wants an early start tomorrow morning." _And you won't even know he's gone until he's back, Mr. Nosey Parker. Down, Severus. Down_.

"Severus, would you fancy a game of cards?"

Snape looked down at Professor Flitwick. "I should like that very much, Filius," and the two retired to Snape's dungeon office for a few games of cribbage.

The next morning the teachers met for brunch rather than breakfast. The month before school started was always more relaxed than any other time of the year, and this time the seven of them were in ahead of the other teachers as well. The rest of the Hogwarts staff would be arriving the next day, when things would settle into a more normal routine. At brunch, however, they were only five.

"Where's Quirrell?" asked Snape as he settled into his seat.

"Saw him heading into Hogsmeade earlier. Don't know why. Didn't ask." Sprout reached for another piece of toast.

"I was looking at your new plantings yesterday, Pomona. You didn't by chance put in some new orris or mugwort, did you? We're getting a bit low."

"Mugwort, yes. Good you mentioned the orris. I'll put some in this week."

Snape left the table as soon as he finished eating. Creating a logic problem took time. It had to be exactly the right amount of information in just the right form or it wouldn't work. He needed to concentrate on it for a couple of hours. _If I finish today, I can start August like a normal school year, without rushing any of the preparations_.

Hagrid was back early that evening and spent the first hour closeted with Dumbledore. Snape didn't see him until they gathered for supper.

"An' he didn't even know he was a wizard! They told him his parents died in a car crash. A car crash! I'd like to thump that Dursley! He seems a nice lad, though. Quiet an' unassuming. Kinda shy, but that could be 'cause everything was so new. Got quite a reception at the Leaky Cauldron, he did. Well, you'd know about that Professor Quirrell."

The others all looked at Quirrell, who seemed embarrassed. "We… got started so early. I… needed to… pick up some things. A… book on werewolves, and… some wolfsbane for the… third years."

"Thought the book was on vampires," muttered Hagrid into his soup.

Snape glanced from Hagrid to Quirrell. _Now what was that about? Quirrell was in London? If it was just a book and some herbs, why didn't he ask Hagrid to pick it up for him? Right. Because I told Hagrid to leave early. Well, I hope Quirrell enjoyed London._

They all went to bed early, and the next day the rest of the staff began apparating in.

The first to arrive were Madam Pince, Madam Pomfrey, and Professor Kettleburn, assuming one did not count Professor Binns. Of course, no one ever really counted Professor Binns, as he never left the History of Magic classroom anymore. Snape thought about him briefly as he passed the Professor's first floor room on his way to McGonagall's office. _Pity he stopped coming to the Great Hall for meals during my fourth year. It used to be quite entertaining watching him try to eat. How can a ghost not know he's dead? Then again the general consensus always was that he died long before he died. Imagine me coming back to teach Potions as a ghost. Now that would scare the little demons._

He stuck his head around McGonagall's door. "Library's open. I'm going up now. If you have your list, I can take it for you. I know you're busy. And Dumbledore wants us all on the third floor at ten-thirty. Are you ready?"

"Oh yes, I had it finished yesterday. I've done this before, remember? It's just you youngsters who have to make up something new. Here, I have that list somewhere. And thank you. These registrations will send me to Bedlam."

The precautions for defending the Philosopher's Stone were ingenious. As each of the team members installed his or hers, Snape evaluated his own chances of getting through the tasks. His task and Sprout's were easy for him, but he knew he would have trouble with Hagrid's, maybe even with Quirrell's. No one knew what Dumbledore put in, and McGonagall's and Flitwick's were impossible. _For me at least. I can follow a chess game, but play one? A good one? And though I've reached the point where I can sit on a broom without looking like a fool, the key challenge is out of my league._

"What'cha think of Fluffy, Professor?"

"Hagrid, you have a talent for the incongruous when it comes to names."

"Ya think so? I thought it sorta fit."

By the end of the day, the entire staff had arrived. Madam Hooch was the only one to fly in. Professors Sinistra, Vector, Futhark, and Burbage apparated into Hogsmeade during the afternoon.

Professor Trelawney came last and made a dramatic entrance at the beginning of supper, flinging herself through the doors of the Great Hall, the back of her right hand held to her forehead, shawls clutched around her shoulders, proclaiming, "The portents… the portents… We shall see dire things at Hogwarts before the end."

"So good of you to arrive in time for supper this year, Sibyll," said Dumbledore in a calm, matter-of-fact voice. "Do join us. The asparagus soup is quite good tonight."

Trelawney ignored a seat next to Snape and rather pointedly sat by Professor Futhark. "Mark my words, we are in for difficult times. I see death in the omens. Death."

Sprout leaned toward Snape. "We ever get a start-of-year dinner where she doesn't see death, I'll faint. Has she ever been right?"

Snape didn't like that question at all. "At least once, I believe," he whispered back. He didn't elaborate.

Dumbledore rose and proposed a toast. "To the coming school year," he said. "May it be pleasant and profitable."

"To the school year," chorused his staff, and all stood and raised their glasses to the coming year.

All Snape's work was done at the desk in his office, not in his own adjoining room. For the most part the bedroom was sparse and austere. Being in the dungeon and therefore without windows except for narrow slits near the ceiling, it was dark and cool all the time. It contained a bed, a night table, a narrow wardrobe, a comfortable chair for reading, a lamp, and two bookcases for private reading material. Here Snape kept his math and science books and a rotating selection of the mysteries that he'd inherited when Gra died. Right now he was rereading Edgar Allan Poe. Or would be if he did not have so much other work.

Every jar, every tin, every package in the Potions room had to be inspected. Some ingredients were old and had lost their potency. Two boxes of powdered amanita were water damaged and would have to be burned. An entire case of newt's eyes came in with faulty sealing and needed to be shipped back. Luckily they would not be used for two months. Shelves had to be dusted, desks and chairs checked for necessary repairs, and in general the entire classroom and office area put in order.

Other duties kept him busy as well. As head of Slytherin house, he had to inspect the common room and all the dormitories to be sure they were fit for the students before the beginning of school. This was particularly important for Slytherin since the house extended under the lake, and was notoriously susceptible to damp and leaks.

Snape also checked out the brooms and other equipment for the house Quidditch team. Although he'd never been interested in Quidditch as a student, as head of the house one of his tasks was to promote a spirit of belonging and friendly competition. Slytherin had done so well under his direction that for the last several years both the Quidditch Cup and the House Cup frequently remained in Slytherin possession. In fact, Slytherin was close to setting a record for consecutive winning of the House Cup. Snape considered it quite an achievement for someone who during all his own school years had been something of a misfit.

As the beginning of the term got closer, Snape found it harder to block out his forebodings about the incoming students. His greatest concern was Neville Longbottom. This boy, the pureblood son of an auror, was the subject of the prophecy that Snape had given to the Dark Lord. It was the Longbottom baby that was the real danger, the Longbottom baby the Dark Lord should have hunted down. If it had not been for a great error of judgment on the part of the Dark Lord in pursuing the wrong child, Lily would still be alive. Snape had high expectations about Neville Longbottom. A boy of great natural ability and potential who would prove that Lily's tragedy was the result of a mistake made by… someone else.

_Sunday, September 1, 1991_

It was a relatively clear sunny day, and the last day of calm for ten months. The teachers ate lunch around a table for the last time until the Christmas break, since from the coming evening forward they would be on the dais where they could watch the students. They shared problems, swapped stories, and tried to relax. That was not easy to do with close to three hundred students only a few hours away.

At last, as the sun sank in the hills to the west, the teachers wished each other luck and went to change into their school robes, to be in the Great Hall when the horde arrived. They had assembled, and Dumbledore had just finished his usual pep talk, when the train whistle sounded at the Hogsmeade station.

"Places, everyone," said Dumbledore. "It is show time."

Within the hour, the thestral carriages were disgorging students, who entered the Great Hall in a mass of black robes trimmed with the colors of their different houses. Anticipation always ran high for the sorting, and many of the students had younger siblings that they hoped, or dreaded, to have sorted into their own houses. It was also widely known that Harry Potter had been on the train, and many of the students were already craning their necks for the first glimpse of the first years as they entered the Hall.

Then the doors swung open, and Deputy Headmistress McGonagall entered, the first years strung out in solemn parade behind her.

Snape searched the faces of the children. James Potter would have been at the front of the line, claiming the spot as if by right, yet none of the first eleven-year-olds bore any resemblance to either James or Lily. Then, behind a taller sandy-haired boy, there he most unmistakably was, beyond a doubt the son of James – same stature, same thin face, same hair. And yet not the same. A trick of memory made the nose seem shorter, the features a tiny bit softer – or was it Lily coming through? Snape shook his head. Difficult to tell.

Nor was Lucius Malfoy's son hard to detect. Same hair, same eyes, same posture. Here, too, Snape saw, or hoped he saw, a toning down of Lucius's hard lines, something of Narcissa in the boy's face. With Draco were two boys who were also immediately recognizable, two heavyset boys that hadn't before entered Snape's mind. But these were clearly the sons of Crabbe and Goyle. It was unsettling to think that they were still close enough after all the troubles that their sons should be friends.

Snape had no idea what the Longbottom boy looked like and was forced to wait for his name in the sorting.

The first years lined up below the dais, backs to the teachers, facing their future classmates. The Potter boy was looking at the ceiling until a girl next to him said something, then he focused on the ceremony. The stool and the Sorting Hat were brought out, and the Sorting Hat sang its song – basically the same drivel it sang each year – and then the sorting began. Slytherin's first student was a girl named Millicent Bulstrode. The Crabbe boy and the Goyle boy were also Snape's.

The ceremony seemed to crawl as McGonagall read through the list of forty names. Some of the students were sorted quickly; others took time. Snape recalled his own sorting, and how it belied the Hat's claim that there was nothing in a head it couldn't see. The horrid thing had actually asked if there was a student there. Understandable considering the occlumency, but embarrassing nonetheless.

"Longbottom, Neville," read McGonagall, and Snape was suddenly focused. A shortish, round-faced boy stepped forward, and immediately tripped and fell down. Giggles in the Hall were hushed, and the boy put on the Hat. Time crawled. Then the Hat cried, "Gryffindor!" and the boy ran off with it still on his head. _THIS is the child of prophecy meant to destroy the Dark Lord? There must, must be another Neville Longbottom._

There was no other Neville Longbottom. Draco Malfoy followed Crabbe and Goyle into Slytherin as expected. And then the Potter boy's name was called. Naturally it was Gryffindor, though the Gryffindor table acted as if the issue were in doubt. _What else could it be, since both James and Lily were Gryffindors?_

The very last student, Blaise Zabini, was a Slytherin, and then the feast began. Food appeared on the tables, the ghosts came out to join the celebration, and all the students started to talk. The decibel level in the Hall rose to a painful point. Snape was sitting next to Quirrell and had to endure his twitching and stuttering with at least a semblance of good grace.

It happened very suddenly. The Potter boy looked up, and the movement attracted Snape's attention. He was suddenly surprised by emerald-green eyes, Lily's eyes, staring into his own, and then the boy flinched. He turned away and touched his forehead. Snape, too, turned away.

_He touched the mark, as if in pain. That isn't logical. The mark was made by the Dark Lord. I bear a mark made by the Dark Lord. It only hurt if the Dark Lord called or someone said his name, but he's been dead for ten years. How could the mark hurt?_ Quirrell babbled on, but Snape could do no more than pretend to hear.

The feast ended, and the new prefects escorted their charges to their respective houses. Snape sought out Dumbledore.

"He was in pain. As I am standing here, I swear to you, that mark on his forehead hurt him."

"I do not doubt you. But what does it mean? Has your Dark Lord returned? I do not think so. Not yet at least. What in the Hall might have caused this? Is it possible that his mark spoke to your mark, and that is all there is to it?"

Snape thought for a moment. "He looked at me, and I at him. In that moment he clutched his head as if it hurt. But I felt nothing. If mark speaks to mark, wouldn't I have been in pain, too?"

"I do not know. It is something we must bear in mind. Severus, this incident troubles me, and I am pleased beyond measure that you have brought it to my attention. Now we must wait, for we do not know what it means. I shall speak privately to his other teachers. If you or any of them notice a recurrence of this reaction of his, we will know that it is a serious matter. Do not fail to keep me informed."

"No, Headmaster, I shall not."

"Then we must both go to bed. I do not know about you, but I am very weary."

Professor Snape didn't sleep well that night. The few times he managed to doze off, he dreamed of the Sorting, of the Longbottom boy falling down and scurrying to Gryffindor with the Hat on his head. When he got out of bed early Monday morning, Snape already had a headache.

It was a couple of hours until breakfast. There was no point thinking about the problem with no new information to add to the equation, so Snape closed off the section of his mind that was fixating on Longbottom and reviewed the coming day. There were no classes yet, as the students needed to settle in and the heads of houses had to meet and interview their new charges. Tuesday was orientation, and formal instruction began Wednesday.

Today dealt mostly with Slytherin house, and of course he had to meet with the Quidditch team.

By seven o'clock, the Great Hall was filling with students and staff. The new first years stood out because they couldn't find their way, so Snape cornered his two Quidditch Beaters, Bole and Derrick, and set them in the corridor to be sure everyone in Slytherin made it to breakfast. The two were threatened with immediate dismissal from the team if any, even one, new student got lost. Luckily the passage from Slytherin to the Hall was simple to negotiate, as neither Bole nor Derrick was overwhelmingly bright.

Before sitting down in his place at the far end of the high table, Snape exchanged a word with McGonagall. "It wouldn't be a bother if I dropped by your office to check a couple of files this morning, would it?"

"No, no. Not at all. Right after breakfast is best as I have to greet the students, but that isn't until eight-thirty."

In McGonagall's office, Snape pulled out three thin files on three new students, two of them legitimately Slytherins to disguise the fact that he was checking on Longbottom, who was one of McGonagall's. "This will take just a moment, if you please, Minerva. I don't need to borrow them."

McGonagall stood by the door and waited, then locked up after Snape replaced the files. She went upstairs to Gryffindor Tower, while he went downstairs to his office in the dungeon. He didn't like what he'd found.

Neville Longbottom was two points off being a complete squib. His first even remotely magical act, maybe his only magical act, was bouncing after a fall from a window at the age of eight. He had not ever, not one minute, been a threat to the Dark Lord. And so there was no mistake. The prophecy had been about Harry Potter, and from the moment the Dark Lord heard that prophecy, Lily was doomed.

There was a tentative knock at the office door. "Come," Snape called automatically, and Terence Higgs, a seventh-year prefect, entered.

"Sir, it's almost a quarter to nine and you… are you all right, sir?"

"Yes, thank you, Higgs. I'll be there in a moment." The boy left and Snape closed off the whole Longbottom question from his conscious mind and went to talk to Slytherin house.

It was a set speech. The seventh years knew it by heart. That was, in fact, the point, since no one could claim ignorance of the rules. Snape welcomed the students to Slytherin, spoke briefly of Salazar Slytherin, the founder of the house, and of famous former members.

"Slytherin house is currently the highest placed of the four houses of Hogwarts, and we expect you to keep it there. As of this year, there is not a student here who has any memory of the House cup going to any house but Slytherin. Since 1985 we have held the Quidditch Cup four times, and since 1986 the House Cup without rival, and I intend it to stay that way.

"Most of you have little control over the Quidditch Cup, but you must support our team members by being at the games and cheering them on. They are the showcase of our house spirit. Gentlemen, step forward. The team captain is Flint, and the other two Chasers are Pucey and Montague, our Beaters are Bole and Derrick, Keeper Bletchley, and Seeker Higgs. Thank you, gentlemen. For our new members, Montague last year was a first year like yourselves, and every one of you has the chance to try out for the team. Higgs is now in his seventh year, and next year we shall need a new Seeker, so there is a chance for greatness for at least one of you.

"The House Cup, on the other hand, is all of our concern. We make or lose points every day, and each of you is responsible both for yourselves and for your housemates. Good study habits and academic performance earn points. Laziness and misbehavior lose them. And do not be fooled – I shall be the first to subtract points from my own house if any of you break the rules. So there will be no hazing or teasing, no fights, no practical jokes, and this includes against the other houses as well as within our own…"

As he talked, Snape was aware that the students, the first years especially, regarded him with some awe. Many of them came from families that had supported the Dark Lord in his days of power, and Snape knew that from the first night at Hogwarts every student learned that he had been a Death Eater. He didn't mind, since it was also understood that students from the other houses would never be told.

Besides, it scared the little monsters and helped keep them in line.

The new students were interviewed alphabetically, starting with Millicent Bulstrode. This day of interviews was something of an ordeal for Snape because it required actually looking at the students. Directly in the eyes. They seemed to expect it as a sign of interest and sincerity. That meant that Snape had to keep his mind locked down and closed the whole time, a conditioning of his childhood that he'd never been able to overcome. There had, in fact, been only two people in his life that he could talk to fully and frankly, with open, direct eyes and mind – his mother and Lily. Both were dead now.

It was after lunch before Snape got to Draco Malfoy.

"Come in, Master Malfoy. Sit down. I hope your parents are well." _There is something of Narcissa around the mouth and nose. It softens Lucius's patrician features._

"They're fine, sir. They send you their best wishes for the coming year."

"Very kind of them. Well, Draco, are you looking forward to life at Hogwarts?"

"Oh yes, sir. Especially since, well Father mentioned… If I showed promise, that is…" The boy seemed suddenly embarrassed, as if he'd trespassed where he wasn't supposed to go.

"What exactly are you trying to say?"

"Father said that if you approved of my studies, and if I showed talent, you could teach me extra things, special things."

"Indeed. He's not communicated that to me. What kinds of things?"

"Like how to invent my own spells, and how to take care of myself in a fight. Sir."

"The first takes a tremendous amount of extra study. The second requires long practice. Are you sure you could handle it?"

"Yes, sir. I could, sir. Father wishes you could have taught him. When he was younger, I mean."

"Very flattering, I'm sure. Well, Draco, let's see how you do with your regular studies before we go adding more work. Do well in first term, and after Christmas break we may discuss this again."

"Yes, sir. Thank you, sir."

After he finished with the first years, Snape met with the Quidditch team. Not that he had much to say in the way of play or practice. That was Flint's job. The crux of the matter was that Quidditch victories were a primary reason why Slytherin kept winning the House Cup. It was in everyone's interest that the Quidditch players were taken care of.

"So far as I know, Flint, Gryffindor have not yet found another Seeker. How would it affect us if they made Wood the Seeker?"

"We could handle that, Professor. He'd be competent, but not great. It might even help us to get him away from defending the goal. Another Keeper probably wouldn't be as good."

"I'm pleased to hear that, as I suggested it to Professor McGonagall in August."

Flint grinned. "Blimey, Professor, we may teach you Quidditch yet!"

Fortunately, Snape didn't have any particular duties regarding orientation. The first years were shown around the whole school and grounds. It was hoped that after the tour the number of lost and strayed could be reduced to about ten percent for the rest of the first week. After that, lateness and truancy were automatically considered to be intentional.

Wednesday and Thursday were fairly normal. Potions was a double class, taking a two-hour period each week rather than two one-hours. This was because of the laboratory work, which always needed more time for setup, brewing, and cleanup. The first years had their Potions later in the week, Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff on Thursday afternoon, Gryffindor and Slytherin on Friday morning.

The first Friday session was not one that Snape was looking forward to. All three boys would be there, Longbottom, Potter, and Malfoy. Snape hated personal or emotional situations. They were physically and mentally very draining. Combining that with the chore of keeping twenty as yet unknown eleven-year-olds under control and on task was Snape's newest image of a private and individual hell.

_Friday, September 6, 1991_

Breakfast was stressful. Snape didn't like sitting next to Quirrell under the best of circumstances, but today in particular he was trying to focus and control his thoughts. Quirrell was not helping. For some reason he wanted to talk about Romanian vampires. It was driving Snape crazy, not least because Quirrell seemed not to know anything about a subject he'd always been quite competent in.

"Fourteen-seventy-six. He was killed in battle in 1476. His head was cut off and sent to the Sultan. Headless corpses do not become vampires. That whole story is tripe." _If I dump on him enough, will he leave me alone?_

"…But he was the… most famous of them…all. I've… seen his… grave." And amazingly Quirrell twitched four times during this short speech.

"And it's not in a castle in Transylvania, is it? It's at Snagov monastery near Bucharest."

All the while, Snape was watching the Gryffindor table without watching the Gryffindor table. _Focus, Severus, focus. You have to face this lot in an hour._

Then, suddenly, the idea came to him. _I can test the boy. I can find out if he's James's son or Lily's. James would just fool around. Lily would come prepared._

Snape strode into his first year Potions class determined to treat it, with minor exceptions, like any other first year Potions class. He started out by taking roll. When he came to the name Potter, Snape focused and took a deep breath. "Ah, yes. Our new celebrity." He began to shut down at that point, to close off and lock out the parts of himself he didn't want seen. At the end of the roll, Snape looked up at the class. It was another set speech.

"You are here to learn the subtle science and exact art of potion-making…" They were listening. Listening with total silence and apparent respect. It was time to test Lily's boy. "…if you are not as big a bunch of dunderheads as I usually have to teach. Potter! What would I get if I added powdered root of asphodel to an infusion of wormwood?"

It was not a hard question. Hagrid had gotten Potter his books on July thirty-first, and he'd had a month to study them. The answer to the question was in the first chapter, yet the boy could not respond.

"I don't know, sir," said Potter.

Snape recoiled, unwilling to accept the answer. "Tut, tut – fame clearly isn't everything." Not for Lily, at least. "Let's try again. Potter, where would you look if I told you to find me a bezoar?"

"I don't know, sir." An answer Lily would never give, but the boy'd said it twice.

"Thought you wouldn't open a book before coming, eh, Potter?"

Suddenly he was looking the Potter boy directly in the eyes. Emerald green eyes. Her eyes. And suddenly Snape wanted to respond, to open, to unlock all the locked doors because that was what he always did for the emerald green eyes.

But it wasn't her; it was James. James looking at him through her eyes.

Mechanically, Snape continued, "What is the difference, Potter, between monkshood and wolfsbane?"

The boy sneered, and said, "I don't know. I think Hermione does, though. Why don't you try her?

Someone snickered, and Snape noticed the girl, standing with her hand raised as if she wanted to touch the ceiling. "Sit down," he snapped. "For your information, Potter, asphodel and wormwood…" and he proceeded to give the answers to all his questions. The first years just sat there, like lumps on logs. "Well? Why aren't you all copying that down?"

The flurry of sudden activity meant he was in charge of the class again. Snape turned back to the smug, insolent student. "And a point will be taken from Gryffindor House for your cheek, Potter."

The class had still over an hour and a half to go, and it did not improve.

The first Potions assignment was a kind of evaluation to find out who was already competent and who had no experience at all. It was a potion to cure boils, more complex than some of the simple infusions they would be doing later, but that was to give the students with more background something a bit challenging. Since it used mostly natural ingredients such as dried nettles, crushed snake fangs, and porcupine quills, it was not really dangerous, yet required the students to learn and practice certain elementary laboratory safety rules.

"Not those gloves, Bulstrode. They aren't heavy enough to handle quills with. We'll be pulling them out of your hands with tweezers… Goggles, Granger, goggles. Never crush snake fangs without goggles unless you want to be blind… Well of course you're not getting the proper amount, Goyle. The balance beam on your scale isn't centered…"

It was, perhaps, the worst first year class he'd ever taught. No one, no one had any prior experience with potions at all. And only two showed any aptitude, one of them being the Granger girl, if she would just stop bouncing up and down with her hand in the air. _Gad, she's worse than Quirrell's twitching._ The other, thank goodness, was Draco. Narcissa's son was the one bright spot in the whole day.

"Class, if you want to see the proper consistency of the stewed slugs, you can come and look at Malfoy's. His are perfect."

Suddenly the telltale hiss of a dissolving cauldron had Snape yelling at the class, "Off the floor! Up onto the stools and tables, quick!" Acid green smoke boiled through the back of the room before Snape managed to say the spell that cleared up the mess. One of the cauldrons was a twisted mass of metal. The boy who owned the cauldron, Seamus Finnigan, was in shock. His partner was on the floor, moaning in pain. It was Longbottom. _So you don't have great natural ability and potential, but did you have to be a bumbling fool?_

"Idiot boy!" Snape muttered as he diluted the potion on Longbottom's arms and legs with water. "I suppose you added the porcupine quills before taking the cauldron off the fire? Here, you, Finnigan… Take him up to the hospital wing. It's on the first floor." Then he wheeled on Lily, who should have kept an eye on the first years.

"You…" _Evans. But it isn't Evans, it's…_ "– Potter – why didn't you tell him not to add the quills?" The sullen boy just stared at him. _Just like his father. He's not supposed to be like his father. He's supposed to be like his mother._

At once the demon, Toby's demon, was back with a power that Snape hadn't felt in more than a decade, and he wanted to strike the boy. With an effort he wrestled the demon down, releasing its pressure in words, "Thought he'd make you look good if he got it wrong, did you? That's another point you've lost for Gryffindor."

They finished the potions and cleaned up, the incident making the rest of the students more cautious. When class was over, Snape went up to the hospital to check with Madam Pomfrey that Longbottom was all right. She'd already released him.

"It was just a few boils, Professor. He was more frightened than hurt. You do have some excitement in that class from time to time, I will say."

Instead of going to lunch in the Hall, Snape went back to his office to rest his head on his arms at the desk. _Is it going to be like this all year? Maybe I should ask Moody about that 'guest room.' It can't be this bad._

The office door opened without an announcing knock. "Thought I'd find ya here, Professor. Missed ya at lunch. Ya ought not t' be skipping yer meals. I take it the morning weren't one of yer best."

Snape sat up. "Understatement of the year, Hagrid. It was a disaster. The first years have no background at all, the Longbottom boy is a catastrophe waiting to happen, and I have to teach James Potter for the next seven years or go to Azkaban. Azkaban is beginning to look like a pleasure resort."

"Can't be that bad. You'll whip 'em into shape soon enough."

"There isn't a lot to work with. And the Potter boy is going to be trouble."

"I thought he seemed right nice. He's coming by this afternoon for a spot of tea. Would it help if he knew about you an' his mum?"

"Don't. You. Dare!" Snape half rose from his chair as all the bad feelings of the morning surfaced again. "I do not need my personal life to become fodder for school gossip! You tell him NOTHING"

"Suit yerself. That's not why I came by anyway. I wanted t' thank you for saving my hide an' Dumbledore's hide."

"How did I do that?"

Hagrid showed him a clipping from _The Daily Prophet_. It was about a robbery at Gringotts. "Found this in a paper stuffed behind a chair in the staff room. See that vault number 713? That's where the Stone was. The robbery was July 31. If ya hadn't sent me off early, I'da got there the next day, an' the Stone'd be gone. Thought ya might like t' know."

Hagrid left. Snape pondered the mystery of the Stone and Quirrell's sudden trip to London for a while, then left as well, for he had an afternoon class.

Snape was locking up the Potions classroom when Dumbledore appeared at his elbow. "Ah, Severus, I am glad I caught you. I was wondering if you would sit with me at supper this evening. I rather want to gather your insights on this new business in Russia. The Ministry has a war watch started, but I am not convinced that it is necessary. I hope you do not mind entertaining an old man tonight."

"Not at all, Professor. I'm happy to oblige." _Hagrid must have talked to him. He'll be prepared to discuss aborted military coups and Lithuania, but he really wants to monitor my food intake. Still, it is rather nice that the Headmaster came all the way down to the dungeon because I wasn't at lunch._

The conversation about Eastern Europe was interesting, and Snape was able to relax a bit about the Potter/Longbottom problem. In fact, the weekend and most of the following week were quite pleasant, allowing for the fact that the term was just settling in.


	35. Chapter 35 – A Hidden Menace

**Where Your Loyalties Lie: A Hidden Menace**

_Thursday, September 12, 1991_

Quirrell was going on about werewolves at breakfast, and Snape was trying to tune him out. _What if I told you I was almost killed by one. Would that shut you up? And didn't you say you were buying a book on werewolves that day you went down to London. Didn't read it, did you? Call yourself a Dark Arts teacher! You even used to be good. What happened?_

Then Severus rose from his seat as Professor McGonagall left the dais in a beeline to the Gryffindor table. Draco was there, along with the Crabbe and Goyle boys, and McGonagall seemed to be breaking up an altercation. _She is so good at noticing things like that. Why don't I notice things like that?_ With a perfunctory "Excuse me" to Quirrell, Snape went to meet McGonagall as she returned to her seat.

"Is my house causing you trouble? Did those boys go over there to start something?"

"It's nothing, Severus. The Longbottom boy got a Remembrall from his grandmother. Draco was teasing. It's over."

But it was not over, as McGonagall was gleefully prepared to inform him at supper that evening.

"Move over, Quirrell. I need to discuss a matter with Professor Snape." Quirrell moved, not wishing to cross McGonagall.

"I am ready to place that bet with you now, Severus. Five galleons on Gryffindor to win the Quidditch Cup this year."

"Five galleons? What did you do? Draft someone from Pride of Portree?"

"We have a Seeker. And it's not Wood. It's a new Seeker, a natural."

"I'm impressed. How did you find this prodigy?"

"Do you remember that bit of a tiff this morning over Longbottom's Remembrall? Well, it didn't stop there…"

Draco was called into Snape's office immediately after supper.

"You teased a member of another house this morning over a gift from a relative."

"It was just that Longbottom kid. He's as stupid as they come."

"Which makes the teasing less sporting. You do understand 'sporting' do you not, Malfoy? To make matters worse, you continued the teasing later on during Madam Hooch's Flying class."

"But he wasn't even there. She took him off to hospital."

"Nonetheless, you continued to tease, and threatened to leave his property up a tree. I am deducting ten points from Slytherin for your actions."

"You can't… I didn't do anything wrong. I didn't hurt the dimwit. You're punishing me for nothing."

"You really don't understand. Let me put it in terms you can understand. You picked on someone weaker than yourself, which is not sporting. You brought the negative attention of another Professor on this house, which reflects badly on your housemates. Your continued teasing led to the discovery of a talented Seeker and may result in Gryffindor's winning the Quidditch cup for the first time in seven years. Does all of this seem like nothing to you."

"No, sir."

"I am pleased you are showing some sense. Ten points from Slytherin. And do not do it again."

"No, sir. Yes, sir. I mean…"

"I know what you mean. Now get out of my office."

The next morning at breakfast, six screech owls brought the Potter boy a long, narrow package that could only be a broomstick. Snape leaned forward and looked down the table at McGonagall. The expression on her face was positively gloating. She seemed to sense that he was watching her, for she turned and gave him a 'thumb's up' sign, then rubbed her hands together, chuckling.

It was Friday again, and first year Potions with Slytherin and Gryffindor that morning. Snape left breakfast early to go back to his office and try to center himself for the ordeal. After the problems of the first week, he had no idea what was going to happen.

What happened was a perfectly normal, well-behaved class. Potter's brain was clearly somewhere else, as was his partner's, the Weasley boy. _Probably on the Quidditch field already._ The Granger girl seemed to be snubbing them both, and the Longbottom boy started at every sound, but otherwise caused no damage. Draco was glowering and resentful, but that could be due to Potter's new broom. Everyone else was subdued and attentive. _What happened?_

The class now started the basic curriculum. "…important that you understand the difference between an infusion and a decoction. Infusions are steeped; decoctions are boiled. Each operation gives a different part of the herb, so you must know what you are looking for. Infusion provides the volatile principles and essences, decoction the extractive and resinous principles. We shall learn later what these are for. Today we practice the techniques."

Homework was to write out the distinctions of tinctures, essences, syrups, fomentations, ointments, and poultices. Despite romantic misconceptions, the main function of Potions was healing. Snape's predecessor, Professor Slughorn, had not been particularly interested in medicines, but Snape made them the cornerstone of his class, a legacy from his witch grandmother.

McGonagall rescued Snape from Quirrell at about a quarter to seven. "Finished eating?" she said brightly. "Good. Quirinus, I'm going to steal Severus from you now. House business. Hope you don't mind." Together they left the hall, and McGonagall steered Snape outside.

"Don't thank me yet, I have ulterior motives," she confessed as they went down the stairs onto the lawn. In front of them, already walking down the hill toward the Quidditch pitch, was Harry Potter. He was carrying his new broomstick.

"I did so want to watch his first practice, but Wood says it will make him nervous. So I'm going to spy on them from up here." McGonagall pulled a small pair of binoculars from her robe. "I'm giving you the chance to assess the opposition."

Snape accepted the binoculars and focused them on the broom shed. Wood was coming out with a case of Quidditch balls and a couple of bats. Potter joined him and they went out of sight on the other side of the stands. A moment later a bludger sailed up from the pitch, then turned to attack.

"How long has Potter been playing Quidditch?"

"Wood says he knows nothing of the game. A novice, but a natural Seeker. There they go."

The two boys were in the air now, and Wood was tossing golf balls for Potter to catch. Snape had to admit the boy was good. Too good. Just like his father.

"So, Professor Snape, I propose a wager of five galleons that says Gryffindor wins the Quidditch Cup this year. Will you take the bet?"

"Minerva, you're going to lose five galleons."

September faded into October. The first Hogsmeade excursion was on Saturday, October 26, and nearly all the teachers were required to supervise. Aside from wanting to ensure that a substantial percentage of the Hogwarts student body didn't run amok during this day of unaccustomed freedom, it was the first Hogsmeade outing for the new third years, among whom were Fred and George Weasley. Just those two warranted the presence of three extra teachers.

It was a pleasant day, even a little warm, and Snape took his post on a bench outside The Three Broomsticks with a hot mug of mulled mead. Here he had an almost straight view down the main street and would see and be able to assist in any incident that arose. Professor Kettleburn came to sit with him and gossip for a while.

"Don't see how you manage to sit next to Quirrell every day and still stomach your food, Severus. I got a whiff of that turban yesterday, and it near knocked me out. Vampires my eye! There's something else in there, and he's using the garlic to mask the smell. Why'd he start wearing that thing?"

"Says it's a gift from an African Prince, and one gets used to what one must." Snape never let down his guard in Hogsmeade, and a movement to his right caught his eye. "You set off that dung bomb, Fred Weasley," he said without turning around, "and I'll have you hanging by your thumbs in Filch's office for the next three days."

"Yes, sir. How'd you know it was me?"

"Lucky guess."

_Halloween, Thursday, October 31, 1991_

Samhain. Halfway between the autumn equinox and the winter solstice. The ancient New Year. It was always a time of great feasting at Hogwarts, and today was no exception. That evening, the Great Hall was decorated with dozens of pumpkin Jacks o' Lantern, while Dumbledore thought to enliven the festivities with a thousand live bats. Professors Sinistra and Trelawney had places of honor in keeping with the holiday's traditions of astrology and divination. Mounds of food were served on golden platters.

Eating had already begun, but Quirrell was not yet in his seat. _Odd for him to be late to dinner. Maybe he thinks the bats will attack his turban. Now that would be a Halloween to remember!_ Snape chose his food carefully, not being overly fond of sweets. His attention was suddenly attracted by the doors opening in the back of the Hall.

It was Quirrell, and he was running. Right into the center of the Hall. His turban was at an angle, and he looked terrified. He made it to Dumbledore's table, gasped, "Troll – in the dungeons – thought you ought to know," and collapsed in a dead faint.

Pandemonium broke loose as students jumped from the benches yelling in panic. Dumbledore set off a couple of explosions from his wand that quieted the crowd. "Prefects, lead your houses back to the dormitories immediately!"

Snape jumped from the dais and managed to corner Higgs. "If the troll is in the dungeon area, you can't take them back to our house. The first floor is better, near the hospital wing. A troll won't be able to climb the staircases." Higgs nodded and began to herd Slytherin house toward the stairs.

Turning back to the high table, Snape watched as Pomfrey and Sprout revived Quirrell. _That makes no sense at all. Quirrell's a troll expert. It's one of the few exceptional talents he has. Why would he faint at the thought of a troll?_ He joined the crowd of teachers and students, making sure that all were heading toward safety.

Then the pieces fell into place. Quirrell in London the day before Hagrid was supposed to be there. A robbery already planned, but too late. Students all in their dormitories, and every staff member in the school heading for the dungeons to fight a troll. Quirrell was after the Stone.

As quickly as he could without attracting too much attention, Snape followed Hufflepuff house toward their dormitories, then turned into a side corridor. There was a staircase there that led up to the third floor and the room where Fluffy guarded the trap door leading down. He should get there well before Quirrell. Snape took the steps two at a time.

The corridor was empty, and the door locked. Snape slipped into a statue niche to wait. If Quirrell didn't come, well and good. If he did…

Quirrell came a few minutes later. A muttered spell, the door opened, and Quirrell slipped inside. Snape left his niche and followed.

Fluffy was asleep. _Not surprising. It has to be Hogwarts's most boring job._ Quirrell stood in front of the great three-headed dog, clearly pondering what to do next.

"What are you doing here?" Snape asked softly.

Quirrell jumped and shrieked. "I… was… worried about the… Stone. Thought…someone might be… after it."

"I do believe you were right. Interesting coincidence, that."

Quirrell shrieked again, but this time it was because Fluffy was awake and moving. Pushing Snape aside, Quirrell jumped for the door. Snape staggered back, then dove down as Fluffy attacked. Wand out, Snape hit the center snout with a bolt of electricity, then rolled under the first head, nearer to the door. He almost made it. The third head grabbed for his left leg, and the teeth scraped skin and flesh as Snape escaped the room and slammed and locked the door.

Quirrell was in the corridor, watching. Snape opened his mouth to yell at the twitching idiot, when both heard horrible noises coming up the stairs from the first floor. They sped down the stairs and along the corridor, meeting McGonagall just as she came up from the dungeon level.

The last horrible crash had come from the girls' bathroom. McGonagall reached it first, with Snape right behind her and Quirrell in the rear. There, unconscious on the floor, was the troll. Standing over it were Potter and Weasley. Quirrell sat down on one of the toilets and put his hands over his heart.

The troll lay stretched out on the bathroom floor. Snape bent over it to see if it bore any signs of restraint, like the marks of a collar, but there were none. McGonagall was furious and letting the two boys know it. "…Why aren't you in your dormitory?"

Snape glanced quickly at Potter and Weasley. _Yes, why are you here? This is the way I took to go to the third floor. Were you following me? Or were you following Quirrell? Why would you follow either of us?_

Then a girl's voice came from the shadows. "Please, Professor McGonagall – they were looking for me." It was Granger.

The girl told a rather far-fetched story of trying to take on the troll herself, but at least her presence helped explain the boys'. McGonagall sent them off to Gryffindor Tower, then she and Quirrell went to find the other teachers to let them know that the troll was captured. Snape headed for the hospital wing to tell Higgs to bring the Slytherin students down so they could finish the Halloween feast in their dormitories.

By now his leg was stiffening to the point where walking was difficult, so Snape's last stop was his own office. He raised robe and gown to examine Fluffy's tooth marks. Skin and flesh were torn, but for some reason it hadn't bled much. _Good thing, or the others would've noticed._

After washing and disinfecting the wound, Snape looked through his salves and ointments for something that would heal bites. Nothing seemed to work. _That's what you get for tangling with a magical dog, you blasted twit! I could go to Madam Pomfrey, but she doesn't know about Fluffy. Dumbledore may not want her to know._

Dumbledore. He had to tell Dumbledore. He had to walk up all those flights of stairs to tell Dumbledore about Quirrell and the troll. Snape stood, and the pain in his leg was like fire. He tried to walk, and all he could do was hobble. _Tomorrow. I'll tell him tomorrow_.

Snape never did have any more dinner that night and frankly, he didn't care.

Early the next morning, Snape went up to see Dumbledore. His leg was better, but still painful. Dumbledore did not appear surprised to see him.

"Quirrell came last night. He seemed to be worried that you were trying to get to the Stone during all the confusion. He thinks I should keep an eye on you."

"I think you should keep an eye on him." Snape explained all his suspicions about London, the robbery, the fact that Quirrell was an expert with trolls, and what had happened in Fluffy's chamber.

Dumbledore was sympathetic about the leg. "I appreciate your discretion regarding Madam Pomfrey. I would rather she did not know. Filch has some medical supplies, splints and bandages and such, if you need them. And he already knows about the dog."

Snape arranged his morning class so that the students would be working on simple preserving of herbs, drying and powdering. Then they had time to work on the reports of their lab work. That way he didn't have to stand or walk around the room. Any student with a question could come to his desk.

As the day progressed, the leg worsened. During the break after lunch, which like breakfast was served in the dormitories because of yesterday's excitement, Snape went looking for Filch. He needed supplies and someone to look at the wounds. He'd have preferred Hagrid, but Hagrid wasn't in the Castle, and Snape couldn't walk all the way down the hill to his hut.

Passing through a courtyard, Snape spotted Potter and his Gryffindor friends acting in a suspicious manner, as if trying to conceal something. "What's that you've got there, Potter?"

It was a library book, out in the cold and damp of the courtyard. Snape confiscated it and, angry that he was forced to handle little problems like this when he was in pain, deducted five points from Gryffindor.

Filch said he could come by in the evening. By then it was all Snape could do to limp to the staff room. He hadn't eaten since lunch the day before, and his mood was foul. He sat in a straight chair and raised his robes so that Filch could examine the bites.

"That's nasty, that is, Professor. You got it nice and clean, though. I seen a bite like that fester and have to cut the leg off, it ain't took care of. I brought you some bandages. That Hagrid, he plays with some dangerous beasts. You're lucky you got out in one piece."

"Blasted thing," Snape said. "How are you supposed to keep your eyes on all three heads at once?"

There was a small noise, and Snape looked toward the door. A student stood there. "POTTER!"

"I just wondered if I could have my book back."

Snape rose, and pain stabbed from his foot up into his back. "Get out!" he screamed at the boy, "Out!" _How dare you enter here without permission! How dare you spy on me and spread stories of my private life through the whole school!_

"Here, Professor," said Filch. "Try this salve. It always worked wonders for me."

_Saturday, November 2, 1991_

_[JKRowling's story implies that a longer time passed between Halloween and the first Quidditch match, but if that were true, then Harry and his friends would have noticed Snape's limp sooner than the day before the game.]_

Filch's salve actually did work wonders, and the next day the leg was decidedly better. Snape still limped, but sixty percent of the pain was gone. It was Saturday, and the day of the first Quidditch match between Slytherin and Gryffindor. Time to see if McGonagall's confidence was well placed.

Breakfast was once again in the Great Hall, and the moment Snape entered, he was accosted by Hagrid. "Elves say you ain't eating again. I'm sitting next t' ya this morning, and if ya don't eat a fit amount, I'll spoon-feed ya in front of the whole student body."

Snape agreed to the arrangement, since he was famished. Hagrid would have no excuse to spoon-feed anyone. It also forced Quirrell to move down, which could only help Snape's appetite. Already the smell of fried sausages was making his mouth water.

Both teams looked focused and subdued. The Potter boy wasn't eating. _Nervous before his first game. I should send Hagrid to spoon-feed him_. Snape glanced over at McGonagall. She seemed nervous, too.

For some reason passing understanding, Quirrell decided he wanted to watch the game. He followed Snape out and joined him in the Slytherin stands. _Why doesn't he sit with Ravenclaw? I'm sure they'd love to have him._

The game started normally, the most irritating thing being the announcer, Lee Jordan, who was so blatantly pro-Gryffindor that it was insulting. Snape made a mental note to mention it to McGonagall later. Gryffindor scored first, a foul was called against Flint for stopping Potter from catching the Snitch, then Slytherin scored. Snape had never really liked Quidditch, except for the bludgers and the house competition. Only two things made today interesting – seeing if Potter really was any good, and watching McGonagall try to contain her excitement.

Suddenly something was wrong with Potter's broom. It was lurching and twisting in an unnatural way and gradually moving higher and higher. It looked as if it were trying to buck the boy off, which at the height it'd reached would be dangerous. Snape realized then that his own instincts had taken over, for without thinking, he'd already started murmuring a countercurse.

Whoever was cursing the broom was powerful. Powerful enough to not only jinx a Nimbus 2000, but to withstand his countercurse as well. The broom threw Potter off, but he managed to hold on to the stick. The Gryffindor Beaters were trying to get close enough to help as the broom continued to ascend. Snape struggled against his unknown foe to bring the broom lower and stop its bucking. A fall from that height could be fatal.

Suddenly people were pulling at his arms and pointing beside him. At the same moment Snape felt flames burning the hem of his robe and cried out in pain. His concentration was broken, but when he turned back to the game, Potter's broom was flying normally again. Whoever had been cursing it had stopped.

Potter clambered back onto the broom and went into a nosedive that ended with him on the ground and the snitch in his hands. Gryffindor erupted in cheers, Slytherin stood in silent shock, and Snape shook his head in bewilderment. _What just happened?_

Hagrid and Snape were both in Dumbledore's office after the game.

"It was a curse. Someone was cursing the broom. Someone powerful. I couldn't stop it; it took every bit of concentration to restrain it. Until I caught on fire."

"How did you catch on fire? A fire that stops as soon as you break eye contact? And yet it seems that it broke contact for the other spell caster as well. Another mystery."

"Begging yer pardon, Professor, but they think you did it."

"Who thinks I did what?"

"The students. Potter an' his friends. They saw ya saying the countercurse, and they thought ya was the one cursing. And they know about Fluffy."

"Potter saw my leg yesterday. He probably suspects Fluffy did that."

There were no answers, only more questions. Dumbledore dismissed the two with instructions to keep an eye on Potter and his friends. As Snape and Hagrid left the Headmaster's office, Hagrid turned to Snape.

"What did Fluffy do t' yer leg? And ya didn't come t' me? We're going right t' yer office now, lad, or I'll be on yer tail for the rest of the year."

The two went to Snape's office, where Hagrid looked at the leg. "That's got t' of hurt. What'cha put on it?"

"Some stuff Filch gave me. It's on the shelf there. It worked."

Hagrid sniffed the small dish. "I don't doubt it. That'd soothe dragon burns – probably what it's meant for. Who d' ya think did it?"

"Attacked Potter? I'd suspect Quirrell, except he's not strong enough."

"Why him?"

"I think he's after the Stone. He heard about it on the thirtieth. He tried to be sure you wouldn't be in London 'til the first, then he went down on the thirty-first and there was a break-in at Gringotts. I think that was Quirrell after the Stone. Then on Halloween he pulled the troll stunt. When have you known Quirrell to be terrified of trolls? I suspected him then and went to the third floor. Quirrell did go in and was trying to decide how to deal with Fluffy. That's how I got this."

"Then ya say he's not strong enough."

"That was at the Quidditch match. Whoever was trying to hurt Potter was a lot more powerful than Quirrell. Though it would explain more. Did the students tell you how they knew about Fluffy?"

"Nope. Didn't… well, yes I did ask, but they distracted me."

"On Halloween, both Quirrell and I used the stairs in the back corridor to get to Fluffy's chamber. The same corridor where Potter and friends found the troll. But what were they doing in that corridor? The girl's story about wanting to take on the troll is obviously a lie. So, were they following me, or were they following Quirrell? And that's probably when they saw Fluffy. It would all fit if Quirrell reached the same conclusion and tried to kill Potter to keep his own secret. But I would never have suspected Quirrell of being that strong."

It also occurred to Snape, though he didn't mention it to Hagrid, that if Quirrell felt he had cause to kill Potter, then he also would have cause to kill Snape.

_Wednesday, November 20, 1991 (the full moon)_

The next month and a half was like waiting for a storm to break. Every day Snape sat next to Quirrell at meals as if he suspected nothing, and Quirrell did nothing to justify his suspicions. Every Friday morning he taught Potions to Gryffindor first years, trying to avoid the green eyes, yet Potter was turning out to be almost as much of a dunderhead as Longbottom, and Snape could not simply ignore him. And Longbottom… Was there ever anyone as complete and total a failure at everything as Longbottom?

At the end of supper on November 20, Snape glanced back, out the windows of the Great Hall, and saw the full moon rising in the night sky. For the first time in a long time, he felt like going down to the lake to sit on Lily's rock and watch the moon. He wished she were there, so he could tell her how he felt.

_I don't like your son, Lily. I'm sorry. He's moody, rude, arrogant, a popularity hound like that husband of yours. You should have seen the gaudy 'Potter for President' sign at the Quidditch game. He even thinks I want to kill him. Why couldn't he inherit Potter's eyes and your personality?_

_And then there's the Longbottom boy. Do you have any idea how long I've hoped the prophecy was about him? But it wasn't about him. He couldn't hurt anyone but himself. There was no mistake. The prophecy was about your son. I am so sorry. I did that. It's my fault. Entirely my fault._

Then it was midnight, and Snape remembered that he had a six o'clock wake-up, breakfast at seven to supervise the students, and a nine o'clock class. He rose and bid the moon, the moon that blazed bright above him, goodnight. As he walked back toward the Castle, he noticed two things. First, a fleeting glimpse of Albus Dumbledore at an upper window, suddenly turning away, and second a dog whining in the woods behind him. _Fang, I swear that's Fang. Hagrid will not hear the end of this._

And yet he was tired, and so Snape returned to his own quarters and went to bed.

December came, and it began to snow. When the storm was over, all of Hogwarts was covered in a blanket of white. The upper classes were given one more Saturday at Hogsmeade before the Christmas break, and Snape stood at a first floor window watching as Quirrell descended the steps and walked across the top of the hill in the wake of the students he was supervising.

"What do you find so interesting?" McGonagall came over to watch, too.

"Look at Quirrell. Now wait."

About five snowballs appeared from their right, flying in a V formation. One by one they dive-bombed Quirrell, bouncing off his turban and swooping back up into the air for another attack. McGonagall was making wheezing sounds as she tried to control her laughter.

"You didn't do that?"

"No. My hexing days are long over, though I could show them a trick or two."

"Do you know who it is?"

"I do not, Minerva, and good for you that I don't because if I did I'd have to deduct points from your house."

"The terrible twins?"

"I'm not saying."

_Friday, December 20, 1991_

The dungeons were cool even on the hottest days of summer. It was the perfect place to store all the potions ingredients. Now, in the winter, it was nearly as cold in Snape's living and working area as it was outside.

The last Potions class of the year ended on the last day before the Christmas break. The students were leaving on Sunday, those that were going home. A skeleton staff and a few dozen students would stay. For their sake, the Great Hall was being decorated for the holidays.

Snape closed and locked the Potions classroom after the students were gone and started up the stairs to the warmth of the Great Hall and something hot for lunch. A little group was standing around Hagrid and one of the fir trees. Just as Snape reached the top of the steps, one of the boys jumped at another and grabbed his robes, clearly intending to start a fight.

"Weasley!" Snape shouted, and the boy let go. Snape realized then that the student he'd attacked was Draco.

"He was provoked, Professor Snape," said Hagrid. "Malfoy was insulting his family."

_Don't get me into a 'he said/he said' situation. Words are one thing; physical violence is another._ "Be that as it may, fighting is against Hogwarts rules, Hagrid. Five points from Gryffindor, Weasley, and be grateful it isn't more. Move along, all of you." Snape herded the Slytherin boys into the Great Hall.

Hagrid and the Gryffindor students came in after them and busied themselves setting up the last tree. Then the students left. Hagrid looked upset about something.

Later, Snape brought the subject up again. "Why've you started playing favorites with Gryffindor students? You were pretty quick to jump to that Weasley boy's defense." Snape was sitting next to Hagrid for dinner at the high table because Quirrell was in his quarters nursing a cold.

"Malfoy was just being nasty. He was egging the boy on an' insulting me t' boot. Don't look at me like that, it were just a comment on m' living arrangements, that they're not palatial."

"Malfoy's been taking some flak in Slytherin for helping put Potter on the Gryffindor team. He seems to be having trouble dealing with it. Should I talk to him tomorrow about it, before he goes home, or wait 'til next term?"

"Don't talk t' him at all on my account. I can take it. By January it may've all blown over."

Saturday was hectic, with students packing, students exchanging Christmas presents, students promising to send owls during the break, students mailing cards…

Sunday they left, and Hogwarts was suddenly very quiet.

_Christmas, Wednesday, December 25, 1991_

The few days before Christmas were calm and rather enjoyable. With no classes to worry about, all of Snape's supervisory duties involved patrolling empty halls or observing students from a distance. When he wasn't on duty, he caught up on some reading. It was a welcome time to recharge energy. Being around masses of students always left Snape feeling drained.

Christmas morning was icy cold, with the feeble sun glittering on the snow from a cloudless sky. Most of the little group of students and staff stayed in bed until after sunrise, which that far north was not until nearly nine in the morning. The sun would set again around three-thirty in the afternoon. The shortest days in the year. Christmas dinner would be served at noon.

Snape woke several hours before dawn and immediately started fires to take the chill off his bedroom and office. His was one of the few areas where, because of all the poisons, the house elves were forbidden to come. Snape preferred the added privacy.

There were no presents. Snape didn't exchange Christmas presents with anyone, which spared them and him the torment of trying to find out what someone else wanted. Instead he passed the time reading, and then went to the Great Hall an hour early to supervise the arriving students, that being his duty station for the day.

Quirrell wasn't at dinner. He hadn't been all week. _Still sick, I suppose._ Dumbledore was insisting that everyone break open the wizard crackers in front of them and put on their hats. He already sported a gaudy flowered bonnet. Snape sat on one side of McGonagall and Hagrid on the other. She and Hagrid pulled a wizard cracker, and McGonagall got a jaunty top hat, which she immediately set on her head at a rakish angle. Hagrid got a Dutch ladies cap with starched white wings.

"Now you, Severus," said McGonagall. "You have to have a hat, too."

Snape shook his head. "With my luck it'd be a feathered war bonnet like the Indians in America wear. I'd rather not live with that image."

McGonagall and Hagrid insisted, however, and Snape reluctantly pulled the cracker Hagrid held out to him. To his enormous relief, it was a relatively dignified Turkish fez in green and black.

The feast began. The few occupied tables were loaded with food to feed two armies. Hagrid helped himself to more wine than was good for him and kissed McGonagall on the cheek. Then the little warning bells began ringing in Snape's brain.

_Quirrell isn't here. Everyone else in the entire Castle is here but Quirrell. This is exactly like Halloween._

Snape quickly excused himself from the table and left the Hall. Running along the corridor to the back staircase, he again took the steps two at a time and, arriving outside Fluffy's room, found himself face to face with Quirrell.

"Quirinus! What a pleasant surprise. So good to see you up and about. I trust you're feeling better."

"S-Severus. What… brings you here?"

"The pricking of my thumbs. But you should really join us downstairs for the feast. It will do you a world of good and speed your healing." Snape took Quirrell by the elbow, turned him around, and steered him back downstairs into the Hall.

Dumbledore looked up as the two entered the Hall but said nothing. Hagrid and McGonagall did not seem pleased at the addition to their company. Snape resumed his seat and proceeded to enjoy the rest of the Christmas dinner. Quirrell sat sullenly at the end of the table and didn't eat a thing.

The afternoon was most enjoyable. The majority of the students were outside, playing in the snow. Quirrell was at his station keeping an eye on them, and so could not be somewhere else. Snape sought out Filch, who'd slept through the Christmas dinner since he had the night watch and didn't get to bed until nearly sunrise.

"Filch, I'm entirely on day duty during the holidays. Do any of the teachers have a night patrol?"

"No, Professor. There's so few students here they thought it wasn't necessary. Decided to let the teaching staff have a holiday, too. No, it's just Filch in the corridors at night. Me and Mrs. Norris."

"It's a burden for one person. If you ever see anyone – anyone – out in the school at night, let me know. I'll help you get them back where they belong."

"Anyone at all, eh?"

"Well, except Dumbledore, of course. Other than that, anyone at all."

Supper was almost as festive as the earlier feast had been, certainly in the amount and type of food available. Then most of the students went to their various dormitories while the teachers gathered around one of the tables for a more convivial evening of brandy, coffee, whist, chess and, for Snape and Flitwick, cribbage. Quirrell was with them, trying to play chess with Professor Vector and losing ignominiously.

"I understand your quarters are, well, cold, Severus," commented Flitwick between games. "Aren't your students freezing as well?"

"The water in the lake helps maintain a constant temperature."

"But the lake freezes."

"Only on the surface. The water underneath doesn't get as cold."

"Someday you'll have to explain that to me."

Gradually the teachers drifted off to bed, but for a few the evening of cards and chess continued until nearly midnight, when the last wished each other a good night and started off for their various rooms. Flitwick was still concerned about the cold.

"Have you ever tried a warming pan?"

Snape raised his eyebrows. "I can't say that I have. Now you'll have to explain that to me."

"You heat bricks at a fire and place them in a flat metal pan to warm up a bed on a cold night."

"And the bricks radiate heat for a long time. Ingenious idea."

"I have some heating on my hearth right now. Come on up and take a couple with you. No need to be cold on Christmas night."

Professor Flitwick's rooms were on the third floor, and the two were almost at the door of the Charms classroom when Filch came hurrying down the stairs. Seeing Snape, he stopped suddenly.

"Someone's prowling upstairs," he snapped.

Snape excused himself to Flitwick and quickly followed Filch up to the fourth floor.

"You asked me to come directly to you, Professor, if anyone was wandering around at night, and somebody's been in the library – Restricted Section," Filch explained.

"The Restricted Section? Well, they can't be far, we'll catch them."

They caught no one, however. Filch led Snape back to the area of the Restricted Section where the prowler had been and showed him the extinguished lamp, still warm, and the book that had alerted him by its screaming.

_A screaming book? 'Spells and Enchantments for Guarding and Protection.' Quirrell must still be looking for a way past Fluffy. But if Quirrell were here, why is there no lingering smell of garlic?_

"Whoever it was, Filch, we seem to have chased them away. Thank you for fetching me. If anything else suspicious happens, let me know. Good night."

"Good night, Professor."

It was too late to get warm bricks from Flitwick. Snape made his way back to the dungeon area and his own rooms, considering the events of the night. Someone had been in the Restricted Section looking at dark spells for guarding things. Someone who was not Quirrell. So now there were two unknowns, the prowler in the Library and the strong spell caster who'd tried to kill Potter at the Quidditch match. Unless, of course, they were the same person.

_Who besides Quirrell would be trying to steal the Philosopher's Stone?_

The meeting with Dumbledore was not satisfactory.

"I assure you, Headmaster, that we're dealing with more than one person here. Quirrell wants the Stone. I caught him once actually entering the chamber, and a second time approaching it. He had to have had something to do with the troll at Halloween. Quirrell wouldn't have simply run from a troll, then fainted. But he isn't strong enough to have continued jinxing Potter's broom over my countercurse, and he wasn't the one in the Library or we'd have smelled the garlic. Besides, Quirrell can't just disappear like that. There are at least two people, Quirrell and someone else."

"Do you believe that they are working together?" Dumbledore asked patiently.

"I don't know. If Quirrell thought Potter'd seen him, he might have a reason to kill Potter, but then he'd have a bigger reason to get rid of me. And why would Quirrell hide it for three years if he really was stronger than me? He didn't know the Stone would suddenly appear. "

"What other person at Hogwarts would you suspect? Who is stronger than you at this type of magic?"

"You are. That's it, just you. At least at this kind of dark magic. It might be one of the students, though. Some of them come from powerful dark families. I haven't seen any that I could suspect of hiding their strength, but that doesn't mean there aren't any."

Dumbledore leaned back in his chair. "I believe you are more worried about this than you need to be. Some of these incidents may be wholly unconnected to the central problem."

"Is there something you know that you don't want to tell me, sir?"

"I couldn't say."

"I'd like your permission to referee Gryffindor's next Quidditch match. They play Hufflepuff in February."

"Severus, Severus, you do want to be unpopular, do you not?"

"I don't understand, sir."

"Slytherin has been the top house in both Quidditch and the House Cup competition for what, seven years? Now Gryffindor has a chance to catch up and knock you out of first place. Do you honestly think that Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff are not in Gryffindor's corner? Anything to deflate Slytherin. And now you want to referee a Gryffindor game? You know what they will think. Besides, I do not recall that you were ever very, shall we say 'comfortable,' on a broomstick."

"I bought a broom after I finished school. I use it to get around in Lancashire. I'm not great, but I'm adequate. If I was up in the air and mobile, and anyone started tampering with Potter's broom, I would be able to see who it was."

"Let me think about it."

"Thank you, sir."

Later that day Snape was down by the frozen lake, where he picked up a handful of pebbles and started targeting pinecones. There was a certain violent precision to his attack that would have terrified two-thirds of his Potions classes into imagining how good he might be with pieces of chalk and student heads. Only this time it wasn't student heads he was thinking of.

"Somewhat upset ya, Professor?"

"Are you spying on me again, Hagrid?"

"Spying, sir? Me?"

"Like you and Dumbledore did last month when I came out here to sit for a while. You think I don't notice?"

"Well, ya do get a bit high-strung from time to time, an' we want t' be ready t' head ya off. What's happened today?"

"Dumbledore."

"So ya take it out on the pine trees."

"I could go for birds or rabbits. It'd be more of a challenge."

"Pinecones is fine. What did Dumbledore do?"

"Hoard information. I went to him about this… problem, and he tells me I don't have to worry about part of it, but he won't tell me which part, and he won't tell me why, so what good does it do?"

"Ya might take comfort from that."

"How so?"

"Well, if he's tightlipped about someone else's private affairs, he's likely tightlipped about yours as well."

"You're probably right, Hagrid."

Throwing stones at trees would not solve the underlying problem. Somewhere on the grounds of Hogwarts, in the Castle itself, unknown, unrecognized, was a spell caster stronger in dark magic than he was. A spell caster whose curses required all of his concentration and energy just to mitigate. In all Snape's life, he'd known only two whom he could not best easily, or at least face one on one as an equal. One was Dumbledore. The other was dead.

_It was bad enough at the Quidditch game, feeling that strength. Now he appears to be wandering Hogwarts at will, as if he were invisible. Dumbledore knows something, but won't tell, which is even more disquieting._

Snape knew two things for certain about this unknown. He was interested in spells of guarding and protection – but to create them, or to bypass them? And he'd tried to kill Potter. _If he's still trying to kill Potter, he may be watching him constantly. If I can spot someone who's always keeping an eye on Potter, I may learn who this mystery spell caster is._

Drawing up a list of all the staff and students who'd remained at Hogwarts over the Christmas break helped somewhat, though Snape couldn't see a single name that he'd suspect of being the one. Maybe he was hiding on the grounds, only pretending to leave. _Maybe he's hiding on the grounds anyway, not a student at all._

The beginning of the new term found Snape nervous and edgy. He reevaluated everyone, trusted no one. He began checking the places Harry Potter frequented to see if anyone else was following the boy. Growing in the back of his mind was a doubt, a worry, the rebirth of a long-dormant fear.

January was a hellish month. In addition to Snape's other troubles, the first years advanced from the simple stages of gathering, preserving, and storing herbs, and the brewing of infusions and decoctions, into full-fledged potions making. All the stunning ineptitude of that first Friday back in September reemerged.

It took two sessions before even half the class managed to grasp the difference between stirring, beating, and folding in. Snape's muggle half was throwing hissy fits. _Didn't anyone ever show them how to bake cookies? Scramble eggs? Make a pudding? Idiot wizard brats!_

Friday mornings were a running commentary on potential disaster. "Bulstrode! Newts' eyes, not bats' eyes. Newt! It begins with an N. You know, the letter with all straight lines… Weasley! Remove that cauldron from the fire before you add the venom – unless you want to redecorate the classroom… Longbottom! Are you missing an entire page! There are six ingredients that come before the nettles… No!" For Longbottom threw the nettles in anyway.

Snape sprang between the cauldron and Finnigan, seizing Longbottom by the wrist and flinging him towards Weasley and Potter, as he whipped out his wand with a quick incantation just as the brew exploded. There was a pop, and a gurgle, and the surface of the concoction belched a little, but catastrophe was averted, except for Snape's wand and right hand, which were splashed with the liquid. Welts and boils rose immediately, and it burned like fire.

Trying to suppress images of what might have happened if he hadn't been standing near the cauldron, Snape wheeled on Longbottom. "Are you deaf as well as illiterate?" he yelled at the boy. "Or do you enjoy sending half your classmates to hospital?"

The thoroughly frightened Longbottom rejoined Finnigan, and they began making the potion again. Snape went to his cabinet to look for a salve for his inflamed hand. It would be better to get something from Madam Pomfrey, but there was an hour left to go for the class, and leaving the students alone for even a moment was unthinkable. Still in pain, he forced his eyes to sweep the room again. Snape himself had been a relatively powerful eleven-year-old. What if the one he was looking for was here?

"Potter, you dunderhead! Can't you read either? Stir that with a clean spoon or we'll have an accident worse than Longbottom's! Don't you pay attention to anything at all?"

_Azkaban has to be better than this._

February's Quidditch match drew closer, and more of the staff discovered that Snape was going to referee. Sprout was telling everyone that she had nothing to do with it, preferring to have Hufflepuff win or lose on its own merits. McGonagall and Flitwick started eating together, pointedly avoiding Snape's company. He cornered McGonagall on the stairs after breakfast one morning three days before the game.

"How can you believe that of me, Minerva? We've been colleagues for ten years. Why would you think I would miscall a game for the sake of the Cup?"

"Are you or are you not the same rascal that talked the best Seeker I ever had into following dragons? I've never known you to want to referee before. It occurred to me that someone who fought like the devil to get to the top might fight just as hard to stay at the top. Set my heart at ease, Severus. Withdraw from refereeing. Otherwise I'll judge on the outcome of the game."

But Snape couldn't withdraw, not if he was going to have even the ghost of a chance of finding out who the spell caster was.

The Saturday of the Gryffindor-Hufflepuff Quidditch game was cold and overcast. The first thing Snape noticed was that he was being ignored at the breakfast table by every other teacher except Trelawney, who normally never spoke to him. She glided up as he was helping himself to a kipper and some toast and muttered. "All your hopes will be dashed today."

"Good morning to you, too, Sibyll," he replied, then stayed longer at the table than usual, trying to eat in a leisurely fashion to show how little the ostracism affected him.

Earlier in the week, Snape had tried out the school brooms and found one that was easy to manage and docile. After breakfast he went down to the Quidditch pitch to practice a bit well before anyone else arrived. It was fairly easy and, as he'd reasoned, from the air he could see every spot in the stands. If any spectator started to jinx Potter's broom, Snape would be able to see who it was.

Lunch was a repeat of breakfast. It'd never struck Snape so forcefully before how much the other teachers resented the fact that Slytherin had been in first place for so long. He could understand McGonagall, Flitwick, and Sprout. They naturally wanted their houses to win. But the rest? He reviewed the staff in his mind and experienced a small revelation. None of the others had been in Slytherin as students. _I'm still the only Slytherin on the staff. I haven't thought about that since I started teaching. No wonder they resent our success._

After lunch, the entire school began to make its way to the Quidditch stands. Everyone wanted to see if Gryffindor would win. Snape had the feeling that even Hufflepuff would cheer a Gryffindor victory.

The teams were still in their locker rooms when the next thunderbolt struck. Just as the game preliminaries were set to start, a flurry of excitement at the center stand attracted Snape's attention. From his aerial position he could see a tall, white-bearded figure take a seat.

_What is Dumbledore doing here? He never comes to Quidditch games, why this one? …Because he knows that no spell caster would try to jinx Potter with him here. He's here because he doesn't want me to find out who the spell caster is._

As the teams filed out of their locker rooms onto the field, Snape felt himself consumed with a sudden anger, and it was directed against Dumbledore.

_Why couldn't he just tell me he wouldn't let me referee? Why let me go to this effort, be hated by all and sundry, and then at the last minute make all the trouble worthless by ensuring the one thing I want can never happen?_ Snape knew his anger showed on his face, and he didn't care.

Madam Hooch sent the teams into the air, and almost immediately George Weasley sent a bludger straight at Snape's head. "Penalty for Hufflepuff!" Snape called, and he and Weasley exchanged glares across the pitch. Just a moment later, Snape caught Fred Weasley trying to hex the quaffle. "Penalty for Hufflepuff," he called again, and this time there were boos from the Gryffindor stands.

Then suddenly the entire crowd was on its feet. Snape turned as Potter flashed past him in a dive for the ground. Though Potter did not actually hit him, the backwash of his speed nearly knocked Snape off his broom, while his robe lashed Snape's face, and bits of broom straw entered his mouth and nose.

Within five minutes of the game starting, Potter caught the snitch and the stands erupted in cheers. It was over, irrevocably over, and nothing of importance happened.

Snape landed his broom, furious with Dumbledore and with Harry, and spitting bits of straw out of his mouth. He stood respectfully in line to accept the congratulations of the Headmaster, since he was one of the game staff. When it was his turn to shake hands with Dumbledore, however, Snape looked him straight in the eyes and said softly, "Are you ever going to tell him it was rigged?"

Dumbledore froze, then his eyebrows shot up, but he said nothing.


	36. Chapter 36 – The Menace Revealed

**Where Your Loyalties Lie: The Menace Revealed**

"I tell you, Minerva, Fred was jinxing the quaffle. I've cast enough jinxes in my life; I know what one looks like."

"Well, I didn't see it, or anything like it. I saw you give two penalties against Gryffindor in the first three minutes, and I didn't see cause for it."

Trelawney cackled as she swept past. "Hopes dashed! What did I tell you? All hopes dashed!"

_You don't know the half of it, you old witch. Something happened out there that Dumbledore was controlling, and now I'm still no closer to solving my problem._

Then Snape saw Quirrell heading toward his first floor rooms. _No. I still have cards to play. If I can't go after the spell caster, I'll go after Quirrell. That'll be something Dumbledore can't interfere with._

"Quirinus!"

Quirrell looked around. "Did you… want to talk to… me, Severus?"

"Did you enjoy the game? You've become quite a Gryffindor fan. I saw you at the November game as well. Don't remember your being so keen on Quidditch last year."

"I… thought the air, you… know, the excitement…"

"Would do you a world of good, yes I know. Or maybe you're just curious about Gryffindor's new seeker."

"Severus, I don't think…"

"Time you did. You and I are going to talk. Now. But not here. Meet me in the forest, just behind the willow, in about fifteen minutes."

_In a spot where no listening spells will work properly. Not even the ones I invented myself._

Snape went first to his rooms to slip on a heavy hooded cloak, partly because it 'd gotten quite cold, and partly to minimize notice. Enough people walked around in the warmer cloaks during the winter that few would pause to question another one. Then he left the Castle and hurried down the hill as if heading for Hagrid's hut. A little past the willow, he turned suddenly and darted into the trees, hoping that in those few seconds no one had been watching from the Castle windows.

Quirrell was already there, standing with his back to Snape, facing into the forest. As Snape reached him, he turned around. Snape lowered his hood.

"I came," Quirrell said.

"Very wise. I thought, before this went any further, that I'd give you the opportunity to show that trust in you was not misplaced. You and I have been running into each other at the most awkward moments, and I can't shake the feeling that your motives aren't entirely blameless. I have an interest in seeing that my labor isn't in vain, so you understand why I take this personally."

"We could… talk about this inside. I… don't know why you wanted… to meet here of all… places, Severus…"

"Oh, I thought we'd keep this private. Students aren't supposed to know about the Philosopher's Stone, after all."

"You know that I'm… just as dedicated to… protecting it as… you are."

"Have you found out how to get past that beast of Hagrid's yet?"

"…But Severus, I – "

"You don't want me as your enemy, Quirrell." Snape took a step towards Quirrell and was satisfied to see that Quirrell retreated.

"…I don't know what you –"

"You know perfectly well what I mean. Not everyone was fooled by your little bit of hocus-pocus. I'm waiting."

"…But I… don't –"

"Very well. We'll have another little chat soon, when you've had time to think things over and decided where your loyalties lie."

Snape drew the hood back over his head and left, not bothering to look back and see if Quirrell followed him or not.

_Done. All cards on the table. No more guessing. He'll either be scared enough not to try anything else, or he'll come after me and prove I'm right. Either way, something will happen. And if it was Quirrell targeting the Potter boy, that should stop because now he knows I'm the greater danger. If it happens again, I'll know there's someone else behind it._

The most infuriating thing was that after their conversation, Quirrell did nothing at all. At least nothing that could be specifically tied to Snape's threat. What he did appeared to be tied to the Quidditch game.

Walking into the Great Hall that evening for supper, Snape found that he was being ignored by every teacher there. It seemed that McGonagall's opinion about the penalties was universally shared, and the general consensus was that if not for Potter's lucky catch of the snitch within the first five minutes, Gryffindor would have been cheated of a victory.

Snape sat at the end of the high table anyway, so he didn't usually talk to most of the teachers except Quirrell, who sat beside him. Now Quirrell moved his chair to the left and spent the entire supper with his back to Snape, discussing the transits of the planets with Professor Sinistra. _Not really a bad tradeoff. I'd rather look at that stupid turban all evening than his face._

At least he could use the time to think. One of the biggest question marks was Dumbledore's role in the whole business. The Headmaster's presence at the Quidditch match made it twice that Snape was discouraged or prevented from looking for the spell caster. But what game could Dumbledore possibly be playing?

Suddenly, without warning, Snape began to shut down. Doors closed and locked, thoughts sank into hiding below the level of consciousness while other decoy thoughts swam to the surface, and Snape found himself remembering the first time he'd been jumped by James Potter and Sirius Black. He looked quickly around the Hall, and glanced down the teachers' table. No one was watching him, no one attempting to establish eye contact, and yet… _Some one is trying to read me. Someone here in the Hall._

Snape let the decoy thoughts float freely in his brain, trusting to instinct to keep him safe, while he began slowly reviewing the face of every student in the Hall. No one was looking at him. No one gave the least sign that he or she was practicing legilimency. Again Snape glanced past Quirrell's back and along the teachers' table. No one there was acting suspicious either. _An animagus? A mouse in the corner? A bat or bird in the rafters?_

His appetite now completely gone, Snape rose and quietly left the Hall. No one appeared to notice, probably assuming that it had to do with the afternoon's Quidditch game.

Back in his office, Snape sat alone in the dark room for several hours. He now had more evidence that a powerful wizard was in Hogwarts, but this evidence was even harder to prove. The first time, everyone at the game had seen that Potter's broom was being jinxed. The second time, Filch was a witness to the night prowler in the library. This time there was no evidence outside Snape's own head. _Can I go to Dumbledore with this? Will he believe me? Will he tell me if he does?_ He realized with a start that he was absentmindedly rubbing his left forearm.

Turning the lights on in the room, Snape stared for a moment at the arm, then rolled up the left sleeves of his robe and the gown underneath. The mark of the skull with the serpent issuing from its mouth was faint, but clear. _Is it my imagination, or is it itching? And maybe just a touch darker and clearer? It isn't definite enough for proof. Besides, he's dead. He is dead, isn't he?_ Was there something Dumbledore knew?

Then Snape thought again of Dumbledore's sudden secretiveness, and a knot tightened in the pit of his stomach, and an icy foreboding gripped his heart.

xxxxxxxxxx

The next two months passed quickly as the students and teachers realized that the time until final exams could now be counted in weeks. In the hourglasses in the entrance hall, Gryffindor's rubies still topped Slytherin's emeralds, and McGonagall was speaking to Snape again.

"You've been jumpy as a cat on coals lately, Severus. Whatever is the matter with you?"

"It must be the students. It must be collectively the most incompetent new class I've ever taught. Don't you have the same experience?"

"Now that you mention it, there has been a higher percentage of mistakes and unfortunate incidents than usual, and Flitwick is rather on edge about some of the problems he's had. But you're worried about something more than just classes."

"I don't know why you think so, Minerva."

"The way you've been prowling the halls and watching the students… There! You're doing it again. You keep looking around like you thought something was going to jump out at you."

"Maybe I just need a holiday."

"Speaking of which, what are you doing for the Easter break?"

"Nothing special. Just try to relax."

"I was thinking of getting down to London for a day, pick up a few things…"

Over McGonagall's shoulder, Snape's restless eyes continued to search the faces of the passing students, finding nothing there to ease his apprehension.

xxxxxxxxxx

Because Easter fell after the middle of April that year, the Spring Term had been long, while the Summer Term would be very short. As a result, a much larger percentage of the student body stayed at Hogwarts for the Easter break than had for the Christmas break in order to study for exams. There were no classes, but supervisory duties did not diminish.

McGonagall managed to fit in her London trip on the Tuesday after Easter. She'd been planning to go on the Monday until Snape reminded her it was a Bank Holiday, and while Diagon Alley would still be doing business, some other things might be closed.

"Stupid to give a holiday to a bank," fumed McGonagall. "These muggles and their idiot ideas, interfering with a person's plans."

So it was that Snape felt partly responsible for McGonagall's frustration, and made a point to speak to her on her return.

"How was London?" he asked at supper, snagging Flitwick's seat and forcing the Charms teacher to sit next to Quirrell for one evening.

"It was lovely, lovely. And I even managed to get into the Public Record Office for an hour, which I couldn't have done had I gone yesterday, so I owe you one."

"What were you looking for in the Public Record Office?"

"Oh, I'm doing this thing on seventeenth century witchcraft trials. A little here, a little there. Did you manage to find some free time today?"

"I'd thought to get down into Hogsmeade, but it wasn't going to happen today. The terrible twins managed to release whooping gas into the study hall on the second floor, and there was pandemonium."

"Well, that didn't stop Quirrell from getting out."

"Quirrell was in London?"

"No, silly. He was in Hogsmeade. I saw him when I apparated back in, late this afternoon. He looked like he'd just come out of the Hog's Head, and he was taking off this enormous hooded cape and stuffing it into a bag. I thought it odd because it's been so warm all day. I certainly wouldn't want to wear something like that in weather like this."

"I've given up trying to figure out why Quirrell does what Quirrell does. Maybe he was raised in a greenhouse."

But Snape began to look around the half-empty Hall again, and noticed for the first time that Hagrid had not come to supper.

xxxxxxxxxx

More than a month passed, a very hectic month. The only bright spot in first year Potions was the Granger girl, and she managed to spoil it all by being an insufferable know-it-all, even when she was wrong. A major disappointment was Draco Malfoy.

"Your marks in both the autumn and spring terms were mediocre, Malfoy. I can't give you extra material to study when you can't excel in the classes you're required to study."

"I can handle the extra work. I'll work harder at everything, and bring my other marks up, too. Father says I have to learn this from you."

"Lucius can be… very insistent. Very well. I am going to give you a description of the formation and dispersing of sound waves, and of various important frequencies. I want you to learn them, and be able to explain them to me in words other than the ones I've given you."

"What do I need to learn this for? It's just a bunch of numbers."

"That bunch of numbers can help you invent spells that will prevent anyone from overhearing what you're saying, let you listen into a conversation on the other side of a Quidditch pitch, or allow you to walk silently over autumn leaves. But if you don't know the numbers, you haven't got a prayer of inventing the spells. Physics first, magic second."

Malfoy looked at the list as if it were the mythical crock of gold. "I can do all that? I'll learn this so fast. You won't be disappointed in me, sir."

_And there'll be snow fights in Hell when you come back to me knowing everything on that list. Oh, Draco. You haven't stuck to anything for longer than two days since you got here. Where do you get it from? Neither of your parents was like that._

At the end of May, Draco Malfoy was brought to Snape for reasons much less admirable than studying the physics of sound waves.

It was a Saturday night, and Snape was up reading well past eleven, since he didn't have night patrol and didn't have to get up early the next day to prepare for classes. It was a murder mystery that he'd never read before, and he was deeply involved in the identity of the corpse plowed up in a field, and whether it was the missing wife of the potter turned monk, when there was an emphatic knock on his office door.

Crossing through the office, Snape opened the door on an infuriated Professor McGonagall and an embarrassed but defiant Draco Malfoy. McGonagall was clearly already dressed for bed.

"Professor, I… do come in." Snape gestured to a chair next to his desk. "Sit down, please. Has Malfoy been causing you trouble?"

"This young man has been wandering the corridors, in the middle of the night, up on the top floor near the Astronomy Tower. And he has tried to fob me off with a story about Gryffindor students and a dragon."

"But it's true, Professor. They're getting rid of it…"

"That will do, Malfoy. We haven't gotten to you yet. Now, Professor McGonagall, you apprehended Malfoy on the seventh floor near the Tower?"

"Not ten minutes ago. I've deducted twenty points from Slytherin for his offense and cheek."

Snape was taken aback by the severity of the penalty, but could not argue about another teacher's authority in front of a student. "Now what have you to say for yourself, Malfoy?"

"They've got a dragon. Hagrid got it over Easter break and it hatched, but it keeps getting bigger so they have to send it away before it burns his hut down and someone's coming tonight to take it from the Astronomy Tower. You've got to catch them."

"You see, Professor Snape. It's a concoction of lies. Where would Hagrid get a dragon? He didn't leave Hogwarts the entire break. And how could no one notice a dragon down there since Easter? And you cannot just fly in and out of Hogwarts. We have shields, defenses, that would have to be turned off…"

"But I saw it! I saw it with my own eyes! In Hagrid's hut!"

Snape shook his head. "First, Malfoy, nothing gives you the right to be out in the corridors after curfew. If you thought something untoward was happening, you should have come to me or another teacher. Second, you may not talk to a teacher in a disrespectful way, and you must apologize to Professor McGonagall. And then you must go directly to the dormitories and go to bed. Your housemates won't be happy to learn tomorrow that you've lost them twenty badly needed points."

A resentful Malfoy apologized and left. Then Snape turned to McGonagall. "Twenty points, Minerva? Isn't that a bit steep? We dole them out in ones and fives and tens. To lose twenty at a shot…"

"I'm sorry, Severus, but I've said what I've said. To be out and about, and then that ridiculous story, and his defiance… twenty points."

Snape escorted McGonagall back to the entrance hall, where Slytherin's emeralds had already been removed from the hourglass. "I certainly hope the rest of your night is peaceful, Minerva. I'm just glad I'm not on duty tonight."

But McGonagall was to have no rest. At that moment, Filch appeared on one of the staircases. "Professors," he called, "there's students out of bed."

"We know, Filch," Snape called back. "One of mine. We've already got him."

"Not him, Professor Snape. Them. And they ain't yours. They're Professor McGonagall's. I've got 'em in your office right now, ma'am."

McGonagall turned scarlet, but whether with rage or shame was hard to tell. A brisk "Good night, Professor," and she was hurrying up the stairs after Filch.

_I wouldn't want to be those students for all the tea in China. Not tonight. Not after what just happened with Malfoy._

The next morning on his way to breakfast, Snape saw a crowd of students looking at the hourglasses. _Rejoicing at Slytherin's loss, probably_. He started to move past them, then saw the points and stopped dead. Slytherin was once more in first place. Gryffindor was last. Gryffindor had, overnight, lost one hundred fifty points.

Snape went quickly into the Hall where a stony McGonagall was already eating breakfast. He slipped behind her and crouched down so his presence wasn't obvious. "Minerva, a hundred and fifty?"

"There were three of them. Fifty each." McGonagall turned to face him. "Severus, how could I punish your house yesterday, then not punish my own for a worse offense? They were actually up in the Tower. Malfoy was only in the corridor."

"Who was it?"

"Potter, Granger, and Longbottom. And Longbottom had the same silly story about a dragon."

Just then a great bulk moved in behind Snape. "Ya ought not t' be down there, Professor. I mighta stepped on ya."

Snape rose and started towards his own seat, but Hagrid touched his elbow and pulled up an extra chair. "T' tell the truth, I'd not mind having a chat with ya. Somewhat's come up."

"Love to be of help, but why me?"

"It's a dark sorta thing, needing a darkish sorta viewpoint, no offense meant."

"None taken, Hagrid, but Quirrell is the Defense against…"

"Pshaw! Quirrell don't know his behind… Begging yer pardon, ma'am… But Quirrell don't know half what you knew at thirteen."

Realizing this might take time, Snape started putting eggs and sausages on a plate. "I'm all ears, Hagrid. I only hope I can help. With whatever it is."

"There's a unicorn died in the forest this last Wednesday." As both Professors turned horrified faces to him, Hagrid continued. "I don't know how it happened, but it'd been bleeding from the neck."

"Have you spoken to Kettleburn?" Snape asked.

"This ain't a matter of care, Professor. It's a matter of killing. I think something was drinking the blood."

"Adult or juvenile?"

"Adult male."

"There's nothing that preys on adult unicorns. It has to be human."

"I knew ya'd have the answer right at y'r fingertips. But who'd it be?"

"I don't know. But I've been worried about there being someone… unusual… on the grounds for some months. Nothing solid, just strange coincidences. What will you do now?"

"Wait. See if it happens again. Go looking for who did it."

"Professor McGonagall has a foursome looking at detention if you need eyes and ears."

Hagrid brightened as McGonagall added, "And a fairly intelligent group they are, too. They might actually be useful."

Two days later Hagrid reported another wounded unicorn, and Malfoy, together with the three Gryffindors, was sent out to help him find the beast and help it if possible. The following morning at breakfast, Snape noticed that Potter, Granger, and Longbottom were acting as if he'd transformed into a devil with hooves, horns, and a pointed tail.

"Hagrid, what happened last night? Did you find the injured unicorn?"

"We did, sir, but it were already dead. Something were slithering around it, no offense intended, an' it even drew the centaurs out. One of them was talking t' Potter, but I don't have particulars."

"Well if it's just centaur talk, there's nothing to it. Still, it would be nice if they stopped looking at me like I was going to roast them over coals." But what could have been 'slithering' around the unicorn? Snape was suddenly reminded of Quirrell's snake of the year before.

xxxxxxxxxx

It was testing week, and no one had anything to think about but exams. Preparing them, taking them, proctoring them. And for the Professors, another week of grading them. At the very end of the last exam, Snape watched the students stream out of his room, locked the exam papers in his office, and headed out toward the entrance. After so many hours cooped up, he wanted a bit of sunshine and a little stroll.

As he crossed the entrance hall, Snape heard, among the babble of voices, a student say his name. Not sure if someone wished to speak to hem, he paused, and then realized the sound came from the three Gryffindors in front of him: Potter, Granger, and Weasley. He moved toward them and caught something about the Ministry of Magic, and Dumbledore turning up. Then the Granger girl saw him and gasped. _What are they plotting that my presence startles her like that?_

"Good afternoon," Snape said. _There's that look again, as if I was going to turn them into… something unnatural._ "You shouldn't be inside on a day like this."

"We were…" the Potter boy began, but hesitated. _What does he feel guilty about?_

"Hanging around like this, people will think you're up to something. And Gryffindor really can't afford to lose any more points, can it?" The boy flushed, but his face was still defiant, James's face. Then suddenly Snape thought about McGonagall, and the distress this obstinate child had caused her. "Be warned, Potter –" he said quietly, "any more nighttime wanderings and I will personally make sure you are expelled. Good day to you."

Without another word, Snape turned and left, no longer going outside, but heading to the staff room to find McGonagall.

They were all in the staff room when Snape entered, McGonagall, Sprout, Flitwick, and Quirrell.

"Thank goodness you're here, Severus," McGonagall said as he entered. "Something's happened. They know about the Stone."

"Who knows about the Stone?" Snape tried to act surprised in front of Quirrell, not wanting Quirrell to suspect he'd already talked to Dumbledore.

"The Three Musketeers. Potter, Granger, and Weasley. They were looking for Professor Dumbledore to tell him that they think someone will try to steal the Stone tonight. But Dumbledore's been called to London."

_The Ministry of Magic. The students knew that, too_. He glanced at Quirrell, who didn't meet his eyes. _Maybe they're right about stealing the Stone. Maybe it is tonight_. "They volunteered this information?"

"They practically screamed it at me in the entrance hall."

"How many other people heard them, then?"

"It was just before the last classes let out. No one else was there."

"Is it possible someone will try to get the Stone?" Sprout asked.

McGonagall thought for a moment. "It is a strange coincidence that they would think someone would on precisely the day Dumbledore leaves for London. He won't be back until tomorrow."

"The students aren't going after it, else they wouldn't have run looking for teachers," Snape said. "If anyone is going to try, it would probably be tonight when the corridors are empty."

Flitwick spoke up. "My office is on the third floor, too. I shall watch the door for the rest of the afternoon and early evening."

"You need more time for your own work," said McGonagall. "I'll watch until after you have supper, then you watch this evening until curfew. Professor Sprout, if you would take the middle watch, then Professor Snape, you can watch from two to morning."

"What about me?" asked Quirrell.

"You have patrol duty tonight. If we change the routine, whoever it is might get suspicious. You just keep to your rounds."

Snape made no effort to hide his satisfaction at McGonagall's plans. He smiled sweetly at Quirrell as McGonagall left the staff room, then turned and walked out himself.

The Granger girl was standing there, looking nervous. "Is there something you need, Miss Granger?" Snape asked.

"I was waiting to see Professor Flitwick," she stammered. "I wanted to ask him about my exam."

"Professor Flitwick is right here. Let me get him for you." Snape went back into the staff room to tell Flitwick a student was outside, then left for his own rooms. He had the distinct impression, however, that Granger would rather have followed him than talk to her Charms teacher.

xxxxxxxxxx

Snape couldn't sleep. He had the ominous feeling that the children were right, that tonight Quirrell would try to take the Stone. As midnight crept nearer, he decided not to wait for the beginning of his own shift, but to go up and keep Sprout company.

When he got there, the door to the dog's chamber was open and Sprout was nowhere in sight. The moon was just two days from full, and its light flooded most of the corridor. A quick search, and Snape found Sprout on the landing of the stairs leading down to the first floor. She was sound asleep.

"Pomona? Pomona, are you all right?" It was clearly an enchantment, and Snape spoke a quick waking spell. As Sprout blinked and sneezed, he asked, "Who attacked you?"

"I don't know," she replied. "What am I doing here?"

"Someone's after the Stone and knocked you out." He helped her to her feet and made sure she was steady. "You get Flitwick. I'm going downstairs after McGonagall. Don't go in until we join you. It could be dangerous."

Leaving Sprout to wake Flitwick, Snape ran down to the first floor and banged on McGonagall's door. "It's happening," he said when she opened the door, and together they hurried back upstairs.

Flitwick and Sprout were waiting. The four teachers edged near the door of Fluffy's chamber, and Snape felt a momentary twinge in his leg. _How do we get past the dog? Why didn't we bring Hagrid into this?_

Fluffy was growling at them, and the trapdoor under him was open, but there were three things in the chamber that weren't supposed to be there. A small harp, a rudely carved wooden flute, and an invisibility cloak.

The rush of anger that swept through Snape on seeing the cloak was almost uncontrollable, and he fought it down with an effort. James Potter's cloak. The cloak that helped change Snape's life irrevocably nearly twenty years before. Snape turned to McGonagall. "Your Three Musketeers are already here," he said, pointing to the cloak, and knew there was a note of bitterness in his own voice.

"Music must calm the beast," said Flitwick. He picked up the flute and muttered a charm. The little instrument began playing a soft, haunting tune, and Fluffy yawned and dropped his heads onto his paws.

"Now," Sprout said, "we can jump down. There's a Devil's Snare there. It'll cushion our fall, then I'll immobilize it. I'd best go first." She stepped to the trap door and jumped. The other three teachers followed her.

Each chamber was under the control of the teacher who'd created it. Sprout got them past the Devil's Snare with no problem. Flitwick didn't need the key to open the door on the other side of his charmed room. The four teachers advanced into the shadowy chess room. There in front of them was the Granger girl, kneeling on the chessboard, trying to revive the Weasley boy, who appeared to be unconscious.

"Hermione! Ronald!" cried McGonagall, "What happened here?"

"Oh, Professor McGonagall, thank goodness you're here. Ron sacrificed himself to win the game so Harry and I could go through and stop…" That was when Granger looked beyond McGonagall at the three other teachers and saw Snape. "You're not… you're supposed to be…"

"Pomona, stay here and see what you can do for Weasley," ordered McGonagall. "The rest of us need to find Potter."

Leaving Professor Sprout with the children, McGonagall, Snape, and Flitwick hurried into the next chamber. An unconscious troll lay sprawled on the floor, and the door to the other side was easy to open. The next to last chamber was Snape's. _I wonder which child solved the puzzle. Probably Granger. Must be the muggle blood in her. No wizard brat could do it._ Snape opened the door, and they ran through, McGonagall in the lead.

There, kneeling beside the unconscious Potter, was Professor Dumbledore. "Ah," he said as the three teachers burst in, "there you are. And just in time, too. Even if I had not gotten here, you would have been able to stop him. He has just left."

"Who…" McGonagall started to say, then looked with the others past Dumbledore. Quirrell was lying on the floor in front of a tall mirror, his face and hands covered with third-degree burns, and blood seeping from the back of his head onto the stones beneath him. The cloth of the turban lay tossed to one side.

"Lord Voldemort," answered Dumbledore, and Snape winced as pain shot from the mark on his arm up into his shoulder. "It seems that Voldemort was inhabiting Quirrell's head all year, and has been trying to get his hands on the Stone since last August. He discovered how to get past Fluffy around Easter, and has been awaiting an opportune moment ever since. Can you help me get this young man to hospital?"

The others attended to Potter, but Snape walked over to Quirrell, who was still moaning softly and obviously dying. Snape knew what it was like to have the Dark Lord probe his mind – it was one of the worst experiences of his life – yet the horror of what Quirrell had lived through was something Snape could only guess at. To have the Dark Lord share every moment of every day, know every thought, control every action…

Snape knelt and lifted Quirrell to a sitting position cradled against his left arm, and began a low chanted healing spell to ease the pain of the burns. Quirrell opened his eyes.

"Severus, is that you? I need to… I don't…"

"Shh, Quirinus, it's all right. He's gone. You're free."

Quirrell shuddered and sighed, turning his face into the fabric of Snape's robe. "He suspects," he whispered. "You must be careful." There was a catch in his voice, and he seemed to gag.

"I will," Snape assured him and resumed his chant.

Gradually Quirrell relaxed, the pain fading from his eyes. A moment later, at the end, he sighed again and died in Snape's arms.

Dumbledore came and knelt with them, laying a hand on Snape's shoulder. The fear that had slept for over ten years was awake and growing once more. Snape looked into Dumbledore's eyes. "What do we do now?" he asked.

xxxxxxxxxx

"So, the spell caster was Quirrell all along. Or rather, him – the Dark Lord – through Quirrell. No wonder he was so strong. And the mysterious prowler in the library was…?" Snape watched Dumbledore across the desk in the Headmaster's office.

"Young Potter in his father's cloak. Somehow I did not think it would do you any good to know that he had it. I caught him out after hours, and he stopped using it. Until it was truly needed."

"And the Dark Lord, through Quirrell, killed the unicorns. When did you know it was him?"

"I suspected that first day, when you told me that Potter's scar was hurting. You have no idea how disturbed I was to find that you might have been dueling your former master over the curse on Potter's broom. I do not want to lose you, Severus, and the thought of what Volde-… I am sorry. I must remember to be careful around you… – he could do if you got directly in his way was not something I wanted to take a chance on."

"So you came to the Quidditch match. You might have told me. He tried to read my mind once. You might have warned me."

"Why? He clearly did not want you to know he was there. Otherwise he would have contacted you. I trust your instincts. I cannot read you. He could not read you even when you wanted him to. I was not too worried about that."

"You weren't worried? For a year he shared all Quirrell's experiences, had access to all Quirrell's memories. Every time Quirrell turned his back on me, he was watching me. Do you know that I've been trying to remember every conversation I ever had with Quirrell, trying to figure out what he knows about me? He's not gone. He's coming back."

"And you are here with me."

Snape rubbed his left arm. "He can summon me. He can punish me. Nowhere is safe."

"We shall deal with it when we come to it. By the way, Quirrell told Potter that you had been trying to help him. Potter could not understand why, so I told him that James had saved your life."

"You…! That's none of his business! That's my private life. You promised!"

"I tend to think it is his business. It was his father. Besides, it seemed the least personal of all the reasons I might have given him. I shall try to keep you out of it as much as I can, but you are part of his family history."

There was little that Snape could say to this. A few minutes later he left Dumbledore's office.

McGonagall caught Snape on the stairs. "I thought maybe I would congratulate you now, since we won't be sitting together at the feast tonight. The Quidditch Cup and the House Cup seven years in a row. I think that's some kind of record."

"It was a record last year, Minerva, and you know it. Still, if you'd punished your students the same as Malfoy, instead of going overboard like that, you'd be in third place now instead of fourth."

"And if I hadn't punished them at all, we'd be in second place. You have a well-oiled machine there, Professor."

There was also one last interview with Malfoy.

"You've done well with the lesson I gave you. It seems you do understand something about the propagation of sound. Now I have a summer assignment for you."

"Homework? You're giving me summer homework?"

"Your enthusiasm seems to have waned. If you don't want to do it…"

"No, I'll do it. What do I have to do?"

"Design a spell that will permit you to talk unheard in a crowded room. Use the information about sound, and see what you can come up with."

"That sounds really useful. Is it one you've already done?"

"It is. And your father knows it too, because I invented it for him and your mother. I shall find out if you learn about it from him."

"I'll get it done for you. I'll work on it all summer. You won't be disappointed."

_We'll see about that Draco. We'll see if the passion is really yours, or if it's just Lucius living through you._

The Great Hall was resplendent that evening with green and silver, and a banner with the Slytherin serpent was displayed behind the high table. The Hall was already crowded when Snape entered and made his way to his seat. He tried to conjure up the same feeling of pride in his house that he'd felt in previous years, but somehow this year was not joyful.

First and foremost was the dread that lodged permanently in his heart knowing that the Dark Lord was back and had intimate knowledge of Snape's place at Hogwarts. He'd never released a former servant and never let a fault go unpunished. As long as his disembodied presence existed, there would be the danger of his return. When the Dark Lord returned, Snape knew that his own name would be at the top of the list for destruction.

The second reason was less in magnitude, but perhaps greater emotionally. For the first time, Snape truly saw the depth of resentment felt against him and against Slytherin for their long years of winning, and realized that the students of other houses, even some of the staff, suspected him of favoring his own house to keep it on top. Snape had no way to defend himself against the rumor, and he understood that every victory in the future would be a hollow one.

It was odd sitting at the end of the table without Quirrell beside him. No one moved to take Quirrell's place, though whether out of respect for the dead or to isolate Snape was anybody's guess.

Everyone, absolutely everyone, was in the Hall when the Potter boy appeared at the door. _Did he do that on purpose? It would be so like his father to stage his entrance for maximum effect._ Students in the Hall were climbing onto benches to see him better as he made his way to the Gryffindor table to sit with Granger and Weasley.

Then Dumbledore arrived, and the Hall settled down to listen to his end-of-year speech. It was the usual stuff. When he reached the announcement of points for the House Cup, the Slytherin table erupted in cheers, but Snape was more sensitive than ever before to the silence of the rest of the Hall.

"Yes, yes, well done, Slytherin. However, recent events must be taken into account."

Snape froze. The room became eerily quiet. _What is he doing? He's never changed points at the feast before._

As Snape listened in disbelief, Dumbledore began to hand out points. Fifty to the Weasley boy for beating McGonagall's chess game. Fifty to the Granger girl for getting past his own logic puzzle. And sixty to Harry Potter for his courage. Not one negative point for the rules they'd broken. Gryffindor and Slytherin were tied. The suspense in the Hall was palpable.

_As long as you decided to take the Cup away from us anyway, you might have the kindness to do it quickly instead of dragging it out like this. I never suspected you of being sadistic before, but now…_

Dumbledore was still talking. "There are all kinds of courage. It takes a great deal of bravery to stand up to our enemies, but just as much to stand up to our friends. I therefore award ten points to Mr. Neville Longbottom."

The Hall exploded as everyone but Slytherin began to cheer. Snape clapped his hands mechanically for Gryffindor's victory, but he really wanted to sink right down through the floor in shame at the way Dumbledore had so publicly humiliated him and his house. _You couldn't have done this before, so at least we wouldn't have come to the feast thinking we'd won._

"Which means we need a little change of decoration."

Green and silver became scarlet and gold. The serpent vanished to be replaced by a lion. McGonagall was beaming. The Hall was wild with cheers. Snape rose and went to McGonagall to congratulate her on her victory, trying to smile as if he meant it. He glanced over at Potter. Never before had the boy looked so much like his father, cocky and self-centered as he celebrated the defeat of a rival.

Then, as Snape started back to his own seat, he too became a small center of attention. Kettleburn was first, coming to shake his hand. "Second place isn't so bad, Severus, but that's got to hurt, the way it was done."

Flitwick and Sprout hurried over, too. "Hard luck, Severus. Never thought Dumbledore would do something like that." And Sprout added, "You come sit with us, dear. To think of treating you that way in front of the whole school."

It was an invitation not to be refused. "Save me a place," Snape responded, then went down to talk to his house and cheer up the Slytherin students a bit before returning to the teachers.

And so, as McGonagall basked in the glow of Gryffindor's triumph, Snape found that the ill feelings against Slytherin had vanished into sympathy and good will. While still less than perfect, it was at least a partly satisfactory end to a most unusual year, and Snape settled back to enjoy the feast with his colleagues, putting aside for tomorrow the troubles that tomorrow would bring.

xxxxxxxxxx

17


	37. Chapter 37 – Gilderoy the Great

**A Tiny Bit About Dueling: Gilderoy the Great**

_Wednesday, August 12, 1992 (the day before the full moon)_

Severus Snape was in his bedroom in the dungeon of Hogwarts castle putting the books in order in his small private bookcase. Professor Snape had a secret passion for murder mysteries, and every year brought a different set from his home in Lancashire to read during his free time at Hogwarts. For years he'd been interested in a series about a medieval monk who also happened to be a potions maker. Thoroughly enchanted with the book he read, he purchased the whole series, or at least as many as had been written and published, and planned to read them in sequence. Now he was fascinated by an English lord and the upper class world of the 1920s. There were enough books in the series to keep him busy and content all year.

That task done, Snape double-checked his room, then the supplies in his office and the orders he'd placed to replenish what was running low or had gotten old, and finally his classroom. All was in order and ready to begin classes in September. _I don't know why we have to be here so early. It never takes me a month to prepare._

A glance up at the slits that served for windows in the dungeons told Snape that it was probably around lunchtime. He locked up – something he was careful always to do because of the quantity of poisons in his rooms – and went to the Great Hall.

Only seventeen people were there, the Professors and the rest of the staff of the school. Snape sought out Professor McGonagall, who was reading _The Daily Prophet_ and sipping a cup of tea.

"Anything interesting?" Snape asked.

"I've located our missing Dark Arts teacher," she replied. "He's in London." She handed the newspaper to Snape and pointed to an advertisement for Flourish and Blotts bookstore. It announced that Gilderoy Lockhart, the celebrated author, would be signing copies of his books at the store that day between 12:30 and 4:30.

"He must be just about to start. Do you want to pop down to London, accost him at his book-signing, and ask him why he's not up here doing his job?"

"Humph. I don't think he'd care. Did you see his book list for the course?"

Snape shook his head.

"Every book he's ever written is on it. He's using this job to increase his book sales and his profits."

Snape shrugged. "Maybe I should write some books. _Potions for the Ungifted_, or _Seven Ways to Burn Your Hands Off While Mixing Floo Powder_."

"More useful than this rubbish. _Gadding with Ghouls_. _Voyages with Vampires_. The man has an alphabet fixation."

The two professors began inventing their own – _Surfing with Succubi_, or _Percolating with Pixies_. Snape's best was _Fan Dancing with Faeries_, but McGonagall topped that with _Grocery Shopping with Grindylows_, and he had to admit defeat.

Later Snape spied Professor Dumbledore down by the lake practicing fly-casting. He went down one of the side paths from the Castle and stood where Dumbledore could see him out of the corner of his eye, but where he wouldn't interfere with the fishing line.

"Ah, Severus, I see you are waiting to ask me something."

"Why Lockhart? Lockhart's a joke. Why not me?"

"I need you around for longer than a year."

"Quirrell was here for three."

"But not in succession. He had that year off. And the third year cannot really count as it was not really Quirrell."

"But Lockhart?"

"I will confess that after Quirrell's demise not that many people were interested in the job. You, of course, but I will not have you. Not yet, anyway. Lockhart seems to think it will improve book sales, but at least he is willing to come. And he has worked with vampires and werewolves, so how bad can he be? Give the poor man a chance, Severus."

"Yes, sir," said Snape, and went back up the hill to spend some time with the English lord.

xxxxxxxxxx

It was the last weekend before the students arrived, and the teachers were taking advantage of being able to sleep late, linger at breakfast, and not look at a clock or listen to Hogwarts's bell all day. Snape and Flitwick were deep into their second cribbage game when Hagrid entered the Great Hall with a fuchsia vision in tow.

"Good morning, Professors," said Hagrid, and there was a fizzing undertone to his voice that Snape immediately recognized as either suppressed laughter or the onset of pneumonia. "I'd like you t' meet the newest member of the staff, Professor Lockhart. He's just been up t' see Professor Dumbledore. Professor, this is Professor Flitwick and Professor Snape."

'Pleased-to-meet-yous' and handshakes were exchanged, as Snape and Flitwick took in the exquisite coiffure and perfect tailoring that was Gilderoy Lockhart. Then Hagrid delivered his punch line.

"Professor Dumbledore says you're t' show him around."

Snape looked at Flitwick, and Flitwick looked at Snape. There was about to be a fight over seniority, which Flitwick, having been at Hogwarts fifty years longer, was sure to lose, when Hagrid spoke up again.

"That'd be you, Professor Snape. The Headmaster says y're t' settle Professor Lockhart into his room, office, an' classroom, an' show him around the Castle an' grounds."

Flitwick grinned and patted Snape on the elbow. "Have a wonderful day, youngster," he said, and walked out of the Hall laughing quietly.

"Well," said Lockhart brightly, "I must say you are certainly high in the Headmaster's estimation to be selected to escort me on my first day here. I fully intend to mention your kindness in my next book, Professor, uh, Shape."

"Snape. Your classroom is on the first floor. If you would follow me."

As they left the Great Hall, Snape chose not to pay any attention to Professor McGonagall, who had risen from the table and was doing a really superb imitation of Lockhart's stance and gait before an audience of totally silent, yet thoroughly convulsed teachers.

As the two professors left the Hall, Lockhart was remarking on his home schooling and education abroad. They paused at the foot of the marble staircase. "This is quite a large entry hall, isn't it? I say, there must be a zillion staircases here. Don't know that I'd want to climb them all in a day, what? I understand the Castle is… one or two hundred years old."

"Closer to a thousand. And your rooms are on the first and second floors. You should never have to climb higher than that unless you visit the headmaster."

"And that was quite a climb, I'm not ashamed to tell you. Fairly set my heart beating, don't you know, although I am really quite athletic. I won the _Witch Weekly_ triathlon competition two years ago. I'm sure you read about it in the papers."

"I fear I don't keep abreast of such things. Here is your classroom."

They entered the Dark Arts classroom, with its rows of desks and benches. Lockhart seemed taken aback. "My, look at the quantity of desks. There must be – six times three, carry the two – at least twenty-six desks here."

"Eighteen, actually. Though your classes generally never run over ten. You have twenty-two sections a week, which in your case is four on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and five on Tuesdays and Thursdays."

"My that is a lot, isn't it. Though I'm sure you're used to such things. The packhorses of education. I am so proud to be able to immerse myself in the stultifying routine of your existence this year. I have so much admiration for those of you who do the same dreary thing, day after day, year after year, for the good of our children. I've already planned to immortalize you and your efforts in a new book, _Plodding with Professors_. Once your friends and family see your name in a Gilderoy Lockhart book, you won't be able to keep the adoring worshipers away."

"I can hardly wait," replied Snape. "Your office and private rooms are on the next floor."

"Well, it certainly is old," was Lockhart's first comment after standing and looking around the office and private room for a minute or two. "Rather small and dim too, what? Still and all it is a place to hang one's hat, and we shall make the best of it."

"I am thrilled to hear you say so." Snape's own room was a quarter the size of Lockhart's, and his office smaller and, being in the dungeon, darker.

"Well we are all part of the same team, and I'm definitely a team player. Always something for my colleagues. Now you, for example, you teach what?"

"Potions."

"Ah, yes," and Lockhart nudged Snape with his elbow. "Love philters and tonics for indigestion. Wonderful stuff. Now if you wanted to expand your capabilities, I would be willing to show you a thing or two about the Dark Arts. What to do if you ever meet a werewolf, say, or even a curse or two."

"You're very kind."

"Not at all, not at all. Part of building collegiality and team spirit. And you could show me how to brew, well, whatever it is you brew."

"As you can see, your things have been brought up. Would you like to tour the grounds now, or would you rather settle in here first, and see the rest this afternoon?"

"I think I really ought to unpack here first. Get all the little homey effects out so our minds can focus on what's important. We can meet…?"

"Lunch is at noon."

"Excellent, excellent. That'll give me time to have everything in order. Oh, and Shape, old boy…?"

"Yes?"

"There wouldn't happen to be any extra wardrobes lying around, would there?"

McGonagall was still in the Great Hall when Snape returned. "So. What's our new celebrity really like?"

"He's offered to teach me something about the Dark Arts. Maybe even a curse or two."

"And you said…?"

"I told him he was kind."

"You wicked, wicked, naughty boy! You're going to lead him down the garden path, then turn and pounce on him like the cobra you are. Pomona! Come over here, dear. This is just too rich. Our Snape has finally agreed to accept instruction in the Dark Arts. He may even learn his first curse."

Professors Sprout and Sinistra both joined Snape and McGonagall. "What's this Minerva? I thought…"

"From Gilderoy Lockhart!" McGonagall shrieked with laughter.

"It's true. He offered. He wants to promote teamwork and collegiality, so he's going to immortalize us in a book called _Plodding with Professors_." Snape looked around at the three faces, mouths open in shock. "It's true. Could I make up something like that?"

"Well, actually, you were doing a pretty good job of it a couple of weeks ago," said McGonagall, "but I believe you anyway. Now, are you going to take him on? About the Dark Arts lessons, I mean. I'd love to be a fly on the wall."

"You could be a cat in the corner. I'm not sure though. It might have been first day jitters had him talking like that. I think I'll wait and see if his attitude changes over the next week or so. If he turns out to be decent, no harm done."

"And if he turns out to be a pompous ass?"

"Why then, Minerva, our consciences are clear."

"Five sickles says that he's a pompous ass."

No one would take McGonagall's bet.

Teachers dispersed to work or relax as the mood seized them, then returned to the Hall for lunch. Snape at first hoped that Lockhart was busy with his room and office, but at precisely 12:15, the man walked in. As Defense against the Dark Arts teacher, his place was next to Snape, and he made his way across the Hall and sat down, nodding and smiling to the others as he did so.

"Is everything so far to your satisfaction," Snape inquired.

"Yes, lovely, but odd thing you know. There seem to be a lottish number of, well, heads of garlic here and there. What sort of chap was in the position before."

"Oh yes, Quirrell. You'd have liked him. Last summer he was zapping zombies along the Zambezi. The local prince presented him with a ceremonial turban to mark his status in the tribe. Just your sort of thing. It was purple."

"Really? How nice. Yes, a purple turban would be nice. What happened to him?"

"He died."

"Dear me. Rotten luck. Well, not for me, eh? Rather good luck for me. I say, this food is quite tasty. Who prepares it for you?"

"We have a whole crew of house elves that see to the proper running of the Castle."

"Excellent! I shall speak to them, of course, about the menu and the spicing of some of the dishes. When I was helping the _École de Gastronomie_ in Paris rid themselves of some pesky poltergeists, I astounded them with my gourmet dishes. Just a natural talent. It could put the finishing touches on the meals. Oh, and we are seeing the grounds after lunch, no?"

Snape smiled.

It never stopped.

At the Quidditch pitch: "I was asked to play for England, you know. I would have been their best Seeker yet, except I had the misfortune to sustain a minor injury in that spectacular duel with the Voodoo Chief of Pico Duarte and had to sit that season out. After that there were too many other demands on my time…"

At Hogsmeade: "Quaint little village. So charming. Needs a bit of life though, don't you think? I could take a room at the Three Broomsticks for readings of my books to the general populace. It would bring in oodles of people and help the local economy. Do you think once a week would be enough…"

At the Forbidden Forest: "Such a shame you can't use it for something. Nature hikes, camping, sell the timber for profit. If it's just a matter of clearing out the dark creatures, well I'm your man. I'm sure Professor Dumbledore would agree, now that he finally has someone on staff who really understands dark forces. I mean I know all you teachers are very good at the subjects you teach, but the Dark Arts, now that takes practical experience…"

By the lake: "Angling! Now there is a sport that requires a cool head and a gifted arm. I could write the definitive book on fishing if my fans didn't keep me occupied with public appearances, or the world at large with the dangerous task of protecting it from evil. The noble art of fly-casting is one at which I excel, and I hope to spend many pleasant afternoons out here demonstrating the techniques…"

Lockhart returned to his rooms while Snape went to the Great Hall. After the students arrived, the professors would seek more the privacy of the staff room, but for now they enjoyed the luxury of the extra space. Snape went to the table where McGonagall, Flitwick, Sprout, and Sinistra were playing whist, and sat watching them for a few moments. McGonagall caved first.

"Well," she snapped, "don't just sit there and make us suffer. What was it like?"

Snape grimaced. "What truly frightens me is that I'm going to have to sit next to that man at every meal, every day for the entire year. I'll probably restrain myself from killing him, but I may have to cut his tongue out."

"That bad."

"You don't know the half of it."

Flitwick chuckled as he played a jack. "Better you than me, boy. Better you than me."

"What are you going to do to him?" Sinistra asked.

"I don't know, Aurora. I can't just gratuitously strike him, much as I would like to. Something will have to come up that I can play on."

"Severus, that sounds ominous," Sprout said. "What did he say to you?"

"He told me Dumbledore was fortunate to finally have a teacher on the staff with practical experience of dark forces."

It was McGonagall's turn to chuckle. "He may have just pounded the first nail into his own coffin."

Snape gritted his teeth all through supper, then fled to the blissful solitude of his own rooms for the rest of the evening, leaving the other teachers the pleasure of experiencing Gilderoy Lockhart. Monday breakfast looked to be more of the same until Filch came into the hall. Filch normally ate in his own room, so his presence at breakfast was unusual.

"Begging your pardons, Professors," said the caretaker, "but Hagrid's needed down at the gate to admit a delivery."

"Can't ya take care of that yerself, Filch?" Hagrid grumbled.

"Not allowed to seeing as it's creatures. Gamekeeper's job."

To Snape's immense relief, Lockhart sprang from his seat. "They'll be mine, I'm sure. Got the order in just a tad late, but when I mentioned who it was for, the delivery company assured me they'd be here. One of the advantages of fame." He grabbed biscuits and sausages and abandoned the now thoroughly delighted Snape. "I'll just go down with you, my man, and take charge of them myself."

The dynamics of the situation shifted immediately, for Hagrid's authority was challenged. "No ya don't, sir," he said at once. "Living creatures is my responsibility, an' they doesn't come onto school grounds without I personally inspects them."

The outcome of the confrontation was that Hagrid and Lockhart went together down the hill to the Hogsmeade gate to bring in and pen Lockhart's living creatures.

Snape went down to Hagrid's hut later in the morning because curiosity was burning him like a consuming fire. He found the door open, Hagrid fuming over a pot on the hearth muttering into his beard, and a large crate in one corner of the room. The crate was emitting piercing squeaks and whistles.

Hagrid looked up at Snape standing on the threshold. "You got a brain between y'r ears. Bet ya know what's in there."

Snape crossed to the crate and listened to the piping and trilling. "Pixies?" he ventured. "Cornish pixies? Are you sure you want them in your hut?"

"There. There's still someone with an ounce of sense in the school. He wanted t' open the crate and look at 'em right there at the gate."

"How many are there?"

"A good dozen."

"And he was going to release them into the air on the grounds?"

"There ya go. But he's the professor with all the experience handling creatures, so I don't know nothing."

"He told you that?"

"He did. But I'm big as about ten of him, so it really weren't no argument."

"Whatever are they for?"

"His first class Wednesday afternoon. He's planning t' test the students' mettle."

"And I have a class then, too. Drat! I'd love to see it."

Word spread quickly about Lockhart's little surprise, primarily because Snape told almost everyone else in the school personally. His excuse was that he was looking for volunteers to help contain the pixies when they got out of Lockhart's control, but the truth was that he was turning into a terrible gossip where Lockhart was concerned.

It was McGonagall who revealed this unpleasant fact to him. "You're turning into a terrible gossip where Lockhart's concerned, you know," she told Snape after supper.

"No I'm not. I'm just relaying essential information in the hope of averting a catastrophe."

"I think you need a nice saucer of milk before you go to bed tonight."

"All right, all right. But you don't have to sit next to him all the time."

xxxxxxxxxx

_Tuesday, September 1, 1992_

The day that the students were to arrive was an especially hectic one as every teacher made last minute checks of his or her classrooms and materials. In particular, the teachers who were heads of houses had to inspect the dormitories and common rooms.

Around noon, Snape finished with his checklist for Slytherin house and headed for the Great Hall and his last relatively peaceful meal until the Christmas break. _And today I'm sitting at the other end of the Hall. There must be something I have to discuss with Professor Vector today. Then again, that would put me next to Professor Trelawney. Hardly a trade-up. Would Trelawney like Lockhart? I wonder._

Professors Sprout and Flitwick were whispering together in one corner, and Sprout waved to him to join them. "The most distressing thing has happened. Two students refused to board the train!"

"That's impossible," replied Snape. "No one refuses to get on the train."

"These two did. They were at King's Cross, but wouldn't even go onto the platform."

"Who was it?"

"Two of Minerva's. The youngest Weasley boy and, you'd never guess it, Harry Potter. Dumbledore got a message from Arthur and Molly. It seems the two stole the family car as well. Poor Arthur's had to admit that the car does things it shouldn't. Like fly."

"It isn't hard to believe," said Snape. "It's the sort of stunt Potter's father would've pulled. Anything to stay in the limelight. And I was hoping this year would be relatively normal. How's Minerva taking it?"

"She's furious," said Flitwick. "Dumbledore's trying to calm her down. She still hasn't gotten over the hundred and fifty points she had to deduct from Gryffindor on Potter's account last year. I understand she'll be waiting on the lawn with a crossbow to shoot them down."

"Assuming they can get in." Snape thought for a moment. "Much as it would serve them right to hit the defenses in that car, it wouldn't do to have squashed student all over the place. Aside from unnecessarily irritating Filch, it would upset some of the parents. He'll have to let them land."

Late afternoon brought the owls with copies of _The Evening Prophet_. Shock and anger swept through the ranks of the teachers as they read about the unforgivable carelessness of Weasley and Potter in allowing the magical car to be seen several times.

"Don't they understand what it means to have muggles aware of our world?" cried Professor Burbage as she threw the paper down on the table. "You'd at least think Arthur would teach his children some discretion."

"We are talking about the father of Fred and George, you know," commented Sprout. "I think the only child they have who doesn't get into trouble is Percy."

Snape was nodding agreement when Dumbledore strode into the Hall. Moving to a table in the corner, he motioned Snape to join him.

"I fear, Severus, that I must place a distasteful duty on you tonight. You have, of course, heard of our errant twosome. We do not know yet when they will arrive. I need someone outside patrolling the grounds during the feast…"

"I'll do it."

"Really, I do know how much you must be looking forward to the feast, and explaining the Sorting ceremony to our new Dark Arts teacher…"

"I'll do it. Just tell me what it is, and I'll do it."

And so it was that later that evening, as every other denizen of the castle was joyfully preparing for the arrival of the students, the Sorting, and the feast, Professor Snape was down by the Hogsmeade gate with a pair of binoculars, searching the sky for a turquoise Ford Anglia with two twelve-year-old boys in it and feeling himself very lucky indeed.

It was getting late. The train arrived, the thestral carriages climbed the hill, and the boats had crossed the lake with the first years before Snape heard the car's engine. He was, at that moment, near the Quidditch pitch, reasoning that it presented a large, clear area in which to land. The drivers of the car had other ideas.

The car came across the lake, and there was enough light from the setting quarter moon to glint off its windows and chrome. As Snape watched in growing horror, the car headed straight toward the hill and the wall of the Castle on its peak. _They're going to crash the car into Hogwarts!_

The car disappeared from his view, yet there was no crash. _They must have missed it on the other side, which means they're headed for the Forest_. The quicker way was along the narrow beach at the base of the hill, and Snape hurried as fast as he could in the moonlight. Shielded by the rock of the hill, he heard no sound.

Rounding the hill Snape could see the black line of the forest and the lighter shadow of the Whomping Willow, but nothing else. No car, no students, nothing. He strode forward until he was abreast of the willow, where he lit a Lumos spell.

The willow was in dreadful shape. Broken branches lay scattered about, and there were great tears and dents in its bark. One huge branch had split away from the trunk and hung mutilated, ready to fall onto the grass. Nearby were the marks of the car's tires ripping up the sod, leading into the forest. Snape followed them a short way under the trees, but saw no sign of the car.

Climbing back up to the Castle, Snape could see clearly the traces where Potter and Weasley had dragged their luggage. _At least they're not in the forest. But what did they do with the car?_ At that moment cold fury broke through Snape's barriers. _Just like his father. Has to be special. Has to be noticed. Doesn't think about the consequences and doesn't care about the rules. And doesn't care who or what he hurts._

As Snape reached the castle steps, his anger abated a bit. _It's always possible they hit the tree by accident and are scared and contrite. I wouldn't mind seeing Potter contrite for once. Rare moment._ But it was not to be. From the steps leading into the entrance hall Snape saw both boys peering between the massive doors of the Great Hall at the feast, and as he approached silently, he overheard:

"Where's Snape?"

"Maybe he's ill!"

"Maybe he's left because he missed out on the Defense against Dark Arts job again!

"Or he might have been sacked! I mean, everyone hates him -"

Standing right at their backs, his voice as low and deadly as he could make it, Snape entered the exchange. "Or maybe he's waiting to hear why you two didn't arrive on the school train."

Although clearly not contrite, the boys had the sense to appear nervous, maybe even embarrassed. Snape led them down into the dungeon area to his office. The room was dark and cold. As he entered and closed the door, Snape turned with his back to it to face the shivering boys. He was fighting to control his anger. Dim moonlight still filtered in through the slits near the ceiling.

"So, the train isn't good enough for the famous Harry Potter and his faithful sidekick Weasley. Wanted to arrive with a bang, did we, boys?"

And of course, Potter tried to blame someone else. "No, sir, it was the barrier at King's Cross, it..."

"Silence!" Snape ordered, his voice still low. "What have you done with the car? You were seen." He snapped his fingers for light and showed the startled boys the headlines of _The Evening Prophet_, then read part of the article to them. By this time he was calmer. He looked up at Weasley, "I believe your father works in the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Office? Dear, dear… his own son…"

Potter seemed more upset about that than Weasley. Snape continued. "I noticed, in my search of the park, that considerable damage seems to have been done to a very valuable Whomping Willow."

Incredibly, they still tried to shift blame from themselves, for Weasley burst out, "That tree did more damage to us than we..."

"Silence!" Snape's anger flared again, and he no longer trusted himself to keep his voice low. "Most unfortunately, you are not in my house and the decision to expel you does not rest with me. I shall go and fetch the people who do have that happy power. You will wait here."

He left the boys in his office and went to find McGonagall.

The Sorting was finished and everyone concentrating on the food as Snape made his way along the edge of the Great Hall and slipped behind McGonagall's chair. He whispered so that both she and Dumbledore beside her could hear. "I've got the pair of them. They're in my office."

Dumbledore nodded, but McGonagall rose at once. As the two professors left the hall, McGonagall began to question Snape. "Are they hurt?"

"Not really. Weasley has a small cut over his eye. They don't even seem too shaken up, though Weasley will claim the Willow damaged them. They brought up their own things, and when I found them peeking into the Hall, they were speculating on whether or not I'd been sacked because they couldn't see me at the table."

"Dear, dear. That doesn't sound at all penitent. What happened to the Willow?"

"They drove the car right into it. It'll need major work in the morning. Poor Sprout. I haven't the heart to tell her now."

"Have you deducted points from Gryffindor?"

"No. I wasn't thinking about points."

They reached Snape's office door. "How do you stand the cold down here, Severus? My fingers are numb already." As she entered the room, McGonagall raised her wand and lit the fire. The boys cringed as if they thought she would curse them. "Sit," she commanded. "Explain."

It was as ridiculous a story as Snape had ever heard, about the King's Cross barrier not letting them through, and stealing a flying car that just happened to be parked in the center of London. Both Snape and McGonagall already knew about the car from the Weasleys. When McGonagall asked why they didn't send an owl, the pair blushed scarlet.

Then Dumbledore knocked and entered, and the whole tale was repeated. As Snape listened, he watched Dumbledore, and the realization slowly dawned that the Headmaster did not intend to punish the boys. Sure enough, all Dumbledore would do was write to their families. _But Weasley's family already knows, and Potter's family doesn't care. So he's not punishing them at all!_ Snape coughed slightly.

"Professor Dumbledore, these boys have flouted the _Decree for the Restriction of Underage Wizardry_, caused serious damage to an old and valuable tree – surely acts of this nature..."

Dumbledore would not budge. Turning all responsibility for the matter over to McGonagall, he put an arm around Snape's shoulders and practically pushed him out of his own office. "Come, Severus, there's a delicious-looking custard tart I want to sample..."

Snape glanced back at McGonagall, yet had no choice but to accompany Dumbledore. Once in the corridor and out of earshot of any students, though, he refused to be silent.

"It isn't right, sir! It isn't fair! If it were any other student in this school you wouldn't leave it in the hands of the head of house. What they did happened outside and affected the whole school, not to mention the work it's created for Professor Sprout. And that story!"

Dumbledore stopped and, with both hands on Snape's shoulders, turned him so they faced each other. "Severus, look me in the eyes."

Snape glanced up into Dumbledore's blue eyes, then down again. His gaze darted from place to place in the corridor, then fixed on the floor.

"Do not worry, Severus, I am not going to try to read you. But do you remember how many times you lied to me when you were a student? Admittedly it was usually to conceal what someone else had done to you, but they were nonetheless lies. And I did not punish you for them. So in the broader picture of things, I do not think I am being unfair. Consider it payback."

"Yes, sir."

"I now have you in a most difficult position. You cannot go back to your office and rooms as they are currently being used by Professor McGonagall to discipline students. You are therefore constrained to go back with me to the Hall and get some of that wonderful food that you have not had a bite of yet. And you will sit with me in McGonagall's seat and not have to talk to Professor Lockhart all evening."

Snape agreed and went with Dumbledore to the feast. The only bad moment was when McGonagall returned and informed him that the boys were eating supper…

"In my office! You left those two hooligans alone in my office unsupervised!" Snape rose to go, but Dumbledore pushed him firmly back into the chair.

"You have to learn not to be so paranoid, Severus. Have some custard. It really is quite good."

xxxxxxxxxx

Though he would never admit it to anyone, Snape had a certain respect for Molly Weasley, a woman he'd met on very rare occasions. She was the sister of the Prewett brothers who'd been murdered during the time Snape was a Death Eater, and despite the fact that he had nothing to do with their deaths, Snape always felt guilty about it. More importantly, Molly was ready to do something that few others had the courage or stamina to do – discipline her sons. It was a Herculean task, especially where Fred and George were concerned, but she never gave up.

That next morning, Snape had cause to bless Molly Weasley, for she sent her youngest son a Howler. "RONALD WEASLEY!" it thundered across the Great Hall at breakfast, silencing all conversation as heads snapped around to listen to Weasley's mother telling him he should be expelled, he had shamed the entire family, and he would be brought straight home if he put another toe out of line.

_Thank goodness she sees the situation clearly. Too bad there's no one to send a Howler to Potter. Maybe I could speak to that uncle of his._

Then, since the week was half gone and there was no extra day for interviews with new students, it was time to begin classes.

At lunch Snape noticed that Professor Sprout glared down the table from time to time at Lockhart. Lockhart was explaining how he managed to rid a Brazilian village of bewitched marsupial anteaters, but Snape finessed the conversation around to the Whomping Willow.

"Professor Sprout was most fortunate that I happened to be here to assist here with that fine specimen of a tree. I'm sure she's quite competent with her subject matter, vegetables and all, but a willow of that sort needs a specialist's care. Luckily I happened to have some experience with…"

Snape was thinking of a way to rent out Lockhart's services to people with chronic insomnia when he remembered – "Excuse me, Professor. I'm sorry I have to run, but I have interviews with some of my students before afternoon classes."

One student actually, Draco Malfoy, who was waiting outside Snape's office. He was there to show Snape the results of his summer homework, which was to create a spell to permit one to have a conversation that couldn't be overheard. Snape didn't expect him to have the spell, and he didn't, but he'd grasped the concept that silencing spells didn't create silence. Rather they targeted specific sound frequencies and either masked or augmented them. Snape gave the boy some pointers on how to proceed with the task.

"Sir," said Draco, when they were through, "could you teach me to defend myself?"

"Your Defense against the Dark Arts teacher is Professor Lockhart."

"I don't mean that, sir. I mean defend myself. Father says you used to be a defensive combat instructor for…"

"I don't discuss certain periods in my past, and I'd prefer you didn't either. What makes you think you're going to need self defense?"

"Well I don't know that I'm going to need it, but if you wait until you need it, it's too late, isn't it?"

"Good point. All right, I'll consider it if you accept that it isn't all magic. The first thing you'll have to learn to do is fall."

"Fall? Fall down? What would I want to fall down for?"

"If you don't know how to do a diving forward roll, you may not have the chance to get your spell off. You think about it, Malfoy, and let me know."

And then there was the news about Lockhart's pixie class. Snape was not among the lucky few to have a free hour that afternoon. Those who did regaled the others with their account of how Lockhart had been driven ignominiously from his own classroom, which now looked as if a bomb had exploded inside it. Kettleburn and Flitwick howled with laughter as they repeated the incantation _Peskipiksi Pesternomi_ to the delight of all listeners.

"Where are the pixies now?" asked Snape.

"About half a dozen broke through the windows and are being rounded up outside. A couple of students got the rest," answered Kettleburn.

"And which students might those have been?"

"Harry Potter. And Weasley and Granger, I understand."

_My money says you should've named the Granger girl first. I'll wager Potter had a lot less to do with it._

On his way back to his rooms to get ready for supper, Snape ran into Marcus Flint, the captain of Slytherin's Quidditch team. "Sir. Begging your pardon, sir. Could I have a word with you for just a minute. Something's come up."

"Certainly, Flint. Come on in. Is this about you or the team?"

"Team, sir. We got a chance to get something good for the team, but there's tit for tat involved."

"All right, what's the good?"

Flint held out a broomstick. Even Snape, who had about as little experience with brooms as was possible for an adult wizard, recognized the quality. It was sleek, streamlined, and obviously fast. "Nimbus 2001, sir, seven of them. Just out last month and a present to every team member. We could sure use them."

"I heartily agree. What's the catch?"

"They're from Malfoy's father. Draco's to be the new Seeker."

Snape sat on the edge of his desk to consider. "I see. On the one hand, Mr. Malfoy is on the Board of Governors of the School, and the team gets new brooms. Of course, Mr. Malfoy was in Slytherin, and it's not unusual for former house members to present gifts. In and of itself, that's not the problem. The problem is the other hand. It's odd that the gift would be directly connected to Draco's becoming Seeker. Mr. Malfoy is usually more subtle than that, and he would have come to me."

"I'm not sure how it's happened, sir. I got the feeling Draco told his dad that he already was Seeker, and his dad gave the brooms as a thank you. So it's Draco sort of controls the brooms. We could sure use them."

"But not at the expense of a good Seeker. Who else is in line for the position?"

"That's it. No one. Draco's good on a broom, he's quick, and he's hungry. He really is the best shot we got. It just doesn't look good. And Draco, well he can get cocky, if you get me."

"Got you. The insufferable arrogance of the rich. Look, Flint, why don't you make him try out? Even if no one else shows. Tell him if he can't make the grade then you or Derrick'll be Seeker, and brooms be damned. You know he'll make it, and I know he'll make it, but he doesn't have to know. Sound good?"

"Cracker Jack, sir. We'll have to train him up. Wood's booked the pitch solid. No one else's got a shot before next month, he got in so fast."

Snape reached for a small parchment roll. "Here. If Malfoy is satisfactory, take this to the pitch on Saturday. It gives you permission to use it together with Wood. It's a large area. Just keep out of each other's way."

"Thank you, sir. For this and for the advice."

On Friday Flint informed Snape that Malfoy had, indeed, been accepted on the Slytherin Quidditch team as the new Seeker.

xxxxxxxxxx

"And what right did you have to take the pitch away from Gryffindor when it was already booked?"

Snape was taken aback at McGonagall's ire. "I didn't take it away. I allowed it to be used at the same time."

"Wood booked it in advance!"

"Wood booked it for four weekends in a row! You can't expect that no one else can train until October. Talk to Flitwick. Talk to Sprout. I'm sure they're not happy either."

"You're just afraid that we're finally going to take that cup away from you this year."

"I am afraid of a lot of things in this world, Minerva McGonagall, but that is not one of them."

The two professors glared at each other for a moment, then a spirit of Puckishness entered Snape. "I understand that rather than train at the same time, your team simply abandoned the pitch. Walked away. Gave up. Surrendered without a fight. Starting with your Seeker."

"Weasley was spitting up slugs. He needed help."

"I sympathize. Not a pleasant experience. But Weasley is not on your team. And Granger was there. And what's-his-name – Creevey – was there. There were others to help him. No, your Seeker just walked away from his team mates. If anyone wins the cup this year, it will be Slytherin."

"I will see you eat those words, Severus Snape, if it's the last thing I do!"

xxxxxxxxxx

By October it was easy to see that Lockhart had alienated the entire faculty, except perhaps for Filch since Snape could find no one who'd ever heard Lockhart claim to be good at janitorial work. Snape still had to sit next to the man at meals, and had started refining sleeping and paralyzing draughts, and begun to practice using an Amazonian blow dart.

Malfoy was turning out to be better at hand-to-hand combat than at spell construction. At first he balked at learning the physical techniques until Snape challenged him to a personal duel by the lake during supper. Alone and unwatched, Snape allowed Malfoy any spell he could think of, while Snape promised not to hit Malfoy at all, and use only one defensive spell to every two of Malfoy's attacks. After ten minutes, the boy was ready to learn anything Snape could teach him.

This physical self defense had always been a strain for Snape to teach, since he had to analyze, for the instruction of others, body movements that for him were instinctive and adapt the analysis to fit uniquely different students. Then, while eager, Malfoy was not remotely athletic off a broom. Still, they slowly progressed, and it quickly became clear that Draco was immensely pleased to be learning something Lucius had not learned in his youth.

After much serious thought, Snape also sought out Dumbledore during the first week of October. Together in the quiet period before supper one evening, they walked down the hill and into the edge of the forest where the trees would frustrate listening spells.

"I think you were wrong about me," Snape said after a moment of silence.

"How so?"

"The first time I lied to you, when I told you we were just talking about summer vacation, you should have stopped me."

"Ah, yes. That little fight Professor McGonagall prevented between you and the Gang of Four. As I recall, you were restricted to your dormitories."

"It wasn't enough."

"What was I to do? I could not prove you were lying. I could not even tell that you were lying, and that disturbed me, I assure you. The only reason I knew it, was because Professor McGonagall witnessed the confrontation."

"You should have forced me to show you the truth. When you know you can get away with something, it tempts you to break more rules. It makes you arrogant."

"We are talking about Harry Potter, are we not?"

"I don't think you should let him lie to you and go unpunished. Or at least let him know that you know. Don't let him think he can deceive you."

"Severus, we do what we can, but we cannot see the future. Sometimes being too strict is not the answer. What would have happened to you if in school I had broken down those amazing defenses you have? You would never have been able to stand up to… him. And we very likely would not be here today to have this conversation."

"Are you honestly telling me that you're allowing Potter to break rules today in order to save the world tomorrow?"

"Well, not exactly. It might happen though. Especially since things have changed somewhat since last year. The boy needs to be strong, not timid. He has his special gifts, just as you have yours, and they must not be weakened in the exercise of misguided strictness."

"He is going to continue lying to you."

"As you did. But in the end you came around. And the strengths you had when you finally did come around served us well."

"I still don't agree with you."

"Then it is fortunate that I am the Headmaster, and not you. The boy has a good heart. He will not stray too far from what is right."

"Perhaps, Professor. I still think events could prove you wrong."


	38. Chapter 38 – The Heir of Slytherin

**A Tiny Bit about Dueling: The Heir of Slytherin**

_Halloween, Saturday, October 31, 1992 (two days before the first quarter)_

Snape hated Halloween. More than anything, it was for him the anniversary of Lily Evan's death. The fact that he had to make a public appearance at a major feast and pretend to be enjoying it made it worse, although it did usually keep him from thinking too much about the Astronomy Tower. The year before hadn't been so bad in terms of memories since everyone ended up dealing with a troll, and Snape was mauled by a three-headed dog, which tends to distract one's attention. This year was more normal.

It was something, at least, to note that young Potter and his friends were not at the feast. Last year he'd been new and unsure of himself. This year, it appeared, he was sufficiently at ease at Hogwarts to be able to absent himself from the gathering without feeling like he was doing something wrong. For the first time, Snape actually felt some sympathy for the boy. After all, it must be equally difficult for him to have the whole school celebrating on the anniversary of his parents' deaths. Luckily, he had friends for moral support.

As they left the Great Hall at the end of the feast, Snape and the other teachers noticed that student radar had detected a disturbance upstairs. Even the Hufflepuff and Slytherin students were hurrying upwards, away from their dormitories. Since this could signal a fight, the teachers ran for the stairs, too, as quickly as they could go.

Snape reached the second floor with the other teachers in time to hear Malfoy's voice ring out, "Enemies of the Heir, beware! You'll be next, mudbloods!" Then Filch's voice soared above the babble, screaming that his cat had been murdered.

On the wall, written in red letters that might be blood, were the words: _THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS HAS BEEN OPENED. ENEMIES OF THE HEIR, BEWARE_.

Dumbledore swept through the crowd to where Mrs. Norris indeed hung by her tail from a torch bracket. By then Snape was near enough to see that the students directly in front of the stiff body of the cat were Potter and his two friends. _What are they doing here?_

Dumbledore was gathering Filch and the three students to go to his office when Lockhart appeared. "My office is nearest, Headmaster – just upstairs – please feel free –"

"Thank you, Gilderoy," responded Dumbledore, and followed Lockhart with Filch, Potter, Weasley, and Granger. McGonagall went, too, since the students were in her house.

Suddenly, Dumbledore turned to catch Snape's eye. With a slight smile, he lifted a finger and beckoned Snape to follow as well. _This must have something to do with our conversation. We'll see now just exactly how truthful Potter is._

Inside Lockhart's office, Snape stayed in the background. Filch sobbed like a parent for a dead child as Dumbledore examined the cat and Lockhart babbled about how Mrs. Norris had been killed and all the things he might have done to save her if he'd been there. No one paid any attention to him.

Then Dumbledore calmly informed them that the cat was not dead. "She has been Petrified, but how, I cannot say…"

This led to Filch accusing Potter, Potter insisting on his innocence, and the startling revelation that Filch was a Squib who subscribed to a Kwikspell course. Snape and McGonagall glanced at each other. _I really did not need to know all of this._

Meanwhile, Dumbledore did and said nothing. Snape finally couldn't contain himself any further.

"If I might speak, Headmaster. Potter and his friends may have simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time, but we do have a set of suspicious circumstances here. Why was he in the upstairs corridor at all? Why wasn't he at the Halloween feast?"

Expecting Potter to talk about his parents, Snape was astonished to have all three students burst into a simultaneous description of Sir Nicholas de Mimsy-Porpington's deathday party. He was now genuinely curious.

"But why not join the feast afterward? Why go up to that corridor?"

And then Potter began his lies. "Because – because – because we were tired and wanted to go to bed."

Snape glanced over at Dumbledore in barely concealed triumph, then looked quickly at all three students. Weasley and Granger were nervous. _Probably wondering what Potter will say next._ "Without any supper?" he asked. "I didn't think ghosts provided food fit for living people at their parties."

"We weren't hungry," said Weasley, a statement betrayed by the unmistakable look of near starvation on his face.

Realizing he could tease McGonagall over the Quidditch flap, and trying to keep a straight face, Snape said, "I suggest, Headmaster, that Potter is not being entirely truthful. It might be a good idea if he were deprived of certain privileges until he is ready to tell us the whole story. I personally feel he should be taken off the Gryffindor Quidditch team until he is ready to be honest."

McGonagall's eyes narrowed dangerously. "Really, Severus, I see no reason to stop the boy playing Quidditch. This cat wasn't hit over the head with a broomstick. There is no evidence at all that Potter has done anything wrong."

Dumbledore turned his gaze from the students to the squabbling teachers. "Innocent until proven guilty, Severus." He then suggested to the still agitated Filch that Mrs. Norris could be cured as soon as Professor Sprout's mandrakes matured and a Restorative Draught was prepared.

"I'll make it," Lockhart interjected, unable to resist stepping into the line of fire. "I must have done it a hundred times. I could whip up a Mandrake Restorative Draught in my sleep..."

Snape turned to him with icy contempt. "Excuse me, but I believe I am the Potions master at this school."

Seeing imminent battle between all three professors, Dumbledore wisely dismissed the students back to their dormitories. Filch left after them.

As soon as the children were out of the office, McGonagall ignored Snape and Quidditch and turned to Dumbledore. "Do you think it's true about the Chamber?" she asked, and her voice sounded worried.

"I do not know, Minerva," Dumbledore answered. "I would think it more likely a prank were it not for the cat."

"What's the Chamber of Secrets?" asked Snape, and noted the look of relief on Lockhart's face. _Happy that he didn't have to be the one that asked._

"It is a hidden chamber supposedly created by Salazar Slytherin before he left Hogwarts. Legend says it contains a monster. No one has ever been able to locate it."

"Then it could be a hoax."

"Oh no, Severus," McGonagall whispered. "It was opened at least once before, in my seventh year. A muggle-born girl was killed."

Lockhart was clearly drinking all of this in. "Ah, the Chamber of Secrets. I've thought before that I should put my sleuthing talents to good use by coming here and discovering it. I've done similar things, most recently the hidden caves of Samarkand…"

"Thank you for your hospitality, Gilderoy. I am getting rather tired now, and shall wish you good night. Pleasant dreams. And to you also Minerva. Severus."

Snape and McGonagall left with Dumbledore after wishing Lockhart good night. As Snape reached the stairs down to the entrance hall, Dumbledore stopped him. "Would you come up to my office for a moment, Severus?"

"This will not take long," continued Dumbledore as they entered the office from the griffin stairway, "I merely wanted to give you a 'heads up' on this Chamber of Secrets business. Something you really need to know."

"And that is…, Headmaster?"

"A couple of other students you know were at Hogwarts when the Chamber of Secrets was opened the last time. Hagrid was one."

"Hagrid was a student here? I didn't know that."

"A long story. Perhaps he will tell it to you sometime."

"And the other?"

"Tom Riddle."

Snape felt as if the room had suddenly turned cold. "Did he have something to do with it opening."

"I cannot prove it, but I believe so."

"He came back last year after the Philosopher's Stone, and now the Chamber of Secrets is open. Are they connected?"

"I do not know. But you, of all people, should be aware of what is happening. You stand to lose more than anyone if he returns. I understand he is unforgiving and has a long memory."

Snape returned to his rooms in a somber mood and had trouble sleeping that night.

Thus it was that November opened in a haze of unfocused anxiety. Only Gilderoy Lockhart seemed convinced that everything was not only explainable but under control. As an extra strain on already frayed nerves, the first half of November brought the year's first Quidditch match between Gryffindor and Slytherin.

Until Halloween night, Snape wasn't dreading this first match. Now, with the specter of the Dark Lord's return and the memory of the previous year's match, he was wondering if Potter would once again be attacked. This time he would be prepared. He even planned to bring a pair of binoculars to search the crowd with. Just in case.

The night before the match, Draco Malfoy sprang the next piece of information on Snape.

"My father's coming to watch my first game. He said to tell you that he looks forward to a little chat."

"And when exactly did he tell you this, Malfoy?"

"Last week. Sorry. I forgot to mention it."

Snape met Lucius Malfoy when the latter apparated to the Hogsmeade gate and escorted him onto the grounds. It was more than a decade since they'd last seen each other. The seven year difference in their ages that had once made the adolescent Snape the follower had become unimportant. Malfoy had grown more reserved and Snape more self-assured in the intervening years.

"Narcissa asks to be remembered to you. She holds a fondness, it seems."

"As do I. Tell her I think of all of you often."

"So tell me, how is this son of mine shaping up on the Quidditch field?"

"He has talent, at least in practice. We'll see today how it translates into open competition. I must admit I am a bit leery of his temper. He needs to keep it under control to focus more."

"Draco isn't one to let others walk over him. We've taught him to put himself forward and not take second place to anyone. He'll be fine. And just send this down to the kitchen," Malfoy added, referring to the house elf he'd brought to valet for him. "He knows what to do."

Snape presented Malfoy to the staff at lunch. Lucius was deferential to Dumbledore and respectful to his former teachers, principally McGonagall and Flitwick. He greeted Lockhart with the politeness due to the latter's fame, but without any invitation to familiarity. In sum, he was the perfect patrician.

Alone at a side table, the two reminisced for awhile, then allowed the conversation to touch on more recent events.

"The Ministry is actually conducting raids to find so-called 'dangerous' artifacts." Malfoy was almost, not quite, complaining. "Now take a family like ours. We have quite an extensive collection, really museum quality, of historical items and personal memorabilia. You would think that something of that intrinsic cultural value might be exempt from some of the new rules, but no. They must examine everything from the point of view of its potential harm in the hands of a psychopath. Hardly a responsible attitude, I'd say."

"I should probably check my own things as well. All very ordinary and commonplace, but one never knows what the Ministry will see as a threat."

After lunch the whole school made its way down the hill to the Quidditch pitch. There was a special electricity in the air since not only were Gryffindor and Slytherin particular rivals, it was generally known that the two Seekers, Potter and Malfoy, despised each other. The students were expecting action.

Snape settled next to Lucius Malfoy in one of the boxes and the game began. The Slytherin team shone on the new brooms, and Snape quietly asked Malfoy if he would mind meeting the team afterwards so that they could thank him for his generous gift. Malfoy agreed with well-bred condescension.

Then, suddenly, one of the bludgers began to misbehave. Instead of shooting around randomly, it seemed to target Potter almost exclusively. From a potentially painful nuisance, it had transformed into a dangerous missile. After a few passes, there was no mistake. The bludger was after Potter.

_This is like last year. Last year it was the Dark Lord working through Quirrell. Where is he now?_ Snape focused on the bludger to divert it with a counter spell and got the shock of his life. Nothing he could do had any effect on the bludger at all.

In disbelief, Snape concentrated all his mental energy on the ball. He didn't dare try to simply destroy the thing because it was flying in zigzag patterns around the fourteen players. There was too much risk of hurting one of the students. Instead he tried for the core of the ball itself.

What Snape touched in the center of the bludger was a power so strong that it threw him back like a physical blow. He tried again, and was tossed back again. No one was that strong. No wizard in the world had that kind of power, and Snape was now very afraid.

xxxxxxxxxx

Dumbledore had tea set out with biscuits and scones. He motioned Snape to sit and poured a cup, insisting that Snape relax for a few minutes before reporting on the afternoon's events.

"Has Lucius left yet? I do hope his visit was enjoyable." Dumbledore's inquiry was more than mere politeness.

"It would've been more so if Slytherin had won. He's with Draco now, touring the grounds and talking. Probably reviewing every teacher and student in the school. Draco will see him out to the gate. Is Potter's arm all right?"

"It will be. Madam Pomfrey is getting up a party to tar and feather Gilderoy Lockhart. I understand there is a waiting list. But the less said about that the better. Now, tell me what happened."

"There isn't a lot to tell." Snape said. "When the bludger went crazy, I thought about destroying it, but there was no way to get a clear shot. So I tried to countercurse it. I was slapped down and tossed back like a rank amateur. Closed out completely. Don't smile. That's never happened to me before. I mean never."

"You have never directly taken me on. Nor, despite last year's Quidditch match, have you ever directly taken on… You know, Severus, we are going to have to decide on something new to call him. I respect the fact that when I say his name it causes you pain, yet I cannot say something like 'You-Know-Who.' I long ago grew tired of the name Moriarty. Since it appears we are again going to be speaking of him regularly, we really have to resolve this."

"How about 'Riddle'?"

Dumbledore looked at Snape over the rim of his glasses. "Most interesting that you should suggest that. Take him back to his school days, before he began to acquire power. Do you know that when you were in school I worried that you might become like him?"

"I was never like him, sir!"

"At eleven, he was not like him either. Two boys from traumatic childhood situations – yours was actually worse than his – both interested in the Dark Arts, both gifted in unique yet similar ways, both with a, shall we say, unconventional moral compass… Oh you had us worried for a while."

"When did you stop worrying about me?"

"I have never stopped worrying about you. My worries simply changed their focus. It was, I believe, your second year, when you started stealing telescopes out of the Astronomy classroom. No boy interested in the Apollo moon shots was going to try to become a Dark Lord."

"I was interested long before my second year."

"Ah, but I did not know it because you were not stealing telescopes."

"Yes, that was for…" Snape stopped. He knew both of them remembered who that was for.

"Right," continued Dumbledore, "You have never directly taken either me or Riddle on. What you felt today with the bludger, would you expect to feel that if you were locked in a confrontation with me?"

Snape considered this question for a few moments, trying to recreate in his mind the exact sensation he'd felt when thrown back from the bludger. "No, I don't think so. It wasn't really like a very, very powerful wizard. It was something different. Something more alien."

"Did I understand that Lucius brought a house elf with him?"

"No. I mean, yes he did, but no that can't be it. Lucius wouldn't try to win a Quidditch game through magic. He'd expect Draco to do it through superior skill. And if Draco didn't, it would be between him and his father. Draco does a lot to try to please his father."

"But this force you felt. Could it have been a house elf?"

"I don't know. I know they're powerful, but I don't have any direct experience of one. You know, if that was a house elf, if anyone ever tries organizing them against us… we're in trouble."

The following morning was Sunday. Normally it was a day to relax and take things easy, especially for the teachers not assigned to supervisory duties. Today, however, there was a note under Snape's door asking him to come to the staff room before breakfast.

When they'd all crowded in, Dumbledore explained. "Last night a most unfortunate incident occurred. One of our first year Gryffindor students was discovered on the stairs petrified in the same manner that Mrs. Norris was attacked. He is in hospital now. We must all accept the fact that the message we received on Halloween was not a prank. The Chamber of Secrets has indeed been opened."

"Such a pity I wasn't there with the boy when it happened," piped up Lockhart. "I would have been able to – Ow!"

"I am sorry, Professor. Was that your foot? So crowded in here." Professor Sprout looked angelic as she smiled sympathetically up at Lockhart. On the way out she was quietly but warmly thanked by several teachers, Snape among them.

"So there really is a Chamber? I thought it was a myth."

"As did I until Halloween, Pomona." Snape nodded towards McGonagall. "Minerva knows as much as anyone, I'd guess. She was a student here the last time it was opened." Sprout immediately scurried after McGonagall to question her.

The next few weeks saw an upsurge of interest among the student body for any information about the history of the Chamber, defensive spells, protective potions, and all kinds of good luck charms. The teachers kept running across signs of, and trying to control, a thriving black market in bogus items, and poor Professor Flitwick was constantly fielding questions about amulets.

xxxxxxxxxx

_Thursday, December 10, 1992 (the day after the full moon)_

The afternoon lesson was with the Slytherin and Gryffindor second years. It was Snape's least favorite group since the bumbling incompetence they'd shown in their first year stayed with the class into their second. Class with them was an unending exercise in disaster prevention.

Snape was on edge more than usual since the class would be making a potion with a potential for being dangerous. Swelling Solutions were useful for examining things that in their natural state were too small to see clearly, but also tended to get splashed on careless students. The greatest concern was swallowing any of it, as that would swell the tongue and the muscles of the throat, a possibly fatal situation. Snape always had plenty of the antidote, Deflating Draught, around just in case.

The lesson was going about as expected, which meant that most of the students were doing a miserable job, when one of the potions on the Slytherin side of the room simply, well, exploded. Snape was luckily on the Gryffindor side checking Longbottom's potion when it happened, and wasn't hit by any of the messy solution, but the Slytherin students were showered with it.

Panic-stricken students were screaming and blundering around the room as noses, ear, lips, fingers, shoulders, began to swell. There was danger that in the pandemonium other cauldrons would tip over. Snape was on the Slytherin side instantly, pulling students away from the goo and trying to restore some calm. Typically, the Gryffindor students were laughing.

_There is no way the potion could have exploded on its own. Someone caused this deliberately_. "Silence! SILENCE!" Snape yelled over the chaos, and the Slytherins, used to his presence and voice, did in fact quiet down. "Anyone who has been splashed, come here for a Deflating Draught." As students lined up for a dose of the antidote, Snape glared at the Gryffindor students, whose continued mirth infuriated him. "When I find out who did this…"

The offending cauldron was Goyle's. After treating the last student, Snape walked over to it and with a ladle fished out what was obviously the remains of a Filibuster firework. Someone on the Gryffindor side had tossed it into the cauldron with the intention of harming Slytherin students.

Cold with anger, Snape swept the room with his gaze. Potter's face in particular caught his eye, for the poorly concealed smirk that tried to hide a glint of triumph. Looking directly at the guilty face, Snape said in a tone barely above a whisper, "If I ever find out who threw this, I shall make sure that person is expelled."

"Severus, Severus, calm down. You do not know it was him. You have no proof."

"You didn't see his face, Professor Dumbledore. I don't need more proof than that. He threw that firecracker into that cauldron with total disregard for the safety of other students."

"Really, Severus," McGonagall spoke for the first time. "It doesn't sound like Potter at all. I know he has a certain disregard for rules, but I've never known him to be malicious."

"Like you never knew his father to be malicious? Shall I entertain you some time with tales of the things he used to do when the teachers weren't watching?"

"Are we talking about James or about Harry?" Dumbledore watched both teachers with undisguised concern.

_Focus. Focus. This isn't about the past. It's about now._ "Headmaster, do you realize what would have happened if any of that liquid had gotten into a student's mouth? Have you ever seen a case of anaphylactic shock? We might very well have had a dead student on our hands. This was not a harmless prank. In all my years as a student and a teacher I have never witnessed such disdain for the safety of others. Not even Fred or George Weasley, not even Sirius Black, has ever done anything that callous. That boy is evil."

"Evil is a strong word."

"He needs to be disciplined."

"Do you have proof that it was his firecracker?"

"No."

"Did you or did any other witness see him throw it?"

"No."

"Then while I understand your being upset at what happened, I cannot discipline Potter. We do not know that he was the culprit."

Snape and McGonagall left Dumbledore's office. Snape felt sick, and it must have shown in his face.

"Are you going to be all right, Severus. It must have been horrendous."

"I have two students in hospital, Minerva. Pressure on the retinas may have affected Goyle's sight, and Zabini has a dislocated shoulder. Your precious charges were laughing about it."

"I'll speak to them all, right now before supper if I can. But I really don't think it could have been Potter."

A little less than a week later, McGonagall approached Snape about a completely different matter. Coming over to his place at supper Wednesday evening, she stood behind him and Lockhart and said, "Refresh my memory, Severus. Isn't it true that you used to teach defensive tactics to…"

"Minerva! That's really not something… Would you excuse us for a moment Professor?"

Taking McGonagall by the arm, Snape steered her into a corner. "What are you doing? Do you think I want that idiot knowing all about my past? It's bad enough that some of the students spread rumors. And where did you learn that anyway?"

"I have my sources. And I just wanted to put a bee in his bonnet. Do you know what he's asked Dumbledore? For permission to give dueling lessons. And he's looking for a sparring partner."

"Oh really?"

"Would you like a chance at him? One that he sets up himself? I've just been doing a bit of ground work for you, laddie. Setting out the bait, as it were. You've got to reel him in on your own."

Snape and McGonagall returned to their respective places. Lockhart was now all eager curiosity. "Teaching defensive tactics? Not as in personal combat, was it? I'm quite a dueler myself, national competition, you know."

"It was a long time ago, and on a very small scale. I doubt I'm in your league at all."

"Well then you really must help me out. The Headmaster has asked me to set up a little dueling instruction to arm the students in their own defense. I could use an assistant to help me demonstrate some of the moves and spells. I'd be very careful not to hurt you, of course. Wouldn't want to have to find a new Potions instructor now would we?"

"When would this take place?"

"Tomorrow evening after supper."

"Agreed. I'll assist you in the lesson."

For the rest of the evening, McGonagall and Kettleburn were making book with the other teachers on who would 'win' the next day. Odds were running seven to one against Lockhart by the time everyone went to bed.

The notices went up Thursday at noon, and by eight o'clock Thursday evening the Great Hall was packed. Lockhart had arranged for one side of the Hall to be set up like a stage and personally called to accompany Snape to the ground floor. Lockhart had chosen robes of a deep violet, but Snape eschewed robes completely, finding that they hampered his movements. In their place, he wore his usual black Victorian trousers and frock coat, which flattered his slender frame, yet didn't overemphasize the fact that he was two degrees to the wrong side of skinny.

The students parted for them, as the Red Sea parted for Moses. Far more to the point were the teachers, who lined the walls behind. _Who among them doesn't want to see Lockhart taken down a peg?_ Snape couldn't think of one.

Lockhart advanced to the center of the stage and raised his hand for silence. "Gather round, gather round! Can everyone see me? Can you all hear me? Excellent!" After a plug for his books, he continued, "Let me introduce my assistant, Professor Snape."

Snape stepped forward. The students were quiet, except for applause from Slytherin, in which the teachers joined.

Lockhart was now grinning from ear to ear. "He tells me he knows a tiny little bit about dueling himself and has sportingly agreed to help me with a short demonstration before we begin. Now, I don't want any of you youngsters to worry – you'll still have your Potions master when I'm through with him, never fear!"

Snape was concentrating on the upcoming exchange. _Lockhart will only give me one shot. After that, he'll back away as quickly as he can, so the one shot has to be good._ For some reason he was reminded of the fencing competition at the Barcelona Olympics that summer. _Olympic wizard dueling. That would be nice._

They faced each other on the stage, Snape nodding curtly and Lockhart giving an extravagant play-actor's bow. Then Snape stood with balanced ease as Lockhart noted proper stance and wand position, adding "Neither of us will be aiming to kill, of course."

_Despite both temptation and provocation_.

"One – two – three..."

There was no rule in competitive dueling that forbade casting two spells simultaneously. Snape's wand came down almost lazily, with classic extension, as he called out, "_Expelliarmus_!" while at the same time nonverbally casting a Rikhno spell. The results were everything McGonagall could have wished for and more.

Flame seemed to shoot from Snape's wand as Lockhart was lifted and flung backwards off the stage, to hit the wall behind him and slump clumsily to the floor. His wand went almost straight up in the air and fell back among the students. The beauty of it was that both spells could have been blocked easily with one simple shield.

Slytherin erupted in cheers, and so did the teachers. "Oh, well done!" cried Pomfrey, and Sprout was positively bouncing.

Snape waited calmly as Lockhart staggered to his feet, his hair disheveled and clothing disarrayed for the first time since his arrival at Hogwarts. "Well, there you have it," he said, as he returned unsteadily to the stage. "That… was a Disarming Charm – as you see, I've lost my wand – ah, thank you, Miss Brown." He was eyeing Snape warily now, as if conscious for the first time that he may have seriously underestimated an opponent.

Snape returned the stare without trepidation. _This oaf couldn't read the back of a breakfast cereal box._

"Yes, an excellent idea to show them that, Professor Snape, but if you don't mind my saying so, it was very obvious…"

Snape let him babble, then gently dropped his wand arm into dueling position again and raised his eyebrows in invitation. Lockhart's reaction was immediate.

"Enough demonstrating! I'm going to come amongst you now and put you all into pairs. Professor Snape, if you'd like to help me..."

Snape moved quickly. It was the perfect opportunity to test Malfoy's progress and to gauge Potter's abilities at the same time. Potter was automatically looking at his friend Weasley, but stepping lightly down from the platform, Snape intervened.

"Time to split up the 'dream team,' I think," he said, though he doubted the boys would understand the reference. "Mr. Malfoy, come over here. Let's see what you make of the famous Potter."

"Face your partners and bow!" called Lockhart. _As if this was a dance. He can't ever have fought a real battle, not the way he behaves._

Lockhart cautioned the students to try disarming each other only and began, "One… two… three..."

Malfoy got his spell off before the count was finished, but though he hit Potter, Potter was not disarmed. He retaliated not with a Disarming Charm, but with a Rictusempra that brought Malfoy to his knees choking with laughter. It brought back unpleasant memories for Snape. _Better here than in Herbology next to the flesh-eating plants._

Snape started forward to intervene, since they were only supposed to use disarming spells, when Malfoy from his doubled up position on the floor managed to gasp, _"Tarantallegra!"_ and the next instant Potter was hopping around like a mad Irishman doing a jig.

Snape struggled to hold back laughter as Lockhart started frantically screaming "Stop! Stop!" _Gad, this reminds me of me and his father. I wonder if we looked that silly while we were hexing each other._

Realizing that Lockhart was incapable of handling the situation, Snape stepped forward and cried out _"Finite Incantatem!"_ to the whole group. All combat stopped as the spells dissipated, all except for the fight between Granger and Bulstrode that had nothing to do with magic.

After establishing a semblance of order, Lockhart said, "I think I'd better teach you how to block unfriendly spells." He glanced over at Snape, seemed to remember the spells he'd not blocked before, and hurriedly continued, "Let's have a volunteer pair – Longbottom and Finch-Fletchley, how about you..."

That did not suit Snape, who now wanted to see more of what Malfoy and Potter were capable of. "A bad idea, Professor Lockhart. Longbottom causes devastation with the simplest spells. We'll be sending what's left of Finch-Fletchley up to the hospital wing in a matchbox. How about Malfoy and Potter?"

Lockhart agreed, and they moved the action to the center of the Hall, clearing away the students from behind the two duelists in case of wild shots. Lockhart started to show Potter a defensive move, but was so nervous he dropped his wand. Snape closed his eyes and turned away, his hand over his mouth. When he looked again, the other teachers were laughing, too.

Bending down to Malfoy's ear, Snape whispered, "This time wait until three. You jump the count, you're disqualified. If Potter actually does what Lockhart tells him, you'll win easily. Send him something to block, but not too powerful."

The boys exchanged nods and glares, and Lockhart counted three. This time Malfoy waited, but was ready with a spell well before Potter. Shouting, _"Serpensortia!"_ he shot a long black snake from his wand that thudded onto the floor of the Hall and glided threateningly toward Potter. Students screamed and fell back, and Potter froze on the spot as the snake raised its head to strike.

Snape started forward. "Don't move, Potter," he said, "I'll get rid of it…"

Lockhart beat him to it. "Allow me!" he shouted, and promptly shot the snake into the air. When it came down it was hissing wildly, striking the air at random and slithering toward Finch-Fletchley.

Snape started forward again, then froze as completely as Potter had frozen facing the snake the first time. Potter was advancing on the snake, focused and radiating a menacing authority, and he was talking to the creature. Talking to it in its own language. Hissing commands that the snake heeded, for it turned to him and bowed forward on the floor in submission.

_This isn't happening. This can't be happening. Parseltongue is an hereditary gift. James didn't have it. Lily didn't have it. I know of only one wizard of our age…_ Forcing himself to remember there was still a dangerous snake in the Hall, forcing himself to move forward, Snape raised his wand and destroyed the viper in a puff of black smoke. The shocked witnesses were beginning to mutter ominously, and Snape realized he was watching Potter's movements as if mesmerized.

Potter's friend Weasley grabbed him by the robes, and he and Granger pushed Potter out of the Hall.

McGonagall hurried over to Snape. "What just hap…" she started.

"I have to talk to Dumbledore," was Snape's response.

Dumbledore sat quietly at his desk as Snape paced the office in undisguised agitation.

"He's a Parselmouth! A Parselmouth! How can that happen? He isn't a descendant of Slytherin, is he? James wasn't a Parselmouth. Not that anyone knew. Lily certainly wasn't. Does it skip generations? That would mean James…"

"You really do have to try to calm yourself, Severus. This is not healthy."

"Healthy! We may be harboring a second Dark Lord here at Hogwarts and my pacing isn't healthy?"

"Now I really must insist that you sit down, Severus. Harry Potter is no second Dark Lord, and you are working yourself into an apoplexy. Sit… That is better. Now, I need to tell you a story. It is a story about three boys, and I do not know the end of it yet, but I know enough to get started.

"Each of these boys was born into a different generation in a different part of England, but against all odds they have met and know each other. Their lives are now entwined. They were all dark-haired and thin, all with lonely, isolated childhoods, all viewing the world as a hostile force against which they had to fight for survival. All with unique gifts of power and defense. All with, as I have mentioned before, a rather unconventional moral compass."

Snape shook his head. "I'm not sure this is a story about three boys. I think it's far more likely to be about just two."

"And yet the third boy is the catalyst that brought the other two together."

"I'm not proud of that. And what has this got to do with Potter being a Parselmouth?"

Dumbledore paused and considered Snape for a long moment. Snape refused to meet his eyes and ended up staring out a narrow window. Finally Dumbledore spoke. "Which is it that frightens you more? Being like Riddle or being like Potter?"

"I'm not frightened."

"No of course not. You just came up to pace a hole in my carpet because you are so contented with life. But I have still not resolved your first question. Here it is. I do not think that Potter was born a Parselmouth. I think he became a Parselmouth when he and Riddle touched each other eleven years ago. I have no details. Does that help?"

Snape still wouldn't look at Dumbledore, but the answer merited reflection. "Yes," he replied. "It does. I should probably go now. It's getting late."

"Very well. Severus, I know that you do not want to talk about this, yet at some point we shall have to. I am fairly clear about the roles of two of the boys, but the role of the third is a mystery to me. I know he will have a role, though, and I should very much like to find out what it is. Good night, Severus."

"Good night, Headmaster."

Hagrid dropped by the next morning before breakfast. "Dumbledore says I need to check on ya."

"Dumbledore is wrong. I don't need checking."

"That's what I told him. Ya don't need checking. So I'll just sit here for a few minutes so 's I can tell him I checked."

After a moment, Snape spoke. "Hagrid, how well do you know Potter?"

"'Bout as well as any. Better'n most."

"Do you see any resemblance between him… and…"

"Naw. Not a bit of it. You were always so independent. Never wanted t' share a plan, never wanted help. Worst thing ever happened t' you was when ya was forced to admit ya couldn't handle it by yerself, that ya needed someone t' back ya up. Potter now, he wants t' share, wants friends, hates the idea of being alone. He's eager for support and plays best on a team. Night and day the two of ya are in that respect."

"Did you know Tom Riddle?"

"I did. Not someone I want t' talk about. But you ain't a bit like him either. Ya got too much sense of balance. Someone tips ya into a stand of Venus Flytraps, ya sets bats on him. Riddle now, he'd kill the person. No sense of proportion. No balance. You draws lines and sticks to limits. Riddle, he didn't know the meaning of limits."

Hagrid stood and stretched. "Well, I got t' go now. I'll tell Dumbledore I looked in, but ya didn't need no checking. See ya at breakfast."

"At breakfast, Hagrid."

As Snape walked through the entrance hall to breakfast, he noticed it was snowing. Not a gentle, sifting snow, but a dark swirling storm, almost a blizzard. That meant the students would be stuck inside most of the day, which frequently meant trouble.

Professor Sprout was announcing that all Herbology classes were canceled. _Lucky her. She has an excuse to cancel class. What kind of excuse could I come up with? We're too high to flood…_

The best thing about breakfast that morning was that Lockhart was not talking. He kept glancing at Snape as if he were trying to complete an assessment, and a couple of times he opened his mouth, but he never actually said anything. _Maybe I should toss him against a wall more often._

Morning classes were normal, except that there was an inordinate amount of whispering going on in the icy Potions classroom. From what Snape could catch, it was more about Potter and the snake than it was about the dueling. Not at all surprising, under the circumstances. Snape would be doing the same thing in their place.

Just before lunch time, Snape was once again making his way to the Great Hall when he was stopped by a flustered McGonagall, who pulled him toward one wall and away from the students.

"It's happened again," she whispered fiercely. "Another student's been petrified. And Sir Nicholas, too!"

"Who?"

"The Hufflepuff boy, Finch-Fletchley. The one the snake almost bit last evening. The one who found him was Potter. He's up with Dumbledore now."

"And Sir Nicholas?"

"His aura's gone out. Dark as coal."

"Where?"

"Fifth floor corridor."

Hagrid was crossing the hall and saw the two talking. "Are you telling him about Justin?" he asked McGonagall.

"When did you hear?" McGonagall asked.

"'Bout an hour ago. I been up t' Dumbledore's office. Harry's all right. Dumbledore knows he didn't do it."

"Hagrid," said Snape quietly. "Why do you have a dead rooster in your hand?"

"Oh, that. Somewhat's been killing them. This is the second. I need permission t' put a spell around the coop t' keep off the varmints."

Snape never ignored the warning bells. _Last year it was dead unicorns. Now it's dead roosters. This means something, but what?_ "I'm going up to the hospital wing to talk to Madam Pomfrey."

"What about lunch?"

"I'm not hungry."

Dumbledore was there as well, talking with Madam Pomfrey about the four patients. "Ah, Severus. I was thinking of interrupting your lunch, but you seem to have read my mind. What do you think of all of this?"

"I wouldn't want to steal Professor Lockhart's glory. He is, after all, the Dark Arts instructor."

Dumbledore stared down his glasses. "Do not be cheeky, Master Snape. Come, look at them. What could have done this?"

There were no marks on the bodies, just straightforward paralysis. Dumbledore pointed out the slight hardening of tissue as well as the stiffening. "It seems to be a mild form of Petrification. I am not familiar with it."

"Gorgons and cockatrices petrify, but it's a full petrification, nothing like this." The warning bells rang in Snape's head again. "Did Hagrid tell you about the roosters?"

"Yes, he did. Do you think it is connected?"

"Basilisks die when they hear roosters crow. But that would mean a person helping the basilisk. And in any case, basilisks kill. They don't paralyze or petrify."

"Is there anything such a creature would not affect?"

"Weasels. Weasels are immune to basilisks, and have been known to kill small ones."

"Come to my office again, Severus. I need to talk to you."

Once up in the Headmaster's tower office, Dumbledore wasted no time. "Have you ever summoned a patronus?"

"No. I've never tried. I'm not sure I could."

"Why not?"

"You need to concentrate on a good memory. A very strong good memory. I have a little trouble coming up with one."

"I'd appreciate it if you would start working on it. It takes a while to develop the skill, and the time may be coming when you will need one."

"Professor, what happened the last time the Chamber was opened? McGonagall said a muggle-born girl died. What did she die of?"

"That is the problem. She did not die 'of' anything. She simply died. The results were a little like an Unforgivable Curse. No marks, no trauma, just dead."

"That sounds more like a basilisk. Why are our victims being petrified? And not full stone petrification either, but this halfway state that I've never heard of?"

"I cannot answer that. I do not know. But the idea that a person may be involved, killing roosters to protect this monster, that disturbs me greatly, especially in light of what happened last year. I really would like you to work on summoning a patronus. If you need my help or advice, let me know."

"Yes, Professor."

That afternoon's Potions was with the Slytherin and Gryffindor second years. Potter stayed in a corner with Weasley and Granger while the rest of the class gave them a wide berth. Snape found himself constantly glancing at the boy, wondering what else he might be capable of besides Parseltongue, and trying to see if there was anything in him that reminded Snape of either the Dark Lord or himself. _Get a grip on yourself. You're losing your concentration on this._

That evening after supper, Snape settled in his small room to consider the patronus problem. A powerful memory of something positive, something good, something happy. Nothing came. There were good memories, but either they were weak, or they were tainted with an inseparable sorrow and guilt. Nothing. Nothing to summon a patronus with.

Snape went to bed and was trying to drift off to sleep when one powerful, unspoiled memory did surface. He was a teenager in Lancashire with his grandmother, Nana. They were kneeling beside a dying muggle boy, a boy who'd fallen from a roof. Nana gripped him and told him, 'You have the gift! Use it.' And he looked into the boy's unconscious eyes and saw the ruptured spleen, the spleen that Nana could witch to health again with her healing powers.

_I saved a life._ Snape ran it through his mind over and over again. Was there anything that sullied it, that stole its cleanness? And there wasn't. Not even Nana's death at the hands of a muggle mob, because now he knew they'd been under an Imperious curse.

Snape made no attempt to summon a patronus that night. He needed to bring back the memory, to relive it and conjure up all the feelings he'd had at that moment. When the memory was full-grown and vital inside him, then he could try the summoning.

An underlying doubt still gnawed at him. _Why is Dumbledore so sure I'll need this?_

The Christmas break started out very quietly, for most of the students were only too glad to leave Hogwarts for a couple of weeks. Having little work and few duties, Snape spent a lot of time by the lake, hidden from the Castle, trying the patronus charm.

At first it didn't work at all, and he was afraid that his best memory was still not good enough. The relief he felt the morning he produced his first small, wispy Patronus was immense. _It's only a matter of time, now._

Christmas Eve was the turning point. Snape worked all afternoon and into the evening. The sun had set, it was time for supper, he was cold and hungry. His little wisps of cloud were growing larger and stronger, and beginning to take shape.

Then, just as he told himself it was finished for the day, just as he extended his wand and cried, _"Expecto Patronum"_ for the last time, it happened. The cloudy patronus assume a shape, shadowy and indistinct, yet nonetheless an animal he could identify.

_I wonder why that one._ Snape returned to the Castle for supper in a pensive mood.

"Fawkes?" said Dumbledore that evening in the Great Hall as they lingered after supper. The Hall was so empty of students that there was no trouble finding a spot to speak privately over an after-dinner glass of port. "Are you sure? I was not certain it would be possible."

"I don't know why not. It's not uncommon. I'm still trying to determine what it means."

"Loyalty, of course. It's one of the greatest symbols of faith and trust we have."

"Really?" Snape was puzzled, but the Hall was warm, and he was comfortable. There were worse ways to spend Christmas Eve than debating patronuses. "I was thinking more of cleverness, intelligence, resourcefulness…"

"Well there is that, too, but above all, loyalty. It is an excellent sign."

Snape took a sip of the port before he said, "And then, of course, the color."

Dumbledore looked puzzled so, a little embarrassed, he added, "The red hair, you know."

"Yes, indeed. She had red hair. I fear that is something that you would be more likely to think of than I. There is also the element of renewal, regeneration…"

"I'm afraid you've lost me there, sir."

"What is there more obvious about a phoenix than its death and rebirth? That should be the first thing…"

Snape laughed, something he did so rarely that Dumbledore stopped in mid-sentence. "No, sir. Not Fawkes. A fox – f-o-x – little wild hunting dog, you know. Tally-ho and all that."

It was Dumbledore's turn to laugh. "We have been talking at cross purposes, have we not? Still, I wonder… might there be something to the fact that your patronus's name is a homonym for my phoenix? As if the reality were hiding, knowable only to those who had the code. A little like you eleven years ago, concealing your true loyalty behind a guise of cleverness. Fawkes the Fox. Now I see what you mean about the red hair, too. It is closer to her color."

"So what can we say about foxes? What does this patronus mean for me?"

Dumbledore thought for a moment. "Able to live almost anywhere, tend to be nocturnal, solitary hunters, wide variety of hunting techniques adapted to prey, very cat-like, often blamed for the depredations of weasels and polecats, hunted for sport, passionately defended by animal-rights types… what have I left out?"

"So I'm doomed to be alone, survive by my own cleverness, be hunted mercilessly for things I didn't do, and be defended (probably posthumously) by a group of fanatic nut-cases."

"All the while being secretly faithful, but having your loyalty known only to those who have the code."

"I'll take it. Pass the port."

Later that evening, in his own rooms preparing for bed, Snape thought again about his patronus, his animal avatar.

_Foxes are clever and adaptable. I'll have to check, but I think they're monogamous, so the loyalty aspect is there. They're an icon of sport hunting, but also the epitome of destructive pillage. I wonder if Dumbledore is right about the fox/Fawkes connection. That would be interesting._

He went to sleep and dreamt of foxes. He also dreamt of Lily and the Apollo moon shots, but wasn't sure when he woke if the dreams were connected or not.

Christmas Day was quiet and peaceful. Snape spent a little time in the afternoon working on his new patronus, then played cribbage with Flitwick. After supper he settled down to read another of his mysteries. He'd gotten to the fourth book and was trying to work out how a corpse still in _rigor mortis_ would have a loose knee when there was a preemptory knock at the door.

It was Filch. "Madam Pomfrey needs you in the hospital right away."

Since Filch either didn't have or refused to divulge any other information, Snape followed him out immediately. Filch left him in the entrance hall. _At least I wasn't already asleep._

Madam Pomfrey met Snape at the door to the hospital wing. "It's the Granger girl," she said quietly.

"Another petrification? Shouldn't you have sent for McGonagall? It's her house."

"Not petrification. A hex."

Snape started to smile. "Isn't that for Gilde…" he began, but thought the better of it as Pomfrey's face turned murderous.

They entered the hospital dormitory where Granger was sitting on the bed. She was probably dejected, though it was hard to tell since she had the face, paws, and tail of a cat. She looked up at the sound of footsteps, then quickly back down again when she realized who it was.

"Good evening, Miss Granger."

"Good evening, Professor."

"Do you happen to have any idea who hexed you like this?"

Granger shook her head.

"I hope you'll excuse me, but I'm going to have to examine you." Snape lifted the girl's chin to check her eyes, and began a murmured litany of instructions. "Open your mouth a little, please. Tilt your head so I can check your ears. I'm going to push up your sleeves to look at your arms. Now we need to remove your shoes. Don't worry, Madam Pomfrey will check the tail later…"

"Miss Granger," Snape said when he was finished. "I do not believe that you don't know who hexed you. You've been transformed by Polyjuice Potion. You would have had to drink it, and since it's quite a disgusting concoction, you would have noticed at once. Did someone give it to you, or did you make it yourself?"

"I made it myself, sir."

"Considering how long it takes to make, you must have started shortly after I mentioned it in class. Do you remember that it was an example of a Potion that could only involve humans and must never be made from animals?"

"Yes, sir. I got the cat hair by mistake."

"So you were trying to turn yourself into someone who owns a cat. I'll leave it to Professor McGonagall to find out who, and to determine your punishment, though the fact that the spell is permanent when worked with animals ought to be punishment enough. Don't worry," Snape continued at the sight of her stricken face, "there is an antidote potion, but it takes nearly as long to make as the Polyjuice Potion does. You're going to have to stay here for the next month. Unless you want to attend your classes as a cat."

Granger shook her head. _Silly girl. At least when she decided to do something foolish it was also something relatively harmless._

Snape turned to Madam Pomfrey. "I'll start on the antidote right away. There really isn't anything else to do but wait and watch her diet very carefully. If she starts craving mice, let me know immediately. I'll keep you informed of the antidote's progress. Well, good night, Madam Pomfrey. Good night, Miss Granger."

Back in his office, Snape cleared off an area well away from any drafts or heat and began setting up the cauldrons and ingredients. It was a foul-smelling brew, which would make his office and private room unpleasant for a while, but there was no place else to make the antidote. He couldn't do it in the classroom for fear one of the students might contaminate it, or worse, drink it.

The initial setup took a few hours, and it was three o'clock in the morning before Snape finally got to bed.

The next morning Lockhart eased into his seat at breakfast with a face all careful sympathy. "They say that Miss Granger has been confined to the hospital wing. You wouldn't happen to know why? The dear girl is a great fan of mine."

_Point against Granger. Unless there are two Grangers._ "She seems to have developed a slight gatanthropic tendency."

"Oh. Uh… yes. It isn't the contagious kind, is it?"

Snape fixed his attention on his kipper. "Not as these things go. The usual precautions, of course. Face mask if you get within ten feet, latex gloves when you handle her homework. Nothing out of the ordinary."

Lockhart studied the backs of his hands. "No special symptoms, what?"

"No, no. A perfectly normal progression. Fur, pointed ears, whiskers, retractable claws, tail… The very first thing is that a couple of days before full onset, the eyes start to turn yellow. Would you excuse me for just a minute? There's Professor McGonagall, and I needed to tell her something."

At the center of the table, Snape bent next to McGonagall's right ear. "You and I are ostensibly discussing a cough syrup I'm making for you, but in about five minutes I want you to tell Sprout to talk to Lockhart on the way out and casually comment that his eyes look a little yellowish this morning. I'll explain later."

McGonagall nodded. Sure enough, about five minutes after Snape sat back down with Lockhart, she got up and moved next to Sprout.

As soon as Lockhart pushed himself away from the table and started down the Hall, Sprout also rose. They met halfway down the center aisle, and she stopped him with a friendly greeting and began to chat. Snape had already shifted his seat to join McGonagall and Flitwick and fill them in on the details.

Sprout squinted and looked at Lockhart quizzically. Lockhart went white and bent down closer to her. Sprout peered into his eyes and nodded emphatically. Lockhart searched frantically in his pockets and pulled out a lady's cosmetic compact with a mirror. He studied his reflection with increasing nervousness as she patted him tenderly on the arm, then he turned and fled from the Hall.

The instant Lockhart was through the doors, Sprout raced for the table. "Give!" she cried as she hit Snape with her hat. "Give, you wicked, evil man, you! What did I just do?" while McGonagall and Flitwick dissolved in helpless laughter. Snape explained.

When she was able to breathe again, Sprout asked, "What was the word you used?"

"Gatanthropic. A gatanthrope is a werecat."

"And look at the man! Grave as an undertaker. Not even the decency to twitch the corner of his mouth. You are dangerous, Severus Snape!"

"Ah Pomona! You don't know the half of it. Lass, how much do you already know of what he and James Potter used to do to each other when they were in third year…?"

Snape left McGonagall and Flitwick to fill Sprout in on more details of his nefarious past and headed upstairs to the hospital wing.

Life was more serious for Poppy Pomfrey and her charge.

"There's a full moon on January eighth. I'll be able to gather the last ingredients then, and a week later the antidote will be finished. It is powerful medicine, and you'll only be able to take small doses at a time, though if you prove amenable to the treatment they can be frequent. That way the condition will clear up sooner. If you need me for anything more, Madam Pomfrey, you have only to ask."

"Thank you, Professor."

On the way out to the stairs, Snape ran into Lockhart, who was coming down from his rooms on the second floor, heading for his classroom. When he saw Snape, Lockhart stopped.

"Yes, there you are, Severus. Look, old boy, could you do me a bit of a favor. I seem to have taken a bit of chill on the liver, what. A holdover from that time I caught malaria while chasing down hoodoos in a Louisiana bayou, and malaria does keep coming back, don't you know. Think I might have a touch of jaundice. Would you mind checking? I'd just hop along to Madam Pomfrey in the hospital, but she has… uh… other patients to care for."

With somber professionalism, Snape gravely inspected Lockhart's eyes. "Well, now that you mention it, there may be a bit of yellowing to the whites, but I rather thought they'd always been that color. I really think you should talk to Madam Pomfrey about it, though. It is her area of expertise."

Snape left Lockhart in the first floor corridor, torn between his hypochondria and his fear of contagion. _Lockhart brings it on himself. Perfect example of the North Carolina Equine Paradox if you ask me. On the other hand, Sprout may be right. Maybe I am just wicked and evil._

The last week of December was Snape's normal time for taking a midyear inventory. With no classes and almost no students, he could work for hours undisturbed. He started with the classroom, where supplies had been depleted from use in potion making and had to be reordered, then moved to his office.

Inventorying the office was more of a formality, since the ingredients there were seldom touched. Snape was nonetheless very careful to keep up-to-date records since so many of them were poisonous.

Working his way methodically through the shelves, Snape checked flower, leaf, stem, and root supplies, then reached the area where animal products were stored. The small jars were minutely calibrated to measure the normally small amounts used in potion making. Some of the things in the office were quite powerful.

Halfway down the list, Snape stopped. He was short of powdered bicorn horn. He checked it a second and a third time, but there was no mistake. The jar was short by two grams. Working more slowly now, he continued his inventory, and was not really surprised to find that a similar amount of shredded boomslang skin was also gone. Both the bicorn horn and the boomslang skin were needed for Polyjuice potion.

_It's all coming together. This was why a Filibuster firework was tossed into Goyle's cauldron. It did its job – it kept me busy. The girl stole my supplies with the help of an accomplice, probably Potter, to make Polyjuice potion to turn herself into someone with a cat. I wonder if Potter turned himself into someone, too. But who? And why? It was Christmas Day, so the number of people they could choose from would be small._

The first thing to do was make up a list and then scratch off the names of those it could not possibly be. If he could figure out who, he might be able to figure out why. When questioning students, it always helped to be able to tell them things they thought they'd kept secret. It made them think you could read their minds.

It turned out to be surprisingly easy, especially since Crabbe and Goyle had been discovered sleeping in a broom closet later on Christmas Day. Snape suspected the cat owner was Millicent Bulstrode. He called Malfoy into his office.

"I need your help, Draco. You remember that Crabbe and Goyle were, shall we say, a little under the weather at Christmas? We're trying to find out if they've been into things they oughtn't. Do you recall any time during that day when they were behaving a bit… strangely?"

Malfoy did. He recounted an odd little conversation in which the two had seemed to sympathize with Arthur Weasley and Colin Creevey, and hadn't remembered previous conversations about Slytherin's heir and the Chamber of Secrets. He seemed to feel that it made sense that the two may have been imbibing something, since Crabbe had complained of stomach ache as well.

After Malfoy left, Snape thought carefully about what he'd said – and hadn't said. _Insulting Weasley and Creevey, and the two couldn't go along. But they wanted information about the Chamber. Which means they didn't open it. Time to talk to McGonagall again._


	39. Chapter 39 – Riddles Resolved

A Tiny Bit about Dueling

**A Tiny Bit about Dueling: Riddles Resolved**

"Okay, let me get this straight. Her name was Mabel."

"Myrtle! Her name was Myrtle."

"And she was way younger than you, but you don't know exactly what year. And her body was found in the girls' lavatory on the second floor."

"Right."

"And she's a ghost."

"Right."

"So why haven't I ever heard of her before? I mean, after eleven and a half years I should know all the ghosts."

"It is a girls' lavatory. And I don't think Myrtle was ever fond of either boys or professors, so you lose on both counts." McGonagall looked down her nose with a decidedly superior attitude.

"Was anyone else on staff at Hogwarts at the time. Besides Dumbledore, I mean."

"Binns, of course, but he'll be of no use. Kettleburn. Oh, and Hagrid was a student. You might want to talk to him. There was also Tom Riddle, but I expect you already know that."

Snape went up to the second floor that evening to check the girl's lavatory. There were so few students, all of whom were in their dormitories anyway, that he had no fear of meeting anyone. Just to be sure, he knocked on the door before going in.

It was a perfectly ordinary lavatory. There was a row of stalls with toilets, and opposite each toilet was a sink with soap and hand towels, and a hamper for the used towels. The hamper was empty. Like the rest of the school, the plumbing here had been installed just before World War I. In all respects, it was one of the more modern of Hogwarts's rooms.

"Is that you, Harry?" came a small voice from one of the stalls, and a young girl ghost came gliding out. She stopped and fled back to the stall when she saw it was a teacher.

"Myrtle?" Snape said calmly. "How do you know Harry?" There was no answer, only a splashing from one of the stalls, and Snape assumed the ghost had left.

_Is this the scene of the crime, the place where they made the Polyjuice potion? It may have been a good choice, since McGonagall says it's seldom used because of Myrtle. Potter was one, Granger another, and probably Weasley. Asking Malfoy about the Chamber of Secrets._

Snape left the second floor and returned to his dungeon office to think.

_Why does Potter want to know about the Chamber of Secrets from Malfoy? Malfoy doesn't know anything._

_The Chamber is open. Only the heir of Slytherin can open it. If the Dark Lord is the heir – and we know he's returned – he would need corporeal servants to assist him. Someone has opened the Chamber for the Dark Lord._

_I don't think it's Draco. I'm sure Draco knows nothing, but could it be Lucius? Lucius brought a house elf on the day the bludger attacked Potter. Maybe that had something to do with the Chamber. But Lucius wasn't here when it was opened. So he had to get someone to do it for him._

_What if it is Potter? Dumbledore says he's a Parselmouth because of his contact with the Dark Lord. What if there's more contact that Potter isn't conscious of?_

_What if the Dark Lord can watch us, watch me, through Potter's eyes?_

xxxxxxxxxx

The students returned with the new year. Almost immediately, the rumor spread that Granger had been attacked by the monster from the Chamber of Secrets, and students kept trying to get a glimpse of her. The truth of the matter was, though, that there were no more attacks. Everything settled down to routine, though Snape kept a much closer eye on Potter than before.

With the full moon, the last of the ingredients for Granger's potion were collected, and by mid January she was taking regular doses and showing visible improvement. Snape kept the potion brewing in his office, and carried the necessary amount up to Madam Pomfrey each day to be sure it was fresh.

On one of these trips, on an evening toward the end of January, he met Filch stomping down the stairs on his way to the broom cupboard. The caretaker was furious.

"These students have nothing better to do with their time than make work for me, Professor," he complained. "Some of 'em has gone and flooded the lavatory on the second floor. I'll be half the night mopping it up."

Questioning revealed it was Myrtle's lavatory. Snape decided to accompany Filch back to the second floor and have another look.

Water was running down the second floor corridor and onto the staircases. Filch, glad of a sympathetic ear, continued his complaining. "Don't know how they did it. Ceiling wet, walls wet, candles guttered and soaking, floor two inches deep. These students've got nothing better they can do but torment me. I went straight to Dumbledore and told him I can't take it anymore…"

"You went to Dumbledore before you came downstairs?" Snape asked, mentally working out times as he helped Filch relight the candles and begin sweeping the water toward the drains.

"I did. And I told him I wasn't going to take it anymore."

"How long do you think that took you?"

Filch eyed Snape suspiciously. "Maybe fifteen, twenty minutes. But if you're thinking I let them get away, you're wrong. I checked first. They weren't in here."

"How did you discover it?"

"I was keeping an eye out, right over there where… where Mrs. Norris was attacked. I heard the water splashing and saw it coming out the door. They can't leave me alone. It was the same on Halloween night. I had to spend the night mopping and worrying about Mrs. Norris at the same time."

Snape straightened up. "There was water on the floor that night? I don't recall…" He conjured up an image of what he'd seen, but the corridor had been so full of students that he had no memory of what the floor looked like.

"Not so bad as this tonight, but puddles of it everywhere all the same. Oh, I could've wrung their necks."

It was worth waiting. Snape stayed until the lavatory was relatively dry and Filch left. Then he called quietly, "Myrtle. Myrtle, what happened here?" There was no response, so he tried again. "Myrtle, I'm not angry. I just want to know what happened."

Nothing. Either the ghost wasn't there, or she wouldn't talk to teachers. Snape decided to see if McGonagall was still up.

"Creevey?" McGonagall was reading in her rooms when Snape knocked, but was more than willing to chat. "What do you need to know about Creevey for?"

"He was the second one attacked, and the first student. Just exactly where was he, and what was he doing?"

"I'll tell you, Severus, if you promise to keep me informed. It was the night of the Quidditch game, and Potter was in hospital regrowing his arm bones. Creevey was apparently coming up to see him from the kitchens because he was carrying a bunch of grapes. We found the boy on a landing. It seems he was trying to take a picture of the thing that attacked him."

"Picture?"

"He was holding his camera up to his face. We don't know if he got the photo or not, for when Dumbledore opened the camera, the film dissolved."

"Where was that?"

"When we were putting the poor boy to bed in the hospital."

"Did Potter see any of this?"

"I don't think so. I think he was asleep. He certainly didn't move or say anything."

Snape bade McGonagall good night and went back to his own room. _Water on the floor when Mrs. Norris was petrified, Creevey with a camera in front of his eyes, Finch-Fletchley in the company of a ghost. Dead roosters. Maybe it is a basilisk after all. That or something similar. But how is it getting into the castle? And from where?_

Snape decided he had to speak to Hagrid, and went down to his hut early the next morning before breakfast.

Hagrid was always up early, checking the verge of the forest or caring for his garden. He saw Snape coming down the hill in the faint light of dawn and went to be sure there was water heated for tea.

"Morning, Professor. Bit chill t' be up and about. What can I do for ya?"

"Sorry to bother you so early, and I have to be brief so I can get back before the students come out for breakfast, but I wanted to ask you about the Chamber of Secrets. You know, what happened last time."

The response was so less than enthusiastic that Snape was taken aback. Hagrid turned and stomped back toward his hut. "Ya ought t' know that's a sore subject. Come have some tea an' then be off with ya."

"This is a switch," said Snape as he entered the familiar hut. "You used to be the one trying to get me to come here. Now here I am and you don't want me."

"Yeah. Well now we're not talking about you, are we?"

"I didn't think we were going to be talking about you either."

"No? Then what're ya… Ya don't know what happened then, do ya?"

"A girl died."

"Yeah. And I got expelled an' forbidden t' use magic."

It was that moment when you realize you've stepped into quicksand. Snape plunged forward. "Why? What did you do?"

"Brought Aragog into the school."

"Who's Aragog?"

"He's one of the reasons the forest's forbidden. He's an acromantula. I bought him from a chap… Well, let's just say I got him an' I brought him t' the school an' that Tom Riddle found out an' had me…"

"Tom Riddle turned you in? Look, Hagrid, did you know the girl who died?"

"Not really. She were Hufflepuff, and I were Gryffindor. It was all very hush-hush. We were never told at the time what really happened. Nor later on, neither. What're ya so interested in all this for."

"You know me and mysteries. Besides, it would be good if we could keep anyone else from being hurt. By the way, did she actually die in the girls' lavatory?"

"Don't know. Didn't never ask about it. That were the rumor, though."

And that was where it remained for another month. The school as a whole began to relax as there were no further attacks. Professor Sprout's mandrakes were getting along nicely, and Snape began paying her visits when he didn't have classes, just to examine them.

"Some are more mature than others. Look at these two, Severus. Trying to touch roots through the drainage holes in their pots, thinking no one would notice."

"We certainly don't want them to grow too quickly," said Snape examining the errant mandrakes, one of which had managed to inch an eye above the level of the compost in its pot and was ogling its neighbor. "It makes the tuber too fibrous for a good decoction." Snape had great respect for Professor Sprout. His own witch grandmother had been both an herbologist and a potions maker – a rare combination – and had taught him the value of herb lore. He himself was fair at Herbology, but knew enough to value greater talent in another.

"While you're here, Professor," added Sprout, "could you look at the bubotubers? They seem to have picked up a fungus that I'd swear was Pennine greenmolt if we weren't so far north."

"And some people say there is no evidence for global warming," murmured Snape as he examined the fungus.

"Global what?"

Snape explained, and he and Sprout discussed growing seasons, rainfall, and temperature variations until it was time to get ready for supper.

xxxxxxxxxx

_Sunday, February 14, 1993 [JKRowling talks of this as a school day with classes, but this is a mistake.]_

Snape left his dungeon rooms for breakfast a little later than usual since it was Sunday and he had no classes. To his great surprise, McGonagall, Flitwick, Sprout, and Pomfrey were standing around in the entrance hall with an eye to the dungeon corridor.

McGonagall saw him first and began positively crowing. "Och, he's here, he's here. Ye'll not believe it, lad, not a bit of it," and she beckoned him to the group.

Flitwick was chuckling, Sprout was fizzing, and Pomfrey looked like a child caught with candy in her mouth.

Before Snape could say anything, Flitwick pushed him toward the Great Hall. "Just look, youngster. Then come back and tell us what to do about it.

It was hideous. The hall was festooned – festooned! – in pink. Wisteria garlands draped from the beams. Two-foot-wide globular blooms that looked like a mad mating of magenta roses, cerise gladiolus, and lavender 'love-lies-bleeding' adorned each torch holder. The grand hearth was a display of fuchsia, heliotrope, orchid, and foxglove, while the walls were plastered with enormous blossoms resembling giant impatiens, pink daisies, and carnations.

The teachers' table was clothed in honeysuckle, and each professor's chair was arrayed with a floral pagan nimbus, Snape himself being blessed with passion flowers. The floor was strewn with petals, and heart-shaped pink confetti sifted from the rafters like snow.

"He's in shock," McGonagall whispered to the others as she pulled Snape back from the doors. She fanned his face with her hat as she demanded, "This is that man's idea of Valentine's Day! What do we do?"

Snape took a deep breath. "Nothing," he replied. "There's nothing we can do."

"What are you talking about, man? We're not going to take this lying down!" Flitwick was more inflamed than Snape had ever seen him before.

"Nothing," Snape repeated. "Not in front of the students. We got away with it at Christmas because there were no students here. But teachers do not attack teachers in front of the student body."

"What about later?" Pomfrey asked.

The teachers bore it stoically for about five minutes, then they began to seethe. That was because Lockhart, after bragging about the number of valentines he'd received, brought in the dwarfs. Short, squat, bearded dwarfs dressed as cupids. For the purpose, Lockhart explained, of sending singing valentine grams.

"And the fun doesn't stop here!" Lockhart enthused like a carnival barker. "I'm sure my colleagues will want to enter into the spirit of the occasion! Why not ask Professor Snape to show you how to whip up a Love Potion! And while you're at it, Professor Flitwick knows more about Entrancing Enchantments than any wizard I've ever met, the sly old dog!"

Flitwick was mortified. Snape gripped the arms of his chair with a force that whitened his knuckles. McGonagall pursed her lips, but was silent. Snape glanced over at McGonagall and mouthed the words, 'He's going down.'

McGonagall smiled.

They had fun in the staff room inventing students' names: Cassiopeia Hicks – Mehitible Dusendorf – Palindroma Yamamoto…

One by one the dwarfs were sent out, each one finding Lockhart in a very public place, eager to receive his accolade from an adoring student.

'Cassiopeia' sent:

_O Lockhart, dear Lockhart, I've waited so long_

_To tell of my love and to sing you this song._

_Your eyes are so droopy, your hair is so lank_

_You always remind me of fish in a tank._

_Your mouth always open to let water in,_

_Your face is so narrow, with hardly a chin._

_There isn't a teacher as squishy as you_

_I love you so madly. Do you love me too?_

By the time they got to 'Palindroma's' love song, Lockhart was running from dwarfs as if they carried bubonic, pneumonic, and septicemic plague all at the same time.

McGonagall reckoned it as: Teachers – 3, Lockhart – 0. It was getting so she had to figure in a point spread.

McGonagall and Sprout had followed the first dwarf up to watch Lockhart receive his gram.

"He was preening like a peacock, strut and all, until the line about his hair being lank, then he began to fall to pieces. He didn't know whether to be embarrassed, angry, or happy that some idiot girl with no talent had sent him a love message. Pomona and I pretended we weren't listening so he wouldn't suspect us. It was lovely."

Flitwick and Pomfrey had gone up for the second message and reported back as well. This time Lockhart was wary of the dwarf, but was willing to give it a try until the lines:

_Lips of fire, fingers of glue,_

_I love you, yes, I do! I do!_

at which he turned beet red and hurried away.

Snape had waited until last since he had always considered both discretion and the final result more important than personal satisfaction. There being one more singing gram, however, and the others already having had their turn, he allowed himself the luxury of following the dwarf to Lockhart's office on the second floor to see what would happen. _Probably nothing. He'll just leave at the sight of a dwarf by this time._

It was right after lunch, and students were streaming back to their dormitories. Another dwarf scuttled past Snape on its way up to the first floor, calling out, "Oy, you! 'Arry Potter!" as it pushed students out of its path. Snape looked up in time to see Potter dart into the first floor corridor, clearly anxious to escape.

_This might be more interesting than Lockhart._ Snape followed the crowd up the stairs. Most of them were younger students, so he hung back out of sight, still able to see everything over their heads. What he saw was the dwarf holding on to Potter's torn book bag as the boy tried to gather up his spilled belongings. Students were hopping quickly away from the pile to avoid the – blood? – no, the red ink that spread out from a broken bottle and drenched the books.

Two voices demanded imperiously what was happening, and Snape saw Malfoy and Percy Weasley push forward. At that point Potter tried to run, but the dwarf tackled him and sat on him to sing its doggerel. The 'valentine' was clearly a joke.

Snape had long before, in more dangerous times, learned to pay attention to the real action rather than the show. While the students laughed at Potter and the dwarf, Snape watched Malfoy. _You wrote that valentine to embarrass Potter. Where did you get the idea? Have you been listening at the door to the staff room? Maybe I should keep a closer watch on you in the future._

Then it was over. Weasley, enjoying his status as a prefect, was breaking up the crowd. The dwarf left, and Potter went back to his stained and damaged books. Malfoy picked one up. It wasn't a school book, it was more like an old-fashioned appointment book, the kind sold in muggle shops. Seeing potential conflict, Snape started to move forward, then paused. There was a prefect there to keep order. He didn't have to intervene unless things got out of hand.

"Give that back," Potter said in a low voice.

"Wonder what Potter's written in this?" Malfoy teased.

"Hand it over, Malfoy."

"When I've had a look."

Weasley moved in. "As a school prefect…"

Potter's wand was suddenly out, and he yelled _"Expelliarmus!"_ The book flew out of Malfoy's hands straight into the air. That was when Snape noticed the other two Weasleys in the thinning crowd, for Potter's friend Ron caught the book as it fell, and right behind him was the first year girl Ginny. She had a look of absolute horror on her face.

"No magic in the corridors!" the Weasley prefect was shouting, so after exchanging parting insults, the combatants broke off their confrontation and departed in different directions.

Snape returned to the staff room where he had to confess that he hadn't seen Lockhart get his last 'valentine.' He blamed it on a little 'disorder' in the corridor without going into specifics, then the five conspirators left for their separate rooms.

Once in his own room, Snape sat to think for a while. _Expelliarmus is not a lower-level charm. Potter can't have encountered it in his classes. He had to have learned it from me when I used it against Lockhart two months ago. Saw it and heard it once, then used it correctly and powerfully when needed. The boy must have more talent than he's ever shown in lessons to pick up something like that so quickly._

Then there were the other details. _Why was that appointment book so important that Potter used magic in the corridor to get it back? And why was Ginny Weasley so frightened?_

A few days later, Snape was in Dumbledore's office.

"Unless it's some monster that's never been catalogued, it seems to be closer to a basilisk than anything. We might be able to account for the fact that no one has died by a remarkable series of coincidences. Filch tells me that there was water on the floor the night Mrs. Norris was petrified, and she may have seen the monster's reflection. The Creevey boy was looking through a camera lens, and if Sir Nicholas was between the Finch-Fletchley boy and the beast, the boy would not have looked at it directly either. I don't think it's ever been documented that meeting the reflection of a basilisk's eye causes Petrification rather than death, but there's no reason why not."

"And the roosters?" Dumbledore asked.

"That's one of the worrisome things. They weren't killed by a basilisk. They weren't killed by an animal either. A person killed the roosters. It could be another coincidence, or it could mean a person is assisting the basilisk."

"The Heir of Slytherin, except the Heir of Slytherin is not at Hogwarts this year."

"Not that we know of."

"You said 'one' of the worrisome things."

"I don't know how it gets around. If it's the same monster that attacked that girl in 1943, it must be huge by now, yet no one has seen it or any trace of it."

"Do you have any suggestions?"

"Invest in weasels. Lots and lots of weasels."

"Too bad Weasleys would not do as well. We do have lots and lots of them."

Snape smiled at Dumbledore's little joke, then changed the subject, not feeling particularly like discussing Weasleys that evening. "I wanted to ask you something else. Last year you started to tell me about Riddle and Potter and, well, me. I've been thinking about it. Something happened on Valentine's Day and Potter used an Expelliarmus against Malfoy. I was there. It was impressive. The boy has… instincts."

"Very powerful instincts. Quite different from yours. Your instincts are all mental. I have never met an Occlumens as powerful or instinctive as you, and you have a gift for defending yourself in face-to-face situations, not to mention your ability to create new spells. Potter's instincts are more physical – his skill with a broom, his quickness in picking up and using spells right when they are needed. Riddle was all planning, all carefully worked-out detail. I do not know if he ever did anything by instinct."

"So you don't think of us as the same?"

"Heavens no! I hope I did not give you that impression. In many ways, you are the antithesis that produces the synthesis. Riddle and Potter are creatures of the world. Riddle does not care if it hates him as long as he can control it. Potter does not want control, only love and support. You just wish the world would leave you alone. Riddle lives by masterful deceit. Potter's attempts at deceit are so transparent that they have never really bothered me. Your idea of deception is to build a wall and hide behind it. Riddle does not understand the concept of love, Potter craves love, and you are afraid to love."

"That's getting a bit personal!" Snape said, half rising from his chair. "I don't think I like this conversation any more."

"Sit down. Lily told me what happened after your parents died. It explained much that had been confusing about you. Of the three boys, you are the one who knows what it means to live with an abiding sense of guilt. Another concept that Riddle does not understand."

"All right, all right. I think you've given me quite enough to think about. Now I'm sorry I asked."

"Any time," said Dumbledore.

From then through the Easter break, there were basically three things occupying Snape's mind. The first was classes, getting his seventh years ready for their NEWTs, the fifth years ready for their OWLs, and the rest prepared for exams. Since he only accepted students into his advanced potions classes who had gotten Outstanding in their OWL, the highest level classes were a joy to teach, much more like university seminars than like secondary courses.

The second thing was the mandrake potion for the petrified victims of the mysterious attacker. One of the biggest problems with adolescent mandrakes was that they were so much like adolescent humans. They were driven by raging hormones, totally lacking in self-control, and devoid of any sense of responsibility. The good thing was that he got to chop them up and boil them into a decoction. _Pity I can't do that with the students. What would student potion be good for? Removing age spots?_

The third thing was counseling for the second years. As third years, they would have to take two extra classes each. This was the first step on the path of career counseling and choice, and the students were generally advised to play to their strengths. Malfoy, for example, was counseled to take Arithmancy, a must for any job in wizarding finance, and Care of Magical Creatures, which always came in handy in a variety of foreign affairs positions.

xxxxxxxxxx

The last Quidditch game of the year was set for the second Saturday in May, Gryffindor against Hufflepuff. At the moment, Slytherin and Gryffindor were tied, with two wins each. If Gryffindor won their last game, they would win the Quidditch cup. If they lost, then the two teams would count points to see who got the cup. Since Ravenclaw had won its game against Hufflepuff, Hufflepuff was not in the running for the cup, so Slytherin was cheering for Hufflepuff. Snape asked Sprout the evening before if he could join her in her box, and she said he was welcome.

Most of the school was already in the stands by the time Snape arrived. The two teams were filing out onto the field, and Madam Hooch was getting ready to start the game. The weather was beautiful, and it promised to be a pleasant afternoon. Snape was more relaxed than he'd been at a Quidditch game for some time, for Gryffindor had played Ravenclaw in March, and there had been no incidents.

Suddenly, surprisingly, McGonagall was hurrying onto the field with a large purple megaphone in her hand. Stopping where the sound would reach all the stands, she called, "This match has been canceled."

Amid the boos from the students and the protests of the players, Snape and the other teachers rose immediately and began leaving the stands. Something had happened, and they would be needed at the Castle.

McGonagall continued, "All students are to make their way back to the house common rooms, where their heads of houses will give them further information. As quickly as you can, please."

It was serious. It was possibly deadly serious. The teachers hurried up the hill as quickly as they could. Dumbledore was waiting for them in the staff room.

Fifteen minutes later, Snape entered the Slytherin common room. Every eye turned to him.

"Ladies and gentlemen, I regret to have to inform you that another attack has occurred against students of this school." Snape could tell from their faces that they already knew it couldn't be a Slytherin student. The first thing they would have done was check if any from their house were missing.

"More mudbloods?" Malfoy asked with a sneer.

"Master Malfoy," Snape said with icy calm, "I will thank you never to use that word in my presence again, or anywhere else for that matter. An attack against any student in this school is an attack against all. The two victims this time were Miss Granger of Gryffindor and Miss Clearwater of Ravenclaw. They were attacked near the Library. Both have been petrified and are in the hospital wing." Snape watched Malfoy the whole time he spoke, and the boy was wise enough to keep quiet.

"Due to the seriousness of the situation, certain rules are being put into effect. No student is to be outside the common room or dormitories unless a teacher is with them. I shall escort you to breakfast and from that point you will be taken to your lessons by your teachers. All students must be in their houses by six o'clock, and supper will be served in the common room. No student may go anywhere in the main building unaccompanied by a teacher, and that includes the lavatories as well as the Library, classrooms, Great Hall, etc."

"Sir," asked Bulstrode. "Are we in any danger?"

"Very possibly. There is a chance that the school will have to be closed if we can't discover soon what is causing these attacks. We don't think anything can get into the dormitories except through the common room. I shall be staying in the common room at night as a guard. Now, I need to patrol the school with the other teachers. If there are no questions? Prefects, see that the students obey the rules. I'll be back in the evening."

Snape left to look for McGonagall.

Snape and McGonagall were assigned an evening patrol around the entrance hall. Snape took the side with the corridors to the dungeons and the kitchens, while McGonagall patrolled the Great Hall. They met every ten minutes in the entrance hall to check in and chat. Snape didn't really expect anything to happen. None of the previous attacks had been followed immediately by other attacks. Still, it was better to be cautious.

Well after nightfall, Dumbledore came downstairs, accompanied by Filch. "No time to talk, Severus," he called from the stairs. "Cornelius Fudge is coming in at the Hogsmeade gate, and I have to be there to meet him. I trust everything is quiet."

Whether Dumbledore's opening the main doors had let in pollen, or it was something else, a few minutes later Snape found himself sneezing. At the same time, he thought he heard a strange noise, as of someone swearing at something. He paused to listen carefully, but there was no further sound.

It was a night of surprises. Shortly afterwards, Lucius Malfoy appeared at the main entrance. Malfoy was looking for Dumbledore and, finding himself talking to Snape, smiled and confided that it was a message from the Board of Governors that Dumbledore was not going to like. _No wonder Malfoy's willing to deliver it himself. I can't imagine another reason why he'd agree to be a messenger boy._ Snape dearly wanted to go with Malfoy and find out what was happening, but his duty required him to stay on guard at the castle.

A short while later, while Snape was telling McGonagall the events of the night, they all returned: Dumbledore, Fudge, Hagrid, and Malfoy. And there, where all of them could see his reactions, Snape learned that Hagrid was under arrest and going to Azkaban, while the Board of Governors had suspended Dumbledore, who was leaving Hogwarts immediately.

Glancing from one to the other, Snape was relieved to see that Dumbledore was gently shaking his head. _Play along. Don't make any rash statements. Don't take sides. Especially not in front of Malfoy._ Not that he had to take sides; McGonagall was doing fine all by herself.

"Lucius Malfoy, I have seen you do some silly, foolish things in my time, but this is utter madness! Do you want the situation to get worse? Do you want more students hurt and Hogwarts closed? You know as well as anyone standing here that Professor Dumbledore is our best hope to resolve this problem. One might think you had something to do with it."

"Now, Professor," interjected Fudge, and she turned on him.

"And you, you big puffed-up bureaucrat, Hagrid is no more involved in this than I am. Instead of throwing your authority in people's faces like some strutting little cockerel, you might be doing something to actually get to the bottom of this and stop these attacks."

Dumbledore stepped forward and took her hands in his. "Do not fret, Minerva. Everything will be fine. This is only temporary. You are in charge until I return, and I know you will do all in your power to protect the school. You can rely on all the other teachers to help you. Now, I fear we must be going."

Malfoy had said nothing, but as he turned to leave, he nodded to Snape, and Snape inclined his head slightly in reply. Then they were gone.

"And you!" cried McGonagall, rounding on Snape. "You might have said something to back me up! Standing there like a great mute lump! If I didn't know you better I'd think you were half pleased to see them haul Dumbledore and Hagrid off."

As McGonagall advanced, Snape retreated. He couldn't explain to her, so it was probably just as well that he couldn't get a word in edgewise. When she'd backed him as far as the dungeon stairs, he fled to Slytherin house, leaving her raging in the entrance hall.

The common room was empty, and Snape settled gratefully on a sofa by the fireplace, trying to reason out what had just happened.

_The Dark Lord is back and his hand can stretch into Hogwarts. He's opened the Chamber of Secrets – it's only a matter of time before people start dying. He's used Malfoy to remove Dumbledore – what other lines of defense are being destroyed.? Dumbledore wants me to stay under cover, but what good is that going to do if the Dark Lord already knows I've left him? How much does he know? How much did he get from Quirrell?_

_Yet Malfoy seems to think I'm still on his side. That's a hopeful sign. I just have to be careful. Spies. He has spies in the school. Draco, and the Crabbe and Goyle boys. Who else is the son, daughter, niece, nephew, cousin of a Death Eater? Every word I say, every move I make can be reported. Even with the teachers I have to be on my guard, lest they talk where students can listen._

_And the Ministry has sent Hagrid to Azkaban. With Dumbledore gone, how long before Moody comes to get me, too?_

Snape dozed fitfully by the fire, dreamed of being dragged bound and helpless before the Dark Lord, and woke unrefreshed with the dawn.

The school went into a state of shock and siege. It was easy for the teachers to keep the students together in escorted groups, for no student wanted to be alone. The hospital wing was sealed off in case the monster, or whatever it was, wanted to get at the petrified victims. The fact that Dumbledore was no longer there made everyone nervous. When not acting as escorts, the teachers gathered in little groups to talk about their fears. The only one who seemed happy was Lockhart, who was convinced that the Ministry was infallible and had arrested Hagrid because he was the guilty party. The rest of the teachers stopped talking to him altogether.

Snape couldn't join the others. He couldn't talk to anyone about his own worry and apprehension. At Hogwarts, only Dumbledore and Hagrid knew of his duel role in the last year of Voldemort's power, and only Dumbledore and Hagrid knew that that role remained ambiguous, had to remain ambiguous if he was ever going to be useful to them again. The power that could remove both of them from Hogwarts at the same moment was the only thing that Snape truly feared, and in empty rooms and corridors, or the privacy of his own office, he checked the mark on his left arm a dozen times a day to see if it was getting darker, dreading that it might start to burn and summon him to the Dark Lord.

Two weeks after Dumbledore's suspension, Draco Malfoy spoke up in class, talking to Crabbe and Goyle, but loudly enough that many of the students could hear.

"I always thought Father might be the one who got rid of Dumbledore. I told you he thinks Dumbledore's the worst headmaster the school's ever had. Maybe we'll get a decent headmaster now. Someone who won't want the Chamber of Secrets closed. McGonagall won't last long, she's only filling in…"

Snape started to admonish Malfoy, then froze. _I'm being tested. How I react and what I say will be reported back to Lucius, and through Lucius to… I have to be noncommittal, neither fish nor fowl, nothing to jeopardize my position either at Hogwarts or with the Dark Lord._ Snape chose to say nothing, but continued checking student work in the class.

Malfoy called out to him. "Sir! Sir, why don't you apply for the headmaster's job?"

_Steady, Severus, steady. You're talking to both the Dark Lord and Cornelius Fudge now. Nothing is private anymore._ Snape forced a weak smile. "Now, now, Malfoy. Professor Dumbledore has only been suspended by the governors. I dare say he'll be back with us soon enough."

"Yeah, right. I expect you'd have Father's vote, sir, if you wanted to apply for the job – I'll tell Father you're the best teacher here, sir –"

Snape decided the best way to keep Malfoy quiet was not to respond, and he continued through the class checking the students' potions. But what Malfoy'd said bothered him immensely. _Does the wind blow that way? Does the Dark Lord want a puppet headmaster at Hogwarts? Or is this just Malfoy shooting off his mouth?_

But Malfoy wouldn't be quiet. "I'm quite surprised the mudbloods haven't all packed their bags by now. Bet you five Galleons the next one dies. Pity it wasn't Granger –"

Weasley was off his stool and heading for Malfoy just as the bell rang, and Snape moved fast to get between the two boys. "Hurry up, I've got to take you all to Herbology," he shouted, and the confrontation was avoided.

The rest of the day, Snape was miserable. The calmer, saner part of him kept saying that it was just Draco. Just Draco trying to be the center of attention and bragging about his family's position and influence. The nervous, worried part of him kept asking 'Why now?' Draco was silent for two weeks, then suddenly in public, in a class shared with Gryffindors, challenged him about Dumbledore and about wanting to be headmaster. _He was told to do that. He was following his father's instructions. They're planning another move, and they're trying to confirm which side I'm on. I can't go to Dumbledore for advice. What would he want me to do?_

To make matters worse, they were told the next day that exams would not be canceled, and he had only about a week to make sure his classes were prepared. _It never rains, but it pours._

xxxxxxxxxx

_Friday, May 28, 1993 (the first quarter)_

Sprout hurried up to Snape before he could sit down at breakfast. "They're ready! I think they're ready! You have to come check them, especially the roots, but I'm sure they're ready."

Food could wait. Snape turned to the teachers' table where he knew eyes were fixed on the pair of them, and gave McGonagall a thumbs-up. She clapped her hands in delight as Snape and the short dumpy herbologist rushed from the Great Hall with nothing on their minds except the mandrakes and the Restorative Draught for those in the hospital.

In the warm dampness of the greenhouse, both professors fixed plugs into their ears, and then Sprout pulled one of the mandrakes halfway out of its pot. The root opened its mouth immediately and began screaming, but neither of them could hear it. Snape prodded it. It was just the right texture for the decoction. Together he and Sprout selected two others, wrapped the three pots in blankets and carried them into the school.

Returning to the Great Hall, Snape announced, "I need prefects, prefects from all houses for about fifteen minutes." Twenty-three students rose to join him, the twenty-fourth being Miss Clearwater, petrified in the hospital wing. In the entrance hall he gathered them around him.

"This is simple," he told them, "but vitally important. In a few moments, Professor Sprout and I will be in my office dispatching the mandrakes for the Restorative Draught. No one can be within hearing of them when they cry out. Slytherin prefects, go into the dormitories and be sure no one is still anywhere in Slytherin house. You other prefects, check every corridor and room in the dungeons, and get everyone out here into the entrance hall. When all's ready, you'll guard the staircase while Professor Sprout and I kill the mandrakes. Then you can go back to breakfast.

It was, in fact, amazing how many students were in the dungeon area. When the prefects reported all clear, Snape and Sprout went into his office, donned their earplugs and, pulling the mandrakes one by one from their pots, quickly cut off their tops and split each one down the middle. The resemblance of the roots to human children was somewhat distressing, but Snape tried to think of lobster bisque and crab Louie. Taken in a larger context, it was not so bad.

All of Snape's classes for the day were canceled, and his students told to remain in their common rooms until their next classes. This included, of course, his morning double session with the first years. He'd chopped the roots into a medium dice and begun stewing them with rosemary, bay, and a few cinnamon sticks (How many people realize that potions are not dissimilar to cooking?), when McGonagall's voice came to him on the intercom system.

"All students to return to their house dormitories at once. All teachers return to the staff room. Immediately, please."

Snape checked his equipment to be sure everything was brewing nicely, then hurried to the staff room.

Despite his proximity, Snape was not the first there, Flitwick was. They stood together as one by one their colleagues filtered into the room. The last to arrive was McGonagall.

"It has happened," she announced almost at once. "A student has been taken by the monster. Right into the Chamber itself."

Amid the gasps and cries of surprise, Snape looked down and realized he was gripping the back of a chair so tightly that his knuckles were white. Staring straight at McGonagall, he said, "How can you be sure?" and heard his own voice rasping hoarse and unnatural in the stillness.

McGonagall glanced around. "The Heir of Slytherin left another message. Right underneath the first one. 'Her skeleton will lie in the Chamber forever.'"

"Who is it? Which student?" asked Madam Hooch.

McGonagall looked grave. "Ginny Weasley," she said. "We shall have to send all the students home tomorrow. This is the end of Hogwarts. Dumbledore always said…"

The staff room door banged open. "So sorry – dozed off – what have I missed?"

It was Gilderoy Lockhart.

It was too much to take, on top of everything else, that they would have to deal with Lockhart, too. A glance around the room showed that the entire staff was agreed and looked to their natural leaders, the four heads of houses, for action.

Snape advanced towards Lockhart, trying to keep his voice moderate. "Just the man, the very man. A girl has been snatched by the monster, Lockhart. Taken into the Chamber of Secrets itself. Your moment has come at last."

This was so clearly not what Lockhart wanted that he went white as a ghost. Sprout moved in for her turn.

"That's right, Gilderoy. Weren't you saying just last night that you've known all along where the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets is?"

"I – well – I –" but Flitwick cut him off.

"Yes, didn't you tell me you were sure you knew what was inside it?"

"D-did I? I don't recall..."

Snape pounced again. "I certainly remember you saying you were sorry you hadn't had a crack at the monster before Hagrid was arrested. Didn't you say that the whole affair had been bungled, and that you should have been given a free rein from the first?"

"I – I really never – you may have misunderstood..."

To McGonagall went the honors of pounding in the last nail. "We'll leave it to you, then, Gilderoy. Tonight will be an excellent time to do it. We'll make sure everyone's out of your way. You'll be able to tackle the monster all by yourself. A free rein at last."

"V-very well. I'll – I'll be in my office, getting – getting ready." And Lockhart was gone.

The first concern was that no other students be attacked. McGonagall ordered the teachers into the corridors and onto the grounds to be sure that no single student in the whole school was outside the dormitories. Heads of houses were to go to their common rooms for a head count and to advise the students to start packing their things, for the school would be evacuated the next morning.

All were to return to the staff room as soon as they were sure that every other student had been accounted for, and that the school was clear.

"I have sent owls," McGonagall informed the rest, once they'd gathered again shortly after noon, "to the Board of Governors, to the Ministry and, of course, to the Weasleys, informing them of what has happened. Oh, and to Professor Dumbledore as well, but that was not an official owl. I have also arranged with the Hogwarts Express for a special run down to London tomorrow, and we've started getting the owls out to the other parents, though that will take some time to complete, telling them the children will be at King's Cross late tomorrow afternoon. Now, what do we know, and what can we do?" She looked at Snape.

"There is a good chance that what we're dealing with is a basilisk," he told them. "So far we've never had two attacks close together, so I would guess it's returned to its lair to rest. I have no idea why it would take Miss Weasley, since so far all the victims have been muggle-born and she's a pureblood, unless that was just coincidence."

"Ginny did look a bit upset at breakfast this morning," said McGonagall. "I wonder if there's any connection."

"Can we try to rescue her? Do we know how this thing gets into the Castle?" asked Madam Hooch.

"I fear she is probably already dead," replied McGonagall. "And we don't have a clue how it gets in or how it moves around undetected."

"Master Creevey was attacked on the stairs between the ground floor and the first floor," said Snape, "Mrs. Norris on the second floor, Miss Granger and Miss Clearwater on the fourth floor near the Library, and Master Finch-Fletchley and Sir Nicholas on the fifth floor. We don't know where Miss Weasley was taken, but the messages were on the second floor."

"The girl fifty years ago was rumored to have been killed in the second floor bathroom," said McGonagall. "Might there be a connection?"

"I don't know how. The Chamber, if build by Slytherin, is nearly a thousand years old. The bathrooms are less than a hundred years old. I would suspect the Chamber of being underground, but we've never seen any sign of the monster in the dungeon or kitchen area." Snape looked to Professor Sprout for confirmation, and she nodded.

The teachers went out again to search the whole Castle for possible ways the monster may have entered. Snape started to join them when he was blocked by McGonagall. "And where do you think you're going? You march right back to your office and work on that Restorative Draught, young man. I want those people in the hospital unpetrified and on the train tomorrow with the other students."

Snape nodded and returned to his potions work.

All afternoon the teachers searched the school, and all afternoon Snape worked on his potion. Sprout dropped in from time to time to see how he was getting on and bring him news.

"Molly Weasley's arrived. Arthur's still at the Ministry, but he'll be here soon. Have you ever met her?"

"After a fashion. She's come to Quidditch games and we've been introduced. A woman of great strengths, it would seem. Pass the flax seed, please."

Well after nightfall, the potion was in its last stages of brewing, and Snape was getting it down to the proper concentration when there was a knock on his office door.

"Come," he called, unable to leave the bubbling concoction.

Dumbledore walked into the office. "They said you would be hard at work. How is it coming?"

"You have no idea how pleased I am to see you. If it weren't for the potion, I'd be tempted to hug you."

"It has been that bad, eh?"

"Worse. At least the Restorative Draught'll be ready in about an hour."

"Lockhart is gone."

Snape almost stopped stirring the potion. "I knew he didn't really want to face the monster, but I didn't think he'd just pack up and leave. All we wanted to do was get him out of our hair."

"He has not packed and left. At least he has not finished packing – he was clearly in the process. No, he is gone. We do not know where, though we know he has not left the grounds."

Snape stared down at the surface of the potion. "You don't think he really knew where the entrance to the Chamber was, do you? After all our teasing, could it be true that he really went to fight the monster?"

"I would be very surprised, but it is nonetheless another mystery. Do let me know when you take that up to Madam Pomfrey."

An hour and a half later, Snape knocked at the door of McGonagall's office on his way to the hospital wing with the doses of Restorative Draught. He was reintroduced to the Weasleys, who seemed remarkably calm under the circumstances, and then he went to see Madam Pomfrey.

The patients had to be brought around one by one so that the two of them could deal with muscle cramps, nausea, and congestion before moving on to the next one. It was a tedious process, but quite successful considering that Creevey had been petrified for nearly seven months.

Just as they finished reviving Granger and were about to start on Clearwater, Madam Pomfrey looked towards the door, dropped the spoon she was holding, and clapped a hand to her mouth. Turning in surprise, Snape saw Arthur and Molly Weasley. Standing between them, looking very sheepish, was Ginny.

"Oh, child," gasped Pomfrey, "are you all right? Come over here quickly, let me look at you. Sit down on the bed here. Professor can you continue with Miss Clearwater on your own? You must be Miss Weasley's parents – please sit here…" Pomfrey rolled up the hospital privacy curtains and shielded the Weasleys from view.

Snape got Clearwater sitting up with a glass of pumpkin juice and started on Mrs. Norris and Sir Nicholas. He was burning, absolutely burning, with curiosity, but needed to work slowly and carefully to see that the patients would recover well.

Finally able to leave the hospital wing, Snape was surprised to find the corridors filled with students making their way to the Great Hall. Descending the stairs, he spied McGonagall.

"What's happening?"

"Oh, it's so exciting! Potter found the Chamber of Secrets and killed the monster! You were right. It was a basilisk, but it's gone now. Dumbledore has ordered a feast."

Snape looked around. He could see Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, and Hufflepuff students, but no one coming up from the dungeons.

"Um, I don't want to be pushy or anything, but has anyone told Slytherin house?"

"Each house has been told by its head. We thought that would be… Oh! You were in the hospital weren't you?"

"That's all right. I'll get them up now." And Snape went down into the dungeon to the Slytherin common room to tell his students the good news and send them up to the feast.

Snape was in Dumbledore's office the next day, discussing the details.

"So, the Dark Lord was never really involved. You're sure. You know one hundred percent that he had nothing to do with this."

"One hundred percent, Severus, at least not Riddle as he is today, so you can relax."

"Not Riddle as he is today. Why don't I like the sound of that?"

Dumbledore reached into a drawer of his desk. "Here. Look at this."

Snape took the mutilated book carefully, wondering why it seemed familiar. Then he remembered. "This is the appointment book Potter took back from Malfoy on Valentine's Day. What happened to it? It looks like someone stabbed it, like it's been bleeding ink."

"Turn it over."

Snape did and read the name 'Tom Marvolo Riddle.' "This was his?" he asked. "How did Potter get hold of it?"

"It seems it was among the possessions of Lucius Malfoy, who only knew about it that it was somehow connected with opening the Chamber of Secrets. He wanted to discredit Arthur Weasley. It seems Weasley's section of the Ministry is conducting raids to uncover illegal artifacts. Malfoy reasoned that if a member of Weasley's family were responsible for opening the Chamber, Weasley would be sacked. Malfoy slipped it among Ginny Weasley's books in Diagon Alley. Look at it more carefully."

Snape turned the thing over in his hands, then noted how none of the pages had writing, how the ink had issued from the holes like blood from wounds. "Potter stabbed it?"

"With a basilisk fang."

"Would Miss Weasley truly have died?"

"Oh yes. She was nearly dead when Potter found her."

"Yet walked quite easily into the hospital wing shortly thereafter. Tell me, did Potter see Riddle?"

"Saw him, spoke with him, was threatened by him… Destroying Riddle, a teenage Riddle, by stabbing the book was how Potter saved Ginny Weasley's life."

Snape leaned forward and carefully placed the book in front of Dumbledore. "I've read about them. Never saw one before."

Dumbledore peered over his glasses. "You are saying you know what it is?"

"And you keep saying I would make a poor Dark Arts instructor. It's a kind of Horcrux."

"A kind of Horcrux?"

"It's just that I would expect it to bring back a more recent version of Riddle, not a fifty-year-old one. And not with something so simple as one girl's sacrifice. But then no one knows everything there is to know about Horcruxes."

"You would make an excellent Dark Arts instructor. What I keep saying is that I do not want you for my Dark Arts instructor. Not yet, anyway."

"So there's still hope?"

"Only if the world becomes much darker than it is today. But back to the question at hand. Does not the existence of this disturb you?"

"Not really. It's been destroyed. That means Riddle can't use it to come back in full bodily form."

"What if it is not the only one?"

Snape looked at his hands, at the floor, the fireplace, the diary, and then at Dumbledore. "It's foolish to make one Horcrux. To make more is the depth, breadth, and height of folly."

"And yet if anyone could do it, it would be Tom Riddle. I do not believe a more intelligent student ever passed through the doors of Hogwarts."

"I see. To be thought intelligent one needs a psychopathic personality and a desire to rule…"

"I said intelligent. I did not say wise."

"Sorry, Sir. I was out of line. I was wondering if you could explain a few more things to me. I'm still trying to figure out how I could've been so wrong."

"Wrong? I did not think you were wrong. You realized it was a basilisk."

"A big basilisk from what McGonagall tells me. Twenty feet long and as big around as a small tree. Where did it come from? How did it move around the school?"

"Why, in the plumbing system, of course. The entry to the Chamber was under a sink in the second floor girl's lavatory."

"That's not possible."

"No? Why not?"

"First, Salazar Slytherin lived a thousand years ago. Flush toilets are about one hundred fifty years old, and the lavatories here were installed just before World War I. Why didn't the crew that put in the plumbing notice that they were connecting it to the Chamber of Secrets? Then, there are no pipes used in the interiors of buildings that can accommodate a twenty-foot long basilisk."

"How do you know this?"

"Common knowledge. Muggle knowledge. Something a pureblood would never think of."

"Only muggle-borns and half-bloods. Riddle was a half-blood. Did you know? Raised a muggle in a muggle orphanage. Of my three boys, you were the only one who knew he was a wizard before getting his invitation to Hogwarts."

"I didn't know that. So maybe he altered the plumbing to further his plans with the basilisk. It would've been a difficult and time-consuming job."

"Something he probably planned for years. He was the long-term planner. You are more the short- to medium-term planner. Potter hardly plans things at all."

"Why couldn't we find the entrance? We searched the lavatories."

"Ah, but to open it you needed to be a Parselmouth. The teachers searched in the afternoon. Potter opened it later that night."

"Does Lucius know he helped destroy Riddle's Horcrux? The Dark Lord will not be pleased."

"He has no clue. It will be a rude awakening."

"One other thing. May I take a crew of students down into the Chamber before they all go home?"

"Whatever for?"

"That basilisk was down there for decades. It would have sloughed its skin about once a year. Do you have any idea how valuable basilisk skin is for potions work? I'll keep as much as I think I'll need – for the rest of my life – and we could sell the rest to make money for the school."

"An excellent idea. You have my permission."

Hagrid returned, Gryffindor – to no one's surprise – won the House Cup, the students returned home, and the teachers were once again on their own for a few days as they locked things down for the summer break. Lockhart was sent to St. Mungo's, what sympathy there had been for him having died when it was learned that the spell that took his memory had been intended for Ronald Weasley.

It was only then that Professor Kettleburn informed them that he was retiring from his post as Care of Magical Creatures instructor. So there were two positions to be filled for the following school year.

They held a roast.

"I don't want to say that Professor Kettleburn has been here for a long time," McGonagall confided to the assembled teachers, "but my grandmother took her OWL in his class, and even then he was talking about retiring."

Dumbledore spoke of Kettleburn's versatility. "He could have taught any class better than most of the teachers sitting before me now. A much better professor of Muggle Studies than Trelawney, superior in Flying instruction to Snape, his Arithmancy outclassed Sprout – in fact the most well rounded teacher we have ever had in the school."

"I was privileged to know students who studied under Professor Kettleburn at the height of his powers," Snape said when it was his turn. "and his lessons were always geared toward the practical. It was he who showed us that Horklumps develop a fondness for wizard ear after the first bite, and that when presented with the possibility of a finger as a snack, a two-week-old Pogrebin is capable of jumping five feet. In fact, until I heard about Kettleburn's class I was totally unaware that flesh-eating slugs were supple enough to squeeze into a hole the diameter of a human nostril."

Having said farewell to Kettleburn and wishing each other a pleasant vacation, the teachers left Hogwarts for their various homes. Snape arrived at his own cozy house at Spinner's End toward evening of a beautiful June day, glad to have put that year behind him and looking forward to a few weeks of peaceful solitude.

_One thing is for certain. Next year has to be better than that one._

27


	40. Chapter 40 – Facing Fears

**Two More for Azkaban: Facing Fears**

_Sunday, August 1, 1993 (the full moon)_

Severus Snape finished locking and securing his home in Spinner's End. Aside from the general spells needed to prevent such mundane occurrences as vandalism and break-ins, he also needed to be sure the little town never noticed the old end of the street and its curious lack of electricity, gas, or any civic improvement for the past twenty years or so. _All I need is a bed and breakfast or a shopping mall in the neighborhood and I'd have to move to Hogwarts permanently._ Everything ready, and his Gladstone bag in hand, Professor Snape concentrated on the outskirts of the village of Hogsmeade in northern Scotland and disapparated.

"There you are," growled a hoarse voice practically in his left ear. "Spot on time."

"Good morning to you, too, Moody. Catch anybody this summer?"

"Lose anybody, you mean. Not that it had anything to do with me, but now there's a vacancy, I thought I might interest you in that vacation I'm always on about."

"Sweet man. So considerate. Try me next year."

"Can't guarantee the same rates next year. Right now it's a bargain."

"Have a thoroughly boring year, Moody."

Alastor Moody laughed heartily as he disapparated back to London. Snape watched the spot where he'd been for a moment, then set off through the town toward the Hogwarts gates. He didn't think he was any earlier than usual, yet Hogsmeade seemed abnormally quiet, as if everyone was still at home asleep.

Approaching the gate, Snape saw Professor Trelawney pacing back and forth, shawls wrapped around her thin shoulders even in the rather warm air. "Good morning, Sibyll," he said, knowing that Trelawney would probably talk his ear off, "Filch not down yet to get the gate?"

"It is part of the doom that hangs over us all, Severus. While Filch tarries in his duty we might be murdered just here, at the very threshold of safety. Mark my words, there will be death at Hogwarts this year."

"I've always admired how you can remain so stoically calm in the face of constant tragedy."

"Have you, indeed? It is not everyone gifted with the Sight that can do so. O where is that Filch? I fear we are in great peril."

"Is there something specific you're concerned with, or just a general sense of foreboding?"

"O Severus, it is that horrible, horrible Black person. They say he is intent on coming to Hogwarts. Is it not so dreadful?"

_Steady, Severus. You haven't read a Daily Prophet in a month, and now Sibyll Trelawney knows something you don't. Stay cool, and she'll never find out_. "I don't think we're in any danger right at this moment, Sibyll. And here comes Filch now, so everything's in order."

Filch opened the magically protected gate, and Trelawney scuttled up the hill to the castle as if hellhounds were at her heels. "Seems a mite skittish," commented Filch.

"Just the recent news. Have you…uh… heard anything more?"

"He's been sighted half a dozen places at the same time. Makes me think folks are more nervous than observant. Then again, a bloke that can get out of Azkaban can most like do anything."

_That explains Moody's remarks, too. A vacancy he wants me to fill._ "They're certain to pick him up fairly soon, though, don't you think?"

"I'd be surprised if he didn't give them the slip. He always was a sly character. You'll know as much about that as anyone, I guess, seeing how often the two of you battled it out in school. My, my, if ever I found slime in the Slytherin corridors or writing on the Gryffindor walls, I could bet my last knut that either Sirius Black or Severus Snape was behind it. No offense, sir, but there were times I wanted to wring your neck."

"None taken," said Snape automatically, but he wasn't listening to Filch anymore. He felt as if he'd been punched in the stomach. As soon as he could, he left Filch and hurried to his own office in the dungeon to digest this shocking news. And as clearly as if it were yesterday, he could hear his own voice coming to him from those dark November days in the hospital wing twelve years earlier:

"If Sirius Black ever gets out of Azkaban, I'll kill him myself."

In the cool dimness of the dungeon office, Snape paced like a caged thing. From a long boarded-up well of memories, emotions gushed like new-tapped oil, dark, viscous, and suffocating. Grief was there, as fresh and wrenching as it had been that Halloween night when he stood, alone and despairing, on the parapet of the Astronomy tower. Guilt was there too, a driving red-hot prod. Overreaching them both was hatred, raw and unyielding. Hatred for the Dark Lord, who hunted rivals like a ravening beast. Hatred for himself, who had given the beast Lily as prey. Hatred for James Potter, who had sacrificed wife and child on the altar of schoolboy sentiment. But above all, hatred for Sirius Black, who had duped his best friend and sold friend, wife, and child to the beast.

Without thought, Snape had picked up and set down jars, paperweights, and vials. He wheeled now and hurled a jar into the fireplace, shattering the glass to slivers with the force of its impact and showering the fireplace and hearth with newts' eyes and green embalming fluid.

There was, at that moment, a tap at the office door. "Severus. Severus, I should like to come in and speak with you." It was Dumbledore.

"Go away and leave me alone!" Snape screamed at the door. "I don't want you! I don't need you!"

"I will not go away, Severus. Now is not a time for you to be alone. If you will not admit me, I shall stay here and listen and wait. I shall not leave you."

"You're a meddling old fool!"

"Yes, and I shall continue to meddle and be foolish while there is breath in my body. Let me in, Severus, and I promise you may yell and shout at me to your heart's content. It is a time for anger. I shall not take that from you."

Suddenly tired and deflated, Snape walked to the door, unlocked it, and opened it to Dumbledore. Behind the Headmaster came Hagrid, and Snape's fury bubbled up anew.

"I don't need a nursemaid!"

"No, of course not. Hagrid is not here to coddle you. He is here to protect me. We understood you might be… destructive." Dumbledore nodded towards the green ooze trickling down the stonework of the fireplace.

"Who told you?"

"Filch. He, too, has known you since you were eleven, and there is a certain icy calm about you that generally precedes a volcanic eruption. Filch is not entirely blind to this. He merely commented that it appeared an explosion was about to occur in the dungeon."

"I believe he used the word 'nuclear,'" said Hagrid.

"Sirius Black has escaped from Azkaban Prison."

"Yes, and you must have just heard of it for this to be so immediate a crisis."

"How did it happen? Why?"

"They do not know. Something triggered him to think again of young Potter. He was heard to mutter in his sleep, 'He is at Hogwarts.' He has always shown some resistance to the dementors at Azkaban and managed to give them the slip. They are expecting him to come here after Potter."

"He must be stopped. He must not be allowed to harm the boy."

"For the boy's sake, Severus, or to foil Black?"

"Does it matter?"

"For your sake it might matter very much. Remember that the boy is Lily's son, and for that alone we must strive to preserve him. Remember also, that while evil should not go unpunished, vengeance and justice are seldom the same thing. Are you calmer now?"

"I think so."

"Good. Lunch will be served to the staff in about half an hour, and it would be well if you were there. Hagrid will stay with you for a while. Do not bristle, he is watching out for the school's interests. Many of these items are quite expensive, and Hagrid will ensure that if you chuck anything else at the fireplace, it will come from your private stores and not the school's stocks."

"Thank you, Headmaster," said Snape, breathing a bit more easily. "I think I'll be able to make it to lunch.

Snape and Hagrid went in to lunch together, no more expensive potions ingredients having been spilled in the meantime. Since there were no students, and would not be for a month, the teachers were able to gather around a table in the center of the Great Hall in a more collegial spirit than usual. Hagrid joined them, which he only occasionally did. Today, however, he had a reason for doing so.

"Well, well," Dumbledore began after they were all settled in. "I do hope you all had a quiet, restful summer break. There are several things we need to talk about, but there is no reason we have to wait lunch. We can discuss things as we eat."

Food appeared on the tables as the house-elves sent up the first of the year's many delicious meals, one of the reasons, if truth be told, why the teachers kept coming back to the school year after year.

"Now," continued Dumbledore, "down to business. First, there are two vacancies on the staff that have not yet been filled: Defense against the Dark Arts, and Care of Magical Creatures. The Dark Arts post is particularly difficult, since the rumor has gotten about that there is no job security. I do have one likely prospect whom I shall be able to contact in a couple of days, but he may not be able to arrive at the school until the very start of term."

Snape said nothing. Most of the teachers knew that he would take the Dark Arts job like a shot, but he never spoke of it to Dumbledore as an actual request except in private.

"As to the Magical Creatures position, there have been a few applications, but the best candidate so far both in terms of expertise and of rapport with the students has been Rubeus Hagrid." Dumbledore paused as the teachers gasped in surprise and turned to congratulate Hagrid, who seemed a touch embarrassed. _That's why he came to the table with us. Dumbledore told him to. I wonder if he'll ask for advice on lesson planning._

Dumbledore tapped a glass for silence. "Now we come to the matter of school security. As you all probably know, Sirius Black has escaped from Azkaban Prison. There is reason to believe that he is insane, and that he is obsessed with the idea of attacking Harry Potter. For those of you unaware of Black's history, he was the Secret Keeper who revealed to Voldemort the location of James and Lily Potter, causing their deaths and the destruction of Voldemort. The guards at Azkaban and the Ministry of Magic are both convinced that Black has always wanted to finish the job by destroying Harry as well."

When Dumbledore began speaking of Black, Snape leaned back in his chair and folded his arms, holding the left arm tight against his body in anticipation of what Dumbledore would say. He was thus able to conceal from the others the sharp stab of pain that, at the mention of Voldemort's name, lanced through the Dark Mark tattooed there. Dumbledore knew of it, but there was no reason the others needed to.

"The Ministry," Dumbledore went on, "has asked that all the defenses at Hogwarts be strengthened, and that we be particularly vigilant until Black is recaptured. We do not wish to frighten the students unnecessarily, but we also do not wish to give Black the opportunity to move freely on the grounds.

"On a more mundane note, September first this year is a Wednesday, and so there will be no extra day between the arrival of the Express and the start of classes. Heads of houses will have to interview the new first years during their spare time in the course of the first week. Everyone else is requested not to impose on the heads while they are thus occupied. I believe that is all the business we have for today."

General conversation broke out as the teachers relaxed and gossiped after six weeks of separation from each other.

As Snape expected, Hagrid did want advice on lesson planning.

"It's just that I ain't never had no training t' be a teacher, and I'd like t' do a good job at it, you know."

"None of us had any training, Hagrid. There are no wizard universities or teacher training colleges. Only muggles actually try to prepare people for the jobs they do. We all picked it up by trial and error."

"So what did trial and error show you, if ya don't mind my asking?"

"Establish rules at the outset and be fierce about enforcing them. You can always relax later on, but if you're lax at the beginning, you've lost them. Evaluate their skills at the outset so you know what they need. Try to catch their interest, but don't go overboard. Remember you're there to teach them, not entertain them. Start with the easy things and work your way up to the hard ones. Those are the basics, except for the most important rule."

"What's that?"

"No matter what they do, try not to kill them. I haven't broken that one yet, though every year I'm tempted."

"Thanks. I'll keep it in mind."

Dumbledore sought out Snape after lunch, too.

"I am very much afraid that I shall have to impose on your good nature, Severus."

"I don't have a good nature to impose on," replied Snape, who was busy inventorying materials in the Potions classroom.

Dumbledore ignored this. "Since we have no way of getting a Dark Arts instructor until the last minute, I need someone to see that the classroom, office, and private quarters are in order. General cleaning and straightening up will be done by house-elves, but they cannot check materials and equipment. Would you mind?"

"You do just love rubbing salt into wounds, don't you?"

"I knew I could count on you."

"Just don't make me teach his classes as well."

"I shall keep that in mind."

After supper Snape went down to the lake, and in the gathering dusk lit by a full moon he skipped stones across the placid water. It was a muggle skill Lily'd taught him when they were twelve.

_Do you remember, Lily, the night we broke curfew, stole a telescope, and came out here to try to see the Lunar Landing Module in the Sea of Serenity? It was a moon almost like this one, full and beautiful. There are two full moons this month - one on the first, and the blue moon on the thirtieth. A bad month to be a…_

Snape stopped, the stone poised in his hand. _Why did I think of him? Probably because thinking of Lily, James, and Sirius it's only natural to think of Remus, too. Still, it does fit eerily into what Dumbledore was saying about not being able to contact the new teacher for a couple of days, and his not being able to arrive until September first. The day after the next full moon cycle. If it were a werewolf, he'd be so tired he'd probably sleep during the whole train ride. Silly thought, though. Even Dumbledore isn't altruistic enough to give a teaching position to someone who'd kill children once a month. Twice in August._

_Kill children. Kill a child. Kill Lily's child._ Snape's thoughts returned to Sirius Black. _Dumbledore says it makes a difference if I try to stop Sirius because I hate Sirius or because I want to save Harry. I disagree. Sirius deserves to die. If it saves Harry, all the better, but Sirius deserves to die. I only hope that when it happens I have a chance to be part of it. But don't worry, Lily. I would never let anyone hurt your son._

It was late when Snape finally returned to his rooms in the dungeon to sleep.

xxxxxxxxxx

Two weeks later, Dumbledore found Snape in the Dark Arts office, checking audiovisual equipment to see if the old magic lantern and wind-up Victrola still worked, since neither Quirrell nor Lockhart had used either.

"You might," Snape said as Dumbledore walked in, "consider having electricity run into the castle so that we could get some decent equipment."

"I shall put that on my list of things to do right after oil lamps and fountain pens. We do not want to rush into things too quickly."

"Plumbing was put in early."

"Ah, but that had an immediate practical application. Have you ever used a chamber pot?" Not waiting for an answer, Dumbledore continued. "I did want to tell you that we definitely have a Dark Arts teacher who will arrive on the train."

"Really. Who is it?"

"An old acquaintance of yours. Remus Lupin."

Snape straightened slowly. "I don't think that's wise, Headmaster."

"I am not surprised by your reaction. It is as I expected, which is why I wanted to tell you first and in private. Sit down, Severus, please. We need to talk about this."

"It's insane! It is absolutely insane! How can you hire a werewolf to teach children?"

"Now Severus, it is not as bad as you seem to…" Dumbledore was unable to finish.

"Not bad! Like it wasn't bad when you exposed all of us to a possible attack when I was a student here? You do remember that he came this close to killing me? I don't exactly have fond memories of that occasion."

"That was not Remus's fault."

"No, it was his friend Sirius Black's fault. And, oh my goodness, his friend Sirius Black has just escaped from Azkaban, is coming to Hogwarts to find and kill Harry Potter, and you're letting his old chum the werewolf in as a teacher and an accessory before, during, and after the fact!"

"Severus, you are once again working yourself into an apoplexy. You have no cause whatsoever to think that Remus is helping Sirius. Now you must remember that Remus was James and Lily's friend as well and, maybe even more to the point, Peter Pettigrew's friend. He has as much reason to want Sirius recaptured as you do."

"He's still a werewolf. He's still dangerous."

"You cannot fool me. I know that you know about the werewolf potion that was discovered five years ago. You cannot tell me you did not learn how to make it."

"Some werewolves are allergic to it, and others are immune. It isn't foolproof."

"Remus has been taking it with considerable success. You can help him."

"Me? I've just inventoried his supplies, checked his equipment, put his filing cabinets in order, changed the locks on his doors, and you want me to make him a potion – a very complex and time-consuming potion – every month? And another thing…"

"I knew there was going to be another thing."

"While he's off being a wolf three days out of the month – who's going to take his classes?"

"I thought we would all chip in and help."

"I hate this year already."

"As long as we are all agreed." And Dumbledore retreated, leaving Snape with a vicious desire to smash glass.

xxxxxxxxxx

_Monday, August 30, 1993 (the full moon)_

Once again Snape was down by the lake after supper, this time huddled next to Lily's rock with his head on his knees.

_I don't know what to do, Lily. I realize he was your friend, but he was never mine. We had a truce at the end, but Lily – a truce was the best we ever got. He always followed Sirius's lead. The first time I ever saw him was when the four of them jumped me at the beginning of third year. And when they attacked me in front of the whole school he was a prefect – a prefect!- and he didn't say one word or lift one finger to stop them. Dumbledore wants me to trust him, but how can I? Sirius Black's little toady._

_Everything's changing this year, Lily. I'm losing my bearings. Dumbledore isn't wise, Hagrid isn't sturdy – you should see how nervous and timid he is about this class. Who can I talk to that understands the problem? Madam Pomfrey knows. She used to treat Lupin when he was a student. I'll have to sound her out._

_I'm beginning to really dread seeing Draco Malfoy. I'm sure he was acting as his father's spy last year. It'll be worse this year since Lucius isn't on the Board of Governors any more. Draco will be his only source of information for what's going on here. I'm going to have to be very careful around him._

_And then there's Harry. I'm sorry, Lily, I don't like your son. He's too much like James – arrogant, self-centered, never thinking before he jumps into things. I wish I could see you in him, but it isn't there. I promise you, though, that I will do everything in my power to see that he's not hurt. If I have to face Sirius, or Remus, or even Dumbledore. Everything in my power._

The lights were still on in Dumbledore's tower office when Snape finally returned to his rooms in the castle. _Is he watching me?_ Something else to worry about.

xxxxxxxxxx

_He walked by the lake shore in the early evening looking for Lily. A nightingale sang, and the air was perfumed with summer flowers. They were to meet for the rocket launch from the island in the lake's center, and a pavilion was erected for the event. A cool breeze swept off the water to refresh the gathering crowds, refresh them and freeze the flowers._

_The flower he held had a heart of ice. Its fragile petals cracked, broke, and fell into the water. And from the icy petals frost spread into the lake, freezing its surface and trapping the swimmers, among them Lily and her baby. 'Severus,' she cried, 'Severus, you're killing me, killing me, killed me. You killed me. You.'_

_The people were pointing at him, crying 'Murder, murderer,' and he cried with them, 'I'm a murderer, murdered her, murdered…' as the people turned into frozen flowers and the flowers into birds. Black birds with tattered feathers and bloody beaks that pecked at his eyes and bored into his head and heart, drawing out his thoughts, his breath, his life… dying…_

Snape woke as his body hit the floor, but the dream didn't end. Cold bound his head like iron bands, and the ravens' beaks were long icy fingers that probed into his very soul and stripped warmth, light, joy from him leaving only despair as black as the birds themselves. He was powerless to run, powerless to fight, alone and dying in the cold.

From a great distance he heard a voice, Hagrid's voice muffled in cotton and fading into the freezing night, "They're by the dungeon windows! They're trying to get in through the dungeon!"

Then there was a crash and an explosion as Dumbledore, burning with fury, blasted his way into the room and cried with commanding power, _"Expecto Patronum!"_

Light flooded the room, beating against the cold and the thirsty raven fingers, freeing Snape from the frosty despair and leaving him gasping for breath on the cold stone floor of his dungeon quarters.

Hagrid came lumbering in. "Get him out of here!" Dumbledore yelled, and Hagrid dragged Snape from the room, half supporting him, half carrying him up to the entrance hall, where he pulled off his own coat and wrapped it around the shivering Snape.

All through the castle doors were banging as the teachers ran from their rooms, calling to each other, asking what was happening. Dumbledore came up from the dungeon, his wrath still blazing.

"Minerva!" he called, "come up with me to my office. Cornelius Fudge is coming in about fifteen minutes, whether he wants to or not, and we are going to get to the bottom of this. The rest of you, travel in threes and fours and be sure every possible entrance to the castle is sealed. We have just been surrounded by dementors from Azkaban."

They started up the stairs, but Dumbledore turned with one more order. "Hagrid, stay with Severus. Since they have already touched him, he may still be a target. Keep him warm and get him up to the hospital."

It was two o'clock in the morning.

Cornelius Fudge, the Minister of Magic, came at Dumbledore's bidding and stayed for breakfast. Snape was already out of the hospital, having been dosed with chocolate and warm blankets for a couple of hours, though Hagrid still hovered around him like a mother hen.

Dumbledore's anger hadn't faded. "I cannot tell you strongly enough how much I disapprove of dementors being allowed anywhere near Hogwarts. I cannot keep them away from the perimeter, but I will not allow them on the grounds."

"Albus, Albus, they aren't here to harm you, they're here to protect you." Fudge helped himself to eggs and bacon.

"Protect? They attacked one of my teachers."

Fudge lowered his voice and whispered something for Dumbledore's ear only. It may have been meant to pacify, but clearly didn't.

"Mr. Minister, I will thank you to treat my school and my staff with respect, and that includes keeping your dementors away from the grounds and from anyone associated with the school. I will not bargain with you on this. No dementors in Hogwarts."

After Fudge returned to the Ministry, Dumbledore addressed the teachers. "The Ministry of Magic has seen fit to surround Hogwarts with dementors in an effort to capture Sirius Black. While we all object to this measure, when we speak to the students we must treat the Ministry's orders with respect. It would serve no purpose to create an atmosphere of distrust or dissension."

Later, privately to Snape, Dumbledore said, "Tread carefully, Severus. Cornelius Fudge is of a mind that the dementors did not select you at random. He feels your former service may have attracted them to you. Do not give them an excuse to seek you out."

The teachers worked all that day and the next, the day of the students' arrival, to adjust their planned activities so as to keep the students away from Hogwarts's perimeter as much as possible during the school year. It was a long two days, but just after sundown on the evening of September first, they gathered in their good robes to go into the Great Hall for the welcoming and the Sorting ceremony. The train was due at any time.

Dumbledore appeared on a staircase landing. "Ladies and gentlemen," he said, and it was clear he was not happy, "there has been a delay. I have just received an owl from our new Dark Arts teacher that dementors have searched the Hogwarts Express. Under the circumstances, it will be better if you meet the students here, or even outside when the carriages arrive, not just heads of houses. Madam Pomfrey, Madam Hooch, Professor Burbage, if you would meet the boats and be prepared to assist the first years. Professor McGonagall, you may want to separate Master Potter and his friends and talk to them privately. It seems the dementors singled him out for attack."

The teachers separated, the desire to discuss the development overridden by the need to protect their charges. Snape went outside with McGonagall, Flitwick, and Sprout to assist any students from their houses who might need aid.

_They set dementors on children. You don't set dementors on children. Potter is what, thirteen?_ Snape shuddered at recalling his own experience. He kept a fire burning in his quarters now, to drive away the memory of the dementors' cold.

Soon the thestral carriages were climbing the hill, and hundreds of students descended from them to enter the castle for the Sorting and the feast. They seemed somewhat surprised, but also relieved to find all the teachers waiting at the entrance. The meeting with the dementors had shaken them considerably.

"Good evening, Professor Snape," said a familiar voice, and Snape turned to greet Draco Malfoy, flanked as usual by Vincent Crabbe and Gregory Goyle. Death Eater families, all of them.

"Good evening, Malfoy, Crabbe, Goyle. Welcome back. I trust you had a pleasant break."

"It was all right. Father specifically asked me to give you his greetings. He's still very interested in what goes on at Hogwarts."

_That was a warning if ever I heard one. Softly, Severus, softly_. "Send my regards to your father when next you write, Malfoy. I'm always pleased to hear from your family." Snape turned to check for more Slytherin students. Malfoy had other business to attend to as well, for Snape soon heard his voice ring out:

"You fainted, Potter? Is Longbottom telling the truth? You actually fainted?" He pushed his way forward to confront Lily's son. Snape heard no response but Malfoy's crowing again. "Did you faint as well, Weasley? Did the scary old dementor frighten you too, Weasley?"

Fury bubbled up in Snape as he wheeled toward the little group. _How dare he! How dare he talk of a dementor attack like it was some child's imaginary bogeyman hiding in a closet!_ Snape moved through the crowd of students, but someone else got there first.

"Is there a problem?" a soft, calm adult voice said, and Malfoy retreated. The incident was over, and the students broke apart to enter the castle and go to their places in the Great Hall. Snape found himself suddenly face to face with Remus Lupin.

It was an awkward moment.

"Severus," Lupin said, extending his hand. His face was drawn and grayish.

"Lupin," Snape replied, ignoring the hand entirely. "You look terrible. Wrong time of the month, maybe?"

"Dumbledore mentioned that you were teaching here. I was hoping to talk."

"I'm sure you'll want your things taken up to your rooms. They'll be starting the Sorting ceremony in about twenty minutes. Would you like to go upstairs to 'freshen up' after your long trip? Change, perhaps?"

"No, I'm all right. Wouldn't want to miss any of the Sorting."

"Come along, then."

"Severus," Lupin asked as he followed Snape into the Great Hall, "who was the boy who was teasing young Potter?"

"Draco Malfoy," Snape replied without pausing or turning around. "His father was an old 'colleague' of mine." If Lupin was smart, he would take the hint and be cautious around Malfoy. If not…

As they approached the teachers' table, Snape realized something had changed. The Dark Arts professor's seat had shifted down the table – Dumbledore had placed Hagrid between Snape and Lupin. _Should I feel relieved, or should I feel insulted? He doesn't trust us. Or maybe he just doesn't trust me._

The feast was, for all intents and purposes, a perfectly normal first day feast. The Sorting went smoothly, Dumbledore warned the students about the dementors, Lupin was introduced to lukewarm applause, and Hagrid's appointment was announced. At this last, the Gryffindor table went wild, which was only to be expected, while the other tables were more restrained – and yet still more enthusiastic than they'd been for Lupin.

Snape didn't eat much, but then he never did. Nor did he talk much. Hagrid was clearly too embarrassed at being with the teachers, and Lupin still too affected by werewolf sickness, to want to chat anyway. _He really does look awful. We're the same age, but his hair's going gray already, at thirty-three. Skin gray, too. We'll see if he looks any better tomorrow or Friday. It could just be that yesterday he was covered with fur and going on four paws. Not doing well financially either. Clothes all patched and worn. Who'd hire a werewolf besides Dumbledore?_

Lily's Potter son came into the Hall just after the Sorting, looking none the worse for wear. _He's almost exactly the age his father was the first time James and Sirius bullied and threatened me. Gad, he looks like James. Don't look at James, think of Lily. He must be resilient, though, to recover from a dementor attack so quickly._

Which brought up thoughts of Sirius Black. _No wonder he tried to escape. Twelve years living with dementors – how could anyone endure that? Deserve it – yes. He sold Lily to the Dark Lord. But endure it – anyone would try to escape. What if he isn't after Lily's son? What if he just wanted to escape? He's been punished for twelve years. If he comes here looking for the boy, I'll know his heart is still evil, but if he's just a refugee from dementors would I go out of my way to hunt him down?_

And of course, Draco Malfoy. _Has he changed since first year, or has he just become less concerned about concealing his mean streak? There was someone else involved, though – Longbottom. Longbottom told Malfoy that Lily's son fainted. Gave him the weapon, as it were. Is he really just an idiot – is it that simple? Or is he one of Draco's toadies, too? Either way, he's responsible for that scene outside._

"Severus? Severus."

Snape started out of his reverie. Lupin was leaning across Hagrid to speak to him. The feast was over and the students were rising from their places to go to their dormitories.

"Severus, Professor Dumbledore said you could show me my rooms. He said you'd locked them up for me and could release them into my control."

"Of course. It's getting late and you must be very tired after – the last couple of days." They left the Hall together.

"I imagine you're tired, too. One or two of the other teachers mentioned that you were attacked by a dementor in your sleep. It's one thing to know they're coming and try to prepare yourself, but as a complete…"

"I'd rather not talk about it, if you don't mind."

They climbed the stairs to the first floor Dark Arts classroom, where Snape undid the locking spells and let Lupin look around for a moment. Then they went up another flight to the office and private quarters. Again Snape released the doors into Lupin's control. "I trust you'll find everything in order."

"It's perfect. Severus, I know you spent a lot of time and effort getting the rooms ready for me, and I appreciate it very much. I wish we could resolve some of our differences and learn to live…"

"Why are you here?"

Lupin seemed taken aback by the abruptness of the question. "I needed a job. The Dark Arts position was open."

"I'm not talking about that. Why are you here now?"

"I'd think that would be very clear. Because of Sirius."

Snape nodded. "Ah, but on which side?" he said, and watched as puzzlement, comprehension, and anger flitted in turn across Lupin's face. "Good night, Lupin. You'll remember, of course, that breakfast is at seven. And classes start tomorrow."

"Good night, Severus. Thank you for your help."

"Don't mention it."

Snape returned to the unaccustomed warmth of his own rooms, but had difficulty sleeping. Aside from the too-fresh memory of the dementor, his brain was full of anger and confusion, of Malfoy and Longbottom, Black and Lupin, Lily and her son… He dozed fitfully shortly before dawn and awoke well after sunrise, groggy, bleary-eyed, and in a foul mood. Disturbed at being late for breakfast, he dressed hurriedly and made his way to the Great Hall.

"Y're going t' have t' do something about that Malfoy and his crowd," said Hagrid as Snape took his place at the teachers' table. "They been razzing Harry this morning about that dementor on the train, pretending t' faint and all and telling him dementors is coming."

Snape started to rise to go to the Slytherin table, but a firm hand on his right shoulder kept him in his seat. He turned slightly to see Lupin had moved to stand behind him. "I would prefer you didn't…" he began, but Lupin interrupted.

"Don't make a big thing out of it, Severus. Let it die. The boy can handle it."

"Malfoy doesn't let things die easily. And take your hand off my shoulder."

"Sorry. And no offense to you, Hagrid, but this doesn't need to be blown out of proportion with teachers taking sides." Lupin quietly sat down again and resumed eating his breakfast.

Snape spoke slowly and distinctly. "Are you aware that I am the head of Slytherin house, and that the behavior of those students is part of my responsibilities?"

Lupin's fork stopped halfway to his mouth. He reddened slightly. "No," he said, "I didn't know that." He set the fork down and faced Snape, though it was not easy talking around Hagrid's bulk. "It looks like I put my foot in it that time. I shouldn't have spoken out of turn. I'm…"

"Sorry. Yes, I know. You've made quite a career of telling me how sorry you are for things."

There was an awkward pause. Hagrid was making puffing sounds as if he was trying to get up the courage to intervene. Snape noticed that Dumbledore was watching their end of the table and wondered if he could feel the chill halfway across the breadth of the Hall. He would take Lupin's side, of course. Suddenly Snape didn't want to sit there any longer. "You will excuse me," he said frostily as he rose from his chair, "I have classes to prepare for."

"What about your breakfast?" Hagrid said.

"I'm not hungry." And Snape left the table, slipping smoothly along the side of the Hall and out the double doors.

There were footsteps hurrying behind him.

"Severus. Severus, wait please. We need to talk."

Snape turned as Lupin walked up to him. "I can think of nothing in particular to talk about."

"Why are you still so angry after all these years?"

"You don't understand, do you?"

"Do you?"

The question was so completely different from what Snape had been expecting that he had no answer. Neither yes nor no would be a proper response, and he had no desire to be dragged into longer explanations. Certainly not here. Certainly not now. Lupin was manipulating the conversation, but Snape was not going to play along.

"We must continue this delightful chat some other time, Lupin. I really am busy this morning."

Snape turned and headed for the dungeon. As expected, Lupin got in the last word.

"I look forward to it, Severus. Any time you're willing."

Once in his own quarters, Snape couldn't keep the question out of his mind. _What does he mean, do I understand? What's changed? What's happened to make it possible for me to stomach his presence? Why would he even entertain the thought?_

Then, because he really did have classes to teach, and because he didn't want to think about Lupin or his question, Snape began to shut down, carefully closing and locking all the mental and emotional doors that might inadvertently reveal something that he didn't want seen, didn't want to see, didn't want to exist.

A half hour later, Snape left his rooms for the Potions classroom to set up for the first lesson of the year.

During the second half of Snape's afternoon double Potions class, Professor Sinistra entered the classroom and motioned to him. "Thought you might like to know," she whispered. "One of your students has been taken to the hospital wing. Injured in his Magical Creatures class."

Snape felt the knot in his stomach tighten. He knew what was coming. "Which one?"

"Malfoy. He's been clawed by a Hippogriff."

_Not Hippogriffs for the first lesson, Hagrid. Not Hippogriffs. Temperamental, unpredictable creatures that can eviscerate a grown man with one swipe of their talons. And Malfoy. Why did it have to be Malfoy?_ "If you could let Madam Pomfrey know I'll be up at the end of the hour…"

xxxxxxxxxx

"Big, clumsy, half-wit oaf. They shouldn't let someone like that teach classes. He'll get every student in the school killed. Wait 'til Father hears about this. He'll have that lumpy menace sent up to Azkaban, and this time it'll take more than an owl to set him free." Malfoy was lying in a hospital bed with his right arm heavily swathed in bandages.

"Is it really that serious?" Snape whispered to Pomfrey.

"He's in no danger, if that's what you mean, but he may have scars. The gashes were deep, and they were down by the lake with no one who knew a healing charm. It took Hagrid several minutes to get him up here."

"Damn!" Snape swore under his breath. "Draco will play this for all it's worth, then Lucius will take it up another octave with the Board of Governors and the Ministry. I wouldn't make book on Hagrid's job at the moment, Poppy." Pomfrey returned to her office. Snape went back to Malfoy's bedside.

"Let's go over this again, Draco. Did you say anything that the beast might consider insulting? Please remember that Dumbledore will be interviewing all the witnesses, and if you're shown to be concealing anything it will weaken your case."

"Well, maybe I said it was ugly, but that was all, I swear it."

"Didn't Professor Hagrid warn you that insulting a Hippogriff is dangerous?"

"No. I don't recall him saying that at all."

"Maybe at a moment when you weren't paying attention?"

"You're taking his side! I'm telling Father you're taking his side! We all know what you were, what you are! How long 'll you last if Father gets the Ministry and the Board of Governors against you? Dumbledore can't protect you forever, you know."

"Once again we're talking about witnesses, Draco. Other students will contradict you. You won't win."

"Maybe not. But I could cause a lot of trouble for him just by trying. What do you care about him, anyway?"

"The school is in quite enough uproar over Sirius Black right now. Adding to it won't help anything."

"That's something else you should be happy about. Black's escape. He was on our side and now he wants to finish off Potter."

"I am surprised at you, Draco. Black's information brought about the Dark Lord's fall from power. Hardly something for you to be crowing about."

Malfoy was silent. It appeared it was an angle he hadn't considered. "How should I handle this?" he asked. "Father 'll want something."

"Better the beast than Hagrid. Keep the response appropriate to the injury. It will give you more credibility later."

"All right. I go along with you this time. But you'd better be nice to me or I'll change my mind and go for Hagrid."

xxxxxxxxxx

"He threatened me. And not subtly either. A direct threat."

"Draco?" Dumbledore poured sherry for Snape and himself, then joined him in front of the roaring fireplace. The large armchairs were warm and comfortable. "Just exactly what did Draco threaten you with, and how did you respond?"

"It wasn't logical. He accused me of siding with Hagrid, then implied Lucius could have me fired by going to the Board of Governors and the Ministry about my past – and present – and then said you couldn't protect me forever. It was as if he were angry because I was a Death Eater and because I was not a Death Eater at the same time. That's what… scares me."

"That is disturbing. It may have just been Draco talking without thinking. And you said…"

"I ignored it. I tried to act as if what he said wasn't important."

"That's excellent. Show him you are not afraid of him and keep him off balance."

"So what do I do now?"

"My sources tell me that what is left of Voldemort – I am sorry, I tend to forget over the summer. I hope that was not too painful. – what is left of Riddle is in Albania. We must assume that there is still some possibility that he will return. If he does, the fact that you may be able to rejoin him could be vital to our success. Make sure that Draco, and through him Lucius, sees that your heart is still on the 'right' side."

"And if Sirius Black comes to Hogwarts? If I have to make a choice between maintaining my role and protecting… him?"

"I doubt that choice will come to you. And he has a name, Severus. It is Harry."

"Thank you, Headmaster," said Snape, who left the office without meeting Dumbledore's eyes.

xxxxxxxxxx

_Morning of September 3, 1993_ _(JKRowling calls this a Thursday, though it would actually have had to have been a Friday.)_

There was a little flurry of activity outside the staff room the next morning. As Snape approached, the talk and whispers died down in a most suspicious manner. _Careful, Severus. Something is afoot._

McGonagall stepped forward. "Professor Snape, so fortunate that you're here. The staff room seems to have acquired some sort of creature during the night. We were hoping that you might be brave enough to confront it and discover what it is. You have much more experience with such things than the rest of us."

Snape looked around at the assembled teachers, all of them watching him with open admiration. Too much admiration. Badly acted admiration through which gleeful expectation seemed to bubble. "This is a trap, Minerva McGonagall, and I am not walking into it. What's in there?"

"Humph. I'm not telling. If you want to know, you'll just have to go in."

_How bad can it be if the whole staff is amused rather than frightened?_ "It is always best to play the curiosity card, Minerva. Much more effective." Snape reached for the door handle, and the other teachers crowded behind him as if eager to look into the room the instant he opened the door. _What is it they want to see that requires my presence?_

Snape opened the door. The teachers pressed forward to look, but there was nothing unusual in the staff room. Nothing at all. "What is this?" Snape started to say, but then the wardrobe began shaking and thumping.

Calmly closing the door again, Snape looked around at the rest of the staff. "That's a boggart," he said accusingly. "You were all hoping to see what I'm afraid of. You will notice, however, that it is the boggart that is afraid and hiding. Now if you will excuse me, I'm going to breakfast." He made his way through the clearly disappointed group and went into the Great Hall.

Hagrid and Lupin were already there, Hagrid being much quieter than usual. "There's a job for you," Snape told him as he took his seat. "It seems a boggart has taken up residence in the staff room. Probably trying to escape the dementors. It'll have to be cleared out."

"A boggart!" exclaimed Lupin. "Don't clear it out right away, Hagrid. That's perfect for my afternoon class. The whole third year curriculum is on dangerous creatures, and there's no better way to start than to show them straight off how to confront their fears."

"I don't know," said Hagrid, looking at Snape.

"It's in the wardrobe. It won't hurt anything. You can take care of it this evening."

It wasn't until much later that Snape realized he and Lupin had agreed on something.

Malfoy wasn't in Potions that morning. The third years were starting complex potion making, which required very careful attention to the preparation of fresh ingredients and the order and timing of their combination. The recipe was on a blackboard in front of the class, and Snape had spent some time going over the specifics. The potion for the day was a Shrinking Solution.

The first half of the session was taken up with explanations and preparation, so that when Malfoy did finally walk into the class at about the halfway point, most of the students were just starting the mixing.

The Slytherin students asked Malfoy how he was doing. The Gryffindor students, who had also witnessed Malfoy's injuries, did not. _Don't let it rankle. It would be the same if the situation was reversed._ Snape shooed the Slytherin students back to their places. "Settle down," he said.

Since Malfoy had just come from the hospital wing where Madam Pomfrey was in charge of his discharge, Snape didn't consider him tardy. There were only a few places left where Malfoy could set up his cauldron, and he chose a place next to Potter and Weasley.

"Sir," Malfoy called a moment later. "Sir, I'll need help cutting up these daisy roots because of my arm…"

Since Malfoy's arm was heavily bandaged and in a sling, it was impossible to argue with this. Snape, who'd been monitoring the class and knew that Weasley's preparations were already well along, didn't even look up. "Weasley, cut up Malfoy's roots for him," he ordered.

Everything seemed to be going well for just under a minute, then…

"Professor. Weasley's mutilating my roots, sir."

Snape went over to the table to look at Weasley's own perfectly shredded roots and the butcher's job he'd done on Malfoy's. _You insolent little puppy! You're deliberately trying to force me into a confrontation. You can't lay aside a grudge for thirty seconds to chop a daisy root? If I can spend hours putting Lupin's rooms in order, you can take half a minute on potions ingredients._

That wasn't what Snape said, however. What he said, in a smooth and controlled voice, was "Change roots with Malfoy, Weasley."

"But, sir!" Weasley actually acted as if he were the aggrieved party.

"Now."

Weasley obeyed.

Malfoy was obviously savoring the moment. "And, sir, I'll need this shrivelfig skinned." The look in the boy's eyes clearly said _Be nice to me._

_Don't push it_. Snape shifted his glance to the two Gryffindor boys. "Potter, you can skin Malfoy's shrivelfig."

Out of the corner of his eye, Snape saw Potter fling the shrivelfig contemptuously at Malfoy, but his attention was distracted as the liquid in a nearby cauldron changed suddenly from bright green to orange. _Is all of Gryffindor house conspiring against me today?_ The culprit was Longbottom.

_You! Spreading stories and giving people weapons to use against your friends. How fast did you scurry off to Malfoy to tell him about Lily's son and the dementor? Have you no thought for the consequences of your actions? Does anything penetrate that thick skull of yours?_

Snape realized with a start that he'd said the last sentence out loud. It didn't matter. The boy deserved it, and the words came spilling out. "Didn't you hear me… Didn't I state plainly… What do I have to do to make you understand, Longbottom?"

Another Gryffindor butted in. "Please, sir, please, I could help Neville…"

The icy calm that Filch would have recognized immediately came over Snape as he turned toward the offending girl. "I don't remember asking you to show off, Miss Granger," he said coldly, then turning back to Longbottom he gave the boy incentive to take more care – "At the end of this lesson we will feed a few drops of this potion to your toad and see what happens."

As the now very subdued class returned to its work, Snape went to his desk. _You're losing control, Severus. Why are you losing control?_ He began to shut down, jamming the anger, the frustration, the confusion into tightly sealed boxes, plugging the raging volcano, forcing himself to be still.

By the end of the lesson, Snape was quiet again. As promised, he tested Longbottom's potion on the boy's toad, and it worked perfectly. _Probably owing to help from Granger. _The students cleaned up and left the classroom. It was lunchtime.

Snape didn't go to the Great Hall for lunch. He had something more pressing to do. The forced calm had brought comprehension, and he knew why he simmered on the edge of an explosion. _If I open that wardrobe door, I don't know what I'll see. I don't know what I fear most, and the uncertainty is tearing me apart._

When he was sure the whole school was in the Great Hall eating, Snape rose from his desk in the Potions classroom and went to confront his boggart.

The dungeon corridor was empty, as was the staff room. Snape looked around carefully, then slipped into its familiar, wood-paneled dimness. The wardrobe stood, quiet and apparently quite normal, against a side wall.

_Has Hagrid ignored both Lupin and me and cleared the boggart out already?_ In a way the thought was a relief. Snape was not yet sure he wanted to see what the wardrobe contained. _I'm supposed to have a Riddikulus spell prepared, but how do you imagine a funny form of something when you don't know what it's going to be?_ The thought occurred to him that he might not be able to drive the boggart back into the wardrobe. _Do I want to see it if I can't get rid of it?_

There was, however, no real point in delaying. Snape took a deep breath, reached forward, seized the knob of the wardrobe door, and pulled it open. The boggart leapt out instantly, and immediately dropped to the floor in a crumpled heap. It was Albus Dumbledore, and he was dead.

Snape stood staring at the limp form. Its eyes were open in a glassy stare, and blood had trickled from its mouth. Slowly, deliberately, Snape backed away from the boggart and sat heavily in a low armchair. _What do I do now?_

In a way he felt curiously unconnected to the image in front of him. _It's because I closed down before I came here. I stepped out of the water just in time. A sea monster's surfaced, but for the moment I'm safe on dry land. I can't stay here forever, though, and when I go back into the ocean I'll be in danger. Best to stay shut off until I'm alone for the night, since I don't know what will happen when I release the waters._

It made sense, though. _Dumbledore is the only thing I have keeping me from the abyss. He's the only one who knows who I really am and what I've really done. He gives me my only protection and my only purpose. Without him, everything was in vain. Without Dumbledore I'm fodder for the dementors in Azkaban. Without Dumbledore the Dark Lord triumphs and I become his slave. If I lose Dumbledore, I'll have nowhere to go and no one to turn to. Cast utterly alone into the outer darkness…_

Snape shook himself free of the quicksand of his thoughts. It was like being back in the grip of the dementor again, with everything good and pleasant being drained from him. _I have to get rid of this boggart. I have to dismiss it back into the wardrobe._

How to make the dead Dumbledore funny? Snape regarded the white hair and beard, and pictured Father Christmas – no, the American Santa Claus who climbs down chimneys – getting stuck in a chimney, his fat legs waving over the hearth… "Riddikulus!" he cried, and the image of jolly St. Nick retreated back into the wardrobe.

It seemed like hours, sitting there in the quiet staff room. It wasn't, of course, just lunchtime. Snape had almost forgotten that Lupin was bringing his afternoon class to see the boggart when he heard the sound of many footsteps and student chatter. He roused himself quickly, not hard since he was still shut down and his emotions closed off.

Lupin entered without knocking, and behind him filed the students of his class – the same Gryffindors who'd been in Snape's morning Potions session. Of all the students in Hogwarts, the ones that at this moment Snape least wanted to see. He rose from the armchair as Lupin started to close the door.

"Leave it open, Lupin. I'd rather not witness this." He made for the corridor.

In front of him was Longbottom. Longbottom, whose very life was a constant reminder of Lily's death, whose every action was like picking at the scab of a festering wound. Snape could feel the locks bursting open, the seals melting, the bonds unraveling as the volcano inside him began building toward eruption. He turned at the doorway to face Lupin.

"Possibly no one's warned you, Lupin, but this class contains Neville Longbottom. I would advise you not to entrust him with anything difficult. Not unless Miss Granger is hissing instructions in his ear."

The students were silent. Lupin looked at Snape as if shocked, then slowly

comprehension seemed to fill his features. _He knows I've seen the boggart._

"I was hoping that Neville would assist me with the first stage of the operation, and I am sure he will perform it admirably."

Snape spun on his heel and went to his quarters. There he sat in semidarkness the rest of the afternoon, fingertips pressed against his forehead, struggling to control the tidal wave inside himself that threatened to drown him in fear and grief. He didn't go to supper, not wanting to see anyone, especially not Dumbledore. Not until he was sure that the students were in their dormitories for the night did he get up from the desk and go into the smaller room to lie down on the bed.

Alone in the darkness, Snape began the slow, careful process of unlocking the doors, unsealing the boxes, and unbinding the chains, letting the caged demons free.

It was a hellish night. Every unsealed box, every unlocked door, was a floodgate of memories and emotions that Snape did not want to see, vivid images of every time he had been cornered or felt trapped. He relived moments with his father, with Bella, Rabastan, and Rodolphus, with the Dark Lord, but a surprisingly large number of them contained the sneering, vindictive face of Sirius Black.

By midnight Snape was exhausted. His body was damp with sweat, and his breath was reduced to shallow gasps. He had to get outside. Rising from bed, where he'd lain fully clothed, Snape groped his way out to the entrance hall and from there to the great oaken doors leading outside.

Once on the steps, he looked up at the moon, now more than halfway up the sky and just a few days past the full. Already he was breathing more easily – the night always relaxed him – and he wanted to go to the lake. He took only a few steps, then stopped. The night sky above Hogwarts seemed full of dementors, and the lake was out of the question.

Slowly Snape backed up the steps and into the castle. There was nowhere to go but back to his room. He was now filled with a horrible, dark depression. _What am I to do if I can't even go outside at night? Is the whole year going to be like this?_

The next morning brought new and unexpected trials. Snape felt sick. He hadn't eaten for twenty-four hours, had been sleeping badly for nearly a week, had a splitting headache, and was emotionally drained. Despite the presence of Lupin, he was looking forward to breakfast, since that would remove the hunger and might help the headache.

As he crossed the entrance hall, Snape noticed that students in small groups were watching him. Watching him, then inexplicably turning away and giggling. Once inside the Great Hall, the phenomenon continued, except that the Slytherin students merely looked embarrassed. At the teachers' table, even some of the professors seemed to find him amusing.

As he sat down next to Hagrid, Snape asked quietly, "Is my nose on crooked or something?"

"Not as I could tell. Why?"

"I seem to be the source of a large amount of good cheer this morning. You wouldn't happen to know about it, would you? "

"I, um… well as to that… I wouldn't. Professor Lupin might."

Lupin, sitting on the other side of Hagrid eating ham and eggs, suddenly remembered he had somewhere else to be. Snape didn't move when Lupin pushed himself away from the table, but as he passed behind them Snape hissed, "Coward."

Lupin stopped. "Don't call me that," he said quietly.

"Why are you running away?"

"I'm not running."

"Are we going to quibble about relative speed in front of the whole school? You're afraid to face me."

"Move over, Hagrid," said Lupin, and sat next to Snape. Both were aware that a large percentage of the school was watching them. "It was the boggart. The boggart changed into you."

Snape looked at the table in front of him rather than at Lupin. "Let me guess – Longbottom. And how, pray tell, did Longbottom get rid of the boggart?"

"He dressed it in his grandmother's clothes."

There was a pause. "As I recall, you were going to work with Longbottom first, which means you would have to help him with his Riddikulus charm. Who suggested the grandmother's clothing?"

There was another pause. "I did," said Lupin. "I…"

"If you say you're sorry to me one more time, I'm going to strike you." Snape stood, slender and proudly erect, still not looking at Lupin. "I seem to have lost my appetite. I do hope you'll excuse me." He walked out of the Hall.

"That's torn it," said Hagrid, not hiding his irritation at Lupin. "Do you know how hard it is to get proper nourishment into him? He ain't eat since yesterday breakfast and now he's off his feed again." He scooped food into a plate, covered it with a table napkin, and stomped out of the Hall leaving Lupin by himself at the end of the table.


	41. Chapter 41 – A Conspiracy of Marauders

**Two More for Azkaban: A Conspiracy of Marauders**

xxxxxxxxxx

There was a knock at the office door. "Go away!" Snape responded.

"I ain't going away. I'm staying here and if need be I'm breaking down the door."

"I don't need a nursemaid!"

"I ain't nursemaiding, I'm protecting school property."

"I'm not destroying school property."

"Prove it."

Snape opened the door, and Hagrid barged in with his plate of food. As he set it on the desk, Snape protested, "I'm not destroying school property. Look around you. What am I destroying?"

"A very valuable Potions master. Now sit and eat."

"I'll sit, but I can't guarantee eating. Hagrid, why would he do that?"

"I don't think he did. Not a-purpose, anyways. He lives in the moment, always has. In that moment he wanted Neville t' feel good about hisself, t' feel strong and in charge. I don't think it even entered his head that it 'd leave that room. He don't understand the cruel side of people."

"Then he's dimmer than I thought. He's seen enough, even participated in some of it, to know about cruelty. I still think that was on purpose." Snape speared a sausage and bit into it. "He's a lot sneakier than you give him credit for."

Hagrid didn't argue. He just let Snape talk, not even understanding all of it, because as long as Snape talked, Snape ate. That, after all, was the purpose of his visit.

Classes didn't improve, especially the third year double Potions with Slytherin and Gryffindor. Between them, Malfoy and Longbottom were enough to ruin Snape's sleep and appetite for a day and a half afterwards, and the others were a constant irritant. It didn't help that from their first year, this had been the thickest, most incompetent group of potions makers Snape had ever had to deal with. Malfoy was actually one of the better students. Granger would be tolerable if it weren't for her habit of constantly waving her hand in his face, but the rest were impossible.

In the middle of the second week of school, Lupin came to see Snape in his office. Snape was grading papers, and called "Come" at the knock without bothering to see who it was.

"I hope I'm not disturbing you too much," said Lupin.

"What do you need?" Snape didn't try to hide the sharpness in his tone.

Lupin pulled a folded-up square of parchment from his pocket. "Just this. I didn't want to push you, but I didn't want to leave it until too late either. I'm… I hope it's not too inconvenient."

Snape took the parchment and glanced over it. "This isn't the standard potion," he said. "Why did you add betony and valerian?"

"I have a nervous reaction to the original formula. They counteract it without altering its potency."

"It'll take about ten days to make."

"That's fine. I need to start the doses on the twenty-first."

"You'll have it before then."

Snape set up the equipment that evening and started preparing the first of several decoctions. The brew didn't need constant attention, and much of the time necessary for its preparation was taken up by the distilling process. True to his word, Snape had the first doses bottled into flasks and in Lupin's hands two days before he had to start the treatment.

"I wasn't sure how much you would need, so there is extra."

"Thank you, Severus."

On September 28, 29, and 30, Professor Lupin was absent from his classes. He was replaced by those teachers who didn't have a class at the particular times of his courses. Snape's free afternoon was, unfortunately, at the same time as the class with the third year Gryffindors. Lupin had left them a writing assignment, and all Snape had to do was baby-sit. He had no problem with that arrangement at all.

On October first, Professor Lupin was back in his classes. He looked awful. His young-old face was gray and drawn, and he walked like an old man. The depth of his fatigue was so great that it was almost impossible for him to teach his classes, and all he wanted to do was sleep. It was the same as he'd been the day he arrived at Hogwarts on the train.

Pomfrey contacted Snape part way through the day, just at the end of morning double Potions. "He never used to be this weak when he was a student. Tired, yes, but not exhausted like this. Do you think it's the potion?"

"He did say he had a nervous reaction to the original one, and that the betony and valerian were meant to counter it."

It was a problem like any other potions problem, to be worked out with logic and experimentation. Snape took some of the pre-symptom potion and added vervain, hyssop, and pennyroyal to it. At lunchtime he stopped Lupin in the entrance hall and pulled him down to his dungeon office.

"Try this," Snape said, handing Lupin a smoking goblet of mint-scented potion.

Lupin took the goblet, glanced once at Snape, then drained the contents in three long swallows.

"You probably should lie down, though resting your head on the desk would have the same effect."

"You're the doctor," said Lupin, and did as he was told. About half an hour later he sat up again. "I feel very much better," he said. "I should get some lunch before the afternoon classes start."

And indeed, the supplemental potion seemed to work, for Lupin was back to normal in his afternoon classes, and had a good appetite for supper.

xxxxxxxxxx

Quidditch practice was under way. The first match of the year was set for the last Saturday in November, and Slytherin was to play Gryffindor. Slytherin had a chance of winning, especially since team captain Marcus Flint was the oldest, largest, and most experienced Quidditch player in the school. This was due to his having to repeat seventh year, not having completed his classes or passed his NEWTs the year before.

Malfoy was causing trouble, though. He continued to insist that his injured arm was troubling him. He'd gone back to writing his own assignments and cutting up his own ingredients, but he complained that the arm was stiff, and he couldn't extend it fully.

Snape could understand Malfoy's milking his injury for all it was worth to get other students to do his work, or as a weapon against Hagrid, but not to keep him from playing Quidditch. He consulted Madam Pomfrey about the boy, and she was mystified as well.

"When I manipulate the arm, Severus, I can extend it to its full length. There doesn't seem to be any lasting damage to the muscles, cartilage, or bone. It's when he tries to do it himself that the arm won't extend."

"That sounds neurological to me. What do we have on the motor nervous system?" Pomfrey's expression told him 'not much.'

In the middle of October, the notices were put up that the first Hogsmeade excursion would be on Sunday, October 31. Snape got his supervisory assignment the same day, looked at his calendar, and went to McGonagall, who was in charge of the supervision.

"I can't be in Hogsmeade on the thirty-first," he said. "I have to stay at the castle. At least part of the day, anyway."

"And why, pray tell, are you suddenly special and exempt from taking your turn watching the little darlings at play?"

Snape knew that McGonagall was only half joking. Hogsmeade duty could be strenuous, and few of the teachers enjoyed it. When a dozen teachers had to oversee more than seventy percent of the school in an uncontrolled situation, it was not easy. The only problem was that his reason had to do with Lupin and his werewolf potion. The thirty-first was the day after the full moon cycle, and Lupin would be weak and sick. Snape didn't know if McGonagall knew about Lupin.

"I have reason to suspect that one of the teachers will be ill around that time. It's a potions matter. I really can't say any more."

McGonagall looked at him shrewdly. "I see," she said. "Very well, Severus. I'll take your name off the list."

Snape was up before dawn on Halloween morning working on Lupin's morning-after werewolf potion. He was refining some of the ingredients and needed to work out a dosage schedule.

Shortly after sunrise, Snape waited in the entrance hall with the first of the doses smoking in a small goblet. He handed it to Lupin as soon as he entered the hall with the order "Don't drink it too quickly," then watched as Lupin downed the liquid without demure. _I wonder if he's still staying in the Shrieking Shack during the full moon._ This thought brought back the memory of the time Lupin almost killed him, and he locked it up at once.

"The potion is a bit milder than last time. I'm hoping you don't need a stronger one, since we caught this at the first moment. You'll need more at noon and in the evening, though, and if it isn't strong enough, you'll have to tell me."

"Thank you, Severus. I can't express how much I appreciate your doing this for me."

Snape looked at Lupin blankly, honestly not comprehending.

"It's my job," he said.

The school was blessedly quiet with only the first and second years in the castle. As long as you weren't supervising, Hogsmeade days were delightful. Snape caught up on his grading, read a little, and then fixed Lupin's noontime potion. Carrying the goblet upstairs to the Dark Arts office would give him a chance to get out of the dungeon and stretch his legs.

He knocked at Lupin's office door, heard Lupin call "Come in," and entered the room. There, sitting at Lupin's desk drinking tea, was Harry Potter. Snape stopped. _What's he doing here? Why isn't he in Hogsmeade? What does Lupin want with him?_

"Ah, Severus. Thanks very much. Could you leave it here on the desk for me? I was just showing Harry my grindylow."

Snape set the goblet on the desk, watching the interplay between Lupin and Potter. _Interesting change in tone from the last two times I medicated him. He wants Potter to think he's in charge, and he doesn't want me to know what they were talking about._ "Fascinating," he said. "You should drink that directly, Lupin."

"Yes, yes, I will."

"I made an entire cauldronful. If you need more."

"I should probably take some again tomorrow. Thanks very much, Severus."

"Not at all." _He doesn't want to drink my potion in front of Potter. Does he want Potter to think he doesn't trust me?_ Snape backed out of the room, trying to see an explanation in Lupin's face. There wasn't one.

Back in his dungeon office, Snape paced. _Am I reading too much into this? They were having a conference. A student-teacher conference that was private. So why not say so? Why the business about the grindylow? They weren't looking at the grindylow at all. They were talking about something that Lupin doesn't want anyone to know about. Talking with Lily's son about something._

For the first time in quite awhile, Snape thought about Sirius Black again.

Everything seemed perfectly normal during the Halloween feast. Snape found himself watching Lupin more closely and worrying about Lily's son. The boy appeared all right, but kept looking up at Lupin at the teachers' table as if he expected something to happen.

Snape always expected something to happen on Halloween. It was, after all, the anniversary of Lily's death, and he'd been sitting in exactly the same spot when the news reached Hogwarts twelve years before that the Potters and the Dark Lord had all been destroyed. _Nobody else seems to remember she died on this night. Potter doesn't. Lupin doesn't. Dumbledore doesn't. I hate Halloween._

_Ever since Potter came to Hogwarts, something has happened on Halloween. Last year the basilisk petrified its first victim on Halloween. The year before we had a troll. What's going to happen this year?_

It didn't take long after the feast to find out. Snape and his prefects were getting the Slytherins back to their common room when the word began buzzing through the hall – Gryffindor was locked out! The Fat Lady's portrait was slashed and she'd fled in terror! As Snape started making his way up the stairs to assist, more rumors met him. Peeves had identified the assailant.

It was Sirius Black.

Snape never actually reached Dumbledore. As he went up the stairs, Gryffindor and Ravenclaw students were coming down. McGonagall saw him and called down the staircase, "All students are to go at once to the Great Hall. Slytherin and Hufflepuff, too. Tell Sprout if you see her."

He started back down, herding students towards the Great Hall as he went. Reaching the entrance hall Snape hurried down the dungeon corridor to Slytherin house. To the surprised students in the common room he said, "Get everyone out of the dormitories. Take everything you'll need for the night. Everyone is to get into the Great Hall as quickly as possible. There may be a dangerous intruder in the castle. Prefects, start with the far rooms and work your way to the corridor wall. I don't want one student left here. Flint, you and the other Quidditch players check the whole dungeon and stand guard to keep people from going back once you've cleared them out."

In the entrance hall Snape met Dumbledore coming down. "Severus, how fortunate. Would you please go up and check the Astronomy tower, the north tower, and the Owlery tower? McGonagall is taking care of Gryffindor and Flitwick of Ravenclaw. That will take care of the highest points in the school. Then work your way down with the other teachers."

Dumbledore went into the Great Hall while Snape hurried up the stairs. It was logical that he take the towers because he and Lupin were the youngest teachers in the school, and Lupin was sick. As he reached the seventh floor, Snape opted to check the Astronomy tower first. Best to get it over with quickly.

At the top of the spiral staircase, Snape stepped out onto the flat top of the Astronomy tower and glanced around at the parapet and enclosed space. That other Halloween twelve years earlier he'd ended up here, too, though he'd not been hunting an intruder. _Mightn't it have been better if Hagrid hadn't stopped me that night. How much good have my last twelve years done anyone?_

It was then that the full import of what was happening hit him. _Twelve years ago tonight, Sirius Black betrayed Lily Potter to her death. Now tonight, twelve years later, we're hunting the same Sirius Black who's come into Hogwarts to complete the botched job. Tonight may be the night justice is finally served!_ Snape returned down the spiral stairs with a renewed sense of purpose, pondering the quarry he was hunting.

_He's been twelve years in Azkaban and a well-publicized fugitive for three months. He can't have a wand with him. So how did he get in? The castle's been locked tight every night against dementors. There's no way. Someone must have let him in. Who do we know in the castle who's a friend of Sirius?_

_Equally to the point, how did he get onto the grounds, especially with dementors all around? I did it once, through the Shrieking Shack, but ever since then the Shack's been magically guarded. Who knows of the Shack and the passage to the Willow, can release the magic charm, and was actually using the Shack up until this morning?_

_Odd how this keeps pointing to one person._

As he searched the other towers, Snape could feel the volcanic pressure building inside him. _Control. Control yourself. Need wit. Need logic. Need a cool head._

_He braved the dementors. He didn't even care about the dementors. All he wanted was to get here and kill a child. Right to Gryffindor, he went right to Gryffindor, where the students would be studying and talking and sleeping except tonight was Halloween. Did he remember it was Halloween? Did he expect to find Lily's son unsuspecting, sleeping, easy prey._

_He didn't escape Azkaban to flee dementors. He escaped Azkaban to kill a child. Kill children if the others got in his way. Kill his friend's son. My friend's son. Kill all that's left of Lily. Close the emerald eyes. Lily's eyes._

Snape was in the entrance hall again, in front of the double doors. _Quiet now. Children. Children sleeping behind the doors._ He paused and breathed deeply, then opened a door just enough to slip through, in control of himself and his thoughts once again.

Dumbledore was standing in the middle of the Great Hall surrounded by students sleeping peacefully in purple sleeping bags. He was talking to the Head Boy, a Gryffindor. One of the Weasleys. Percy.

Swiftly but quietly, Snape moved across the floor of the Great Hall until he was close enough to talk to Dumbledore without disturbing the sleeping children.

"Headmaster?" he said.

Dumbledore looked up as Snape approached.

Snape spoke in a low, quiet voice, less noticeable than a whisper. "The whole of the third floor has been searched. He's not there. And Filch has done the dungeons; nothing there either."

"What about the Astronomy tower? Professor Trelawney's room? The Owlery?"

"All searched…"

"Very well, Severus. I didn't really expect Black to linger."

Snape was not about to let the conversation end there. _Slowly. Go slowly. Stay in control._ "Have you any theory as to how he got in, Professor?"

"Many, Severus, each of them as unlikely as the next."

"You remember the conversation we had, Headmaster, just before… the start of term?" _He has to listen. There's too much at stake now._

Dumbledore seemed to have other ideas, for his voice became cold. "I do, Severus."

_He doesn't want to talk about it here in front of Weasley, but if I don't make the point now, it may be too late. Try to calm down and sound reasonable._ "It seems almost impossible that Black could have entered the school without inside help. I did express my concerns when you appointed…"

"I do not believe a single person inside this castle would have helped Black enter it." And there it was. Dumbledore had cut off the subject, refused to listen, refused to even entertain the prospect. Then he sealed it completely. "I must go down to the dementors. I said I would inform them when our search was complete."

_He knows I can't follow him… can't go near the dementors._

Dumbledore was talking to Weasley. "…but I'm afraid no dementor will cross the threshold of this castle while I am headmaster." And then he was gone.

_You won't listen to me. Will you listen to Lupin? Do you even know where Lupin is? He was sitting at the feast, and then he was gone. We never did see him while we were searching the castle. Maybe we didn't find Black because Lupin let him out again. What about that, Professor?_

One little, nagging voice at the back of Snape's skull did mention that Lupin could have told Black that Lily's son was at the feast that evening, but Snape was in no mood to listen to it at that moment.

Suddenly everyone was aware that Potter was in danger, and the boy was unable even to go between classes without an escort. He appeared to resent it, acting as if the rest of the school were fools and he an immortal god. McGonagall was beside herself.

"He's known since before school started that Black was after him, and he thinks it's not important. Certainly not as important as Quidditch practice. Black was in the castle. In the castle! He drove the Fat Lady away and had free run of the Gryffindor common room and dormitories, but Potter has to have his unencumbered Quidditch practice."

Snape agreed. "The Headmaster is equally stubborn, Minerva. It's impossible for Black to have gotten in without help, yet he refuses to investigate. How are we to do our jobs with no support?"

"Do you have anyone in particular in mind?"

"You know there's only one old friend of Sirius Black's in this building."

"Oh but Severus, I don't think Remus would let Sirius hurt anyone."

Snape folded his arms across his chest and narrowed his eyes. "Funny about that. My recollections seem to be just a tad different from yours."

"Oh," said McGonagall. "Yes. I see what you mean."

Then, just as the end-of-November Quidditch match was approaching, Malfoy announced that his arm had not improved enough to allow him to play. Gryffindor would meet Hufflepuff instead of Slytherin.

To make matters worse, Lupin came to Snape on the Friday before the match. "Could you take my classes this afternoon, Severus? I don't feel well. I'll be gone for a few days."

"I thought that started tomorrow night."

"I did, too, but it seems its coming earlier this time."

The sudden change of plans gave Snape an idea.

Snape did not go to lunch. Instead he went to his office and pulled out the paper that Lupin had given him with the werewolf-calming formula on it.

_Why would he start feeling ill two days before the full moon when the cycle starts the day before… Dumbledore should have investigated this before he ever took the post… If the potion is too weak – no, then he'd just be more like a normal werewolf… We already knew Black was loose before Dumbledore offered him the job. It was so obvious… What if it's too strong? He has been having reactions, hence the betony and valerian… He's got to be forced to investigate, or we'll have dead children, but he won't listen to me._

Pulling jars and tins from the shelves around the office, Snape began going through his stores of calmatives, stimulants, and restoratives.

_I can't force Dumbledore to investigate, but the Board of Governors could… I wonder if it's the betony. It's an aperient as well as a nervine. It could be weakening him… The parents could, too. If it comes from me, Dumbledore won't listen, but if it comes from the parents…_

_Potter doesn't have any parents. All because of Sirius Black. And that fool James Potter. Couldn't you see how unstable your 'friend' was? The rest of us could. Crazy and unpredictable. You had the best secret-keeper in the world, and you turned to a madman out of 'love.' Did you love Sirius more than Lily? Was that why you let him talk you into it? Sentimental idiot. Lost life, lost wife, lost one friend dead, two friends gone bad, son in danger…_

Realizing that it was almost time for Lupin's class, Snape put all his potions material in order, locked the office, and went upstairs to the Dark Arts classroom.

Lupin's Friday afternoon class was Snape's least favorite group of Gryffindors. He allowed them a few moments of horrified realization that the class would be taught by their least favorite teacher, then proceeded to the formality of taking roll. It really was just a formality, as Snape already knew that only one student was missing – Harry Potter.

_Just like Potter. A madman loose on the grounds who has access to the castle – a madman he knows to be intent on hurting him – and he's wandering around alone. And Lupin's out, too. Lupin suddenly gets 'sick' and Potter's not in class…_ The knot was forming again in the pit of Snape's stomach.

"Now," Snape addressed the class, "as has, I am sure, become abundantly obvious to even the least cerebral of you, Professor Lupin is not here today. He feels 'unwell.' He has, unfortunately, left no lesson plan nor any record of what you've covered so far…"

Predictably, Granger's hand immediately shot into the air, and at the same time Potter burst through the door gasping, "Sorry I'm late, Professor Lupin, I –" then skidded to an abrupt halt as he recognized Snape.

_Let's make sure he has reason not to wander alone during class time._ "This lesson began ten minutes ago, Potter, so I think we'll make it ten points from Gryffindor. Sit down."

"Where's Professor Lupin?"

No 'Professor.' No 'sir.' Just raw, blatant defiance. Snape closed down immediately and braced himself to meet the green eyes. Lily's eyes, now obscenely lit with James's arrogant sneer. A profanation, a blasphemy. Snape's voice was chill, "He says he is feeling too ill to teach today. I believe I told you to sit down."

"What's wrong with him?"

_Don't fight me, Potter. You're making it very hard to want to save your life._ "Nothing life-threatening." _Unlike the danger you face from Sirius Black._ "Five more points from Gryffindor, and if I have to ask you to sit down again, it will be fifty." _And if you defy a teacher in front of a class again, you'll have detention for the rest of the year._

Potter, however, took the hint and sat down.

The rest of the class, led by Granger, was equally rebellious, with even Thomas and Patil questioning the assignment he gave them. It was irritating, but he punished none except Granger and Weasley, both of whom went too far, since essentially the class was right. It was too early in the year for them to be studying werewolves. Werewolves, however, were what they needed to know about now, in the real world. _Lupin has been working hard to be popular with this group. It won't be easy to get them to focus on the danger, especially since Dumbledore won't allow me to tell anyone about Lupin's 'problem.' If just one or two notice and tell their parents, though…_

While the class studied the werewolf section in the book, Snape looked at some of the papers. Lupin wasn't exacting enough, in Snape's opinion. But then he'd always been like that, always wanting to ease up on people he liked.

After taking five points from Granger and giving Weasley detention, Snape assigned the entire class an essay on how to recognize and destroy werewolves. _At the very least, they have been forced to study what to do if they ever have to face Lupin in wolf form. May it never happen, but if it does they're better off prepared._

At the end of the class, Snape returned to his office to continue puzzling over Lupin's potion.

It was well into supper time when there was a knock at Snape's office door. It was Hagrid. "I've got somewhat to say about this habit you're getting into of skipping meals," he said accusingly.

"Potions work. Medicinal," Snape responded.

"In that case, then, you'll let me bring you a plate."

"Of course." Snape absent-mindedly closed the door in Hagrid's face.

He needed pennyroyal and reached up to shift some tins in order to get it. Glancing at the tin in his hand, Snape paused. It was aconite… monkshood… wolfsbane… _Why did I pick up that one?_ He rotated the tin in his hand, aware of the shadow thought forming in the recesses of his brain, but refusing to look at it. He listened instead to the voice of his witch grandmother, Nana. _Potions are a sacred thing, for with them you hold life and death in your hands, and they are not toys to be treated lightly. You can care for the body, but you cannot probe the soul or part the curtain of the future to see if today's actions are good or evil. So above all, do no harm._

Hagrid knocked again, bringing the food he'd promised. Snape carefully placed the tin of aconite back on its shelf and answered the door.

Noon is generally a good time to visit someone afflicted with Lycanthropy. While the rest of the school ate lunch and buzzed with anticipation about the day's Quidditch match between Gryffindor and Hufflepuff, Snape finished his potion. He then checked with Madam Pomfrey, who asked that he take Lupin some food as well, thus sparing her a trip in what was already looking like the biggest storm of the season.

It was a terrible day for Quidditch. Rain pelted down in blinding sheets while wind whipped the castle towers into aeolian pipes. Nothing short of lightning stopped a Quidditch game, however, and the school was prepared to troop en masse down to the pitch to watch as much of the action as they could see through the rain.

Snape took a flask of the modified werewolf draught and a dish of food, wrapped himself in a hooded cloak, and slipped out of the castle, taking care not to be seen, though in the torrential rain it was unlikely anyone would notice his dark figure walking down the hill.

He'd only used the passage under the Whomping Willow twice before in his life, but both occasions had been memorable ones, and Snape found the knot that froze the tree with no problem. Then ducking down between the great, overgrown roots, he entered the tunnel and made his way to the Shrieking Shack.

Lupin was in the upstairs room, sitting at a table with his head resting on his arms. He looked up as the door opened and Snape walked in. "Good morning, Severus. Or is it afternoon already? It's kind of you to call."

"I brought you something," said Snape, setting the plate of food on the table. "Did you change last night?"

"No, actually. I felt like I was going to, but in the end there was no transformation. It looks like I'm on schedule for tonight."

"Drink this, then." Snape handed Lupin the flask. "It's the same, except I replaced the betony with pennyroyal. It should be less enervating and relieve some of the muscle tension. If it isn't effective, we can try something else."

Lupin took the flask and downed its contents at once. Handing it back he said, "You wouldn't care to stay and talk, would you? It gets lonely here sometimes."

"No. I wouldn't."

"Back at the beginning of the term I asked you a question, whether you understood…"

"I remember."

"I'd like to understand." Lupin spread his arms. "Is it because of what happened here?"

"That wasn't your fault."

"Then what…?"

"Did you ever try to stop them? Did you ever once try to stop them?"

"That's unfair. There was that time by the lake."

"Lily was there. You did that because of Lily. No, I mean just because…" Snape stopped. He was looking out the window of the Shack where they had a view of the area around the Quidditch pitch. "What's happening over there? It looks like more than the storm."

Lupin looked, too. "It's the dementors! They're being drawn to the Quidditch game!"

The two professors raced down the stairs, through the tunnel, and out into the rain as quickly as they could run, Snape ahead of Lupin, who was sick from his impending change. They slowed in the grass and mud at the base of the hill, where footing was less certain because of all the water.

Snape had reached the road that led up the hill when the cold hit him. He knew immediately what it was. Whatever may or may not have happened at the Quidditch game, his and Lupin's presence was now superfluous. The dementors had left the pitch and were returning to the perimeter, and there was at least one of them somewhere in front of him, invisible in the gusting sheets of rain.

Dementors felt and fed on emotions, and Snape began to back away and lock down simultaneously. No occlumens can fool a dementor for any length of time, but this one was far enough away that it might not have sensed him yet. He had no desire to feel its touch ever again in his life. Turning, he moved quickly up the hill, slipping slightly in the mud.

Lupin rushed up, as fast as he could go in the mud and the rain, his wand extended toward the source of the cold. _"Expecto Patro…"_ he almost managed to shout, when Snape grabbed his arm, twisting the wand down, and clamped a hand over his mouth.

"Don't attract their attention!" he hissed.

Lupin glared at him, but did as he asked, the two of them now hurrying up into the castle, both drenched and bedraggled. Noting that Lupin's skin had a grayish color, and that his breathing was ragged, Snape took him by the arm and pulled him into the office in the dungeon where there was already a fire burning.

Tossing Lupin a couple of towels, Snape went into his bedroom to get a warm blanket. "Get out of that wet robe and dry off. I'll get you something to take the chill off and perk you up a bit. Then you'd best take a cloak and return to the shack before the change begins."

Lupin wrapped himself in the blanket and sat huddled by the fire, but when Snape gave him the warm potion he asked, "Why did you stop me? One of them was turning towards you."

"I was far enough away. It didn't have a strong feel for me. You'd have drawn it to us."

"No, it marked you. It was turning. I could see it turn."

"See? In that rain? I didn't know your condition improved your eyesight so spectacularly."

"Stop this!" Lupin snapped, and the tremor in his voice was not from the cold. "I was trying to help you. I wanted to protect you from that thing."

"I don't need protection."

"No? So you're here because you love to teach?" Lupin took a deep breath. "Severus, I know what you were. I know you changed before the end, and that Dumbledore valued you. I know that if you ever leave here, it's with a one-way ticket to Azkaban. But that's history. It's finished. You and I are colleagues now, can't we treat each other like colleagues? You made some choices in the past that turned out wrong, but…"

Snape had gone icily cold, not the cold of the dementors but the cold that preceded an explosion. "Get out," he said, struggling to control his voice and his hands. "Get out of my office. Take your things and leave."

Lupin's anger was cold, too. "I can't believe that you'd allow schoolboy grudges to control your life all these years. Grow up, Severus. Let it go. Leave it behind you and grow up!" Then Lupin rose and walked out the door.

Close behind Lupin, Snape shut and locked the office door, his hands trembling as if with palsy. His body was wound so tight now that he was shaking all over. He could smash his fist into the leaded glass on a cabinet door. He could slam himself against the wall. Striding to the side of the room, he instead wrenched open the doors of a cupboard containing jars and beakers. In one long, fluid motion, he seized a beaker and flung it with deadly precision into the fireplace. Another beaker followed, and another, each shattering against stone with all the energy he could channel through nerve and muscle until the shards of twenty-seven covered the grate.

Drained, he let his legs buckle under him and collapsed beside the drawers at the base of the cupboard. There he sat as evening fell and darkness gathered, leaning against the knobs and drawer pulls, emptying his mind of thought and feeling, floating in a limbo of nervous exhaustion until, in the wee hours of the morning Snape finally dragged himself into the other room and lay on the bed.

That was a mistake, for that was when he drifted into restless sleep.

xxxxxxxxxx

_He stood on the grass facing Lily – her emerald eyes held him mesmerized – but the eyes were in a different face, and he knew he was in danger. The attack came from behind – he wheeled to face the great dog, the mastiff, with its bloody fangs. Around him a crowd was laughing at the sport – he was the sport – and the wolf with a prefect's badge pinned to its fur lolled on the grass grinning._

_Hit from behind again, he spun to face the new threat. But he never could face it because however he turned it was always behind him. He wanted to run, but he was lying on the ground, arms and legs strapped with iron bands. He wanted to scream, "I didn't do anything!" but harsh bristles tore at his tongue, and pink foam frothed in his mouth._

_The foam expanded, clogging his nasal passages, filling his throat, burning his lungs. He couldn't breathe – couldn't breathe – he was dying - and the crowd was laughing, for his fear, his pain, his death were all for their amusement…_

_Then foam was gone, bristles gone, iron bands gone, and Bella stood above him, pushing back the crowd. He crawled to her to lay his head on her feet, where she sat at the table. "Good dog," she crooned, "Good little puppy," as she fastened a collar around his neck, and he lay curled at her feet because that's what good dogs do._

_He woke in the dark alone. The collar was gone. Rejoicing in freedom, he went out into the sunlight. But the sun was dark, and the wolf and the mastiff attacked him, tearing at his throat, his limbs, his stomach. "Help!" he screamed, "Please help me!" "I can't," said Bella. "You're not wearing the collar."_

_Frantically he searched the room as the mastiff rent his flesh. The collar was in his hands, and he fastened it around his own neck. Then the animals weren't there, only Bella, singing. "Now I can protect you – protect you – protect you –" And he lay at her feet and loved her._

"_Come with me," Bella said, fastening a steel chain to his iron collar. He trotted at heel beside her. Around them were wolves, hounds, lions, tigers… but they couldn't touch him if he wore the collar._

_In the dark, dark room they faced a hooded spectre. Bella smiled. "I've brought you a pet… a puppy… a servant… a slave…" Red eyes burned into his mind, his heart, his soul, his arm, as the cold voice laughed, "I have a collar, too…"_

Eyes suddenly opened wide in the darkness, Snape listened for the rustle of robes in the chamber. In the silence he raised a hand to his throat, expecting to feel the collar. There was no collar, no chamber, no rustle of robes. He was lying in bed, heart still racing from the nightmare.

He groped his way from the bed into the office, where embers glowed in the fireplace. There, in the lingering warmth, Snape stoked the fire and sat in front of it, wrapped in the blanket he'd brought out for Lupin, waiting for dawn and the coming of light.

As soon as it was time, Snape left his office to go to the Great Hall for Sunday breakfast. He was a little dizzy from lack of food, and once again he had a headache.

Lupin wasn't there. _Of course not. He's a wolf lying in the upper room of the Shrieking Shack._ Hagrid was, though, and Hagrid was clearly relieved to see Snape walk into the Hall.

"Where was you last evening?" he muttered. "We was all riled up about the dementors at the Quidditch match, and Harry and all, and come round about ten I says to myself, 'I ain't seen Professor Snape come in for supper,' but then it was too late."

"I was busy. What happened to Potter?"

"He's in the hospital wing, not bad hurt but Madam Pomfrey wants t' keep him there a while. Them dementors came right onto the Quidditch field. Seems they went for Harry most of all, and he fell off his broom about fifty feet up. Dumbledore was already on the field driving off the dementors and managed to slow Harry's fall. Had us all scared there for a bit."

Snape ate as Hagrid talked, asking a question from time to time, though there wasn't much more than that to tell. _Potter has no luck with opening Quidditch games. First one his broom's jinxed, then its bludgers, now its dementors._

As he finished his breakfast, Snape's attention was drawn to Malfoy at the Slytherin table. Draco was obviously doing imitations of dementors and of Potter falling off his broom. The little group around him was giggling. _That boy and I are going to have a talk today._

Breakfast over, Snape went up to the first floor, to the hospital wing. He spoke briefly with Madam Pomfrey, who'd taken Lupin his breakfast. All apparently well with his patient, Snape returned to his own rooms to clean up the broken glass and generally straighten everything from the episode of the evening before.

He was calm, but only because he'd locked everything, including the dream, away.

At midmorning there was a knock on the door.

"Come," Snape called. He was making samples of werewolf potion with different proportions of ingredients.

Dumbledore entered the room. "Ah, Severus," he said. "It is good to see you looking well."

"Did you expect that I wouldn't, Headmaster."

"Why so informal? Why do you not call me Professor, as you usually do?" Dumbledore moved around the table to a position where he could see Snape's eyes, and though Snape carefully avoided contact, Dumbledore soon nodded. "I take it that you and Remus had a… difference of opinion."

"Am I that transparent."

"My boy, there are days when you are the purest of crystal. Others when you are as impenetrable as obsidian. And on the days when you close yourself down this tightly in the privacy of your own office, it is generally because what you are afraid of is inside you. The most obvious trigger for this is poor Remus. How is he doing, by the way?"

"He doesn't react well to the medication. It makes him sick both before and after the change. We're trying to adjust it to smooth out the transitions."

"If anyone can, it is you. Tell me now, what happened with Remus?"

"He wants to be friends."

"Defensive sarcasm, and therefore a slight exaggeration. Today is a crystal day. You see, it is not so hard. I take it Remus wishes to cease being enemies."

"He also wants to protect me from dementors and forgive me all my sins."

"Whose sins do you not want forgiven, his or yours?"

"He is going to forgive me for the wrong choices I made in the past."

Dumbledore's eyes widened slightly. "I am most gratified, Severus, that you have chosen to confide this in me. Things begin to get clearer. So the difference of opinion involved the nature of choices?"

"I would prefer not to talk about it."

"I am a patient man. It has taken me what, twelve years to get this piece of information. I shall treasure it and ponder it…"

"Now you're being sarcastic."

"You are right. I beg your pardon. It troubles me, though, that you are so closed, that there is no one that you can open yourself to. That was what was so wonderful about you and Lily Evans. Just knowing that you had someone to talk to… Severus?"

"It's nothing. I'm all right."

"Do you ever talk to her now?"

"You do watch me!"

"That was not an answer." Dumbledore waited as Snape turned away from him to the potions on the workbench.

"I did. I can't now. There are dementors around the lake."

"Is there any place else where she is?"

"The Astronomy tower."

"No, no. That would not do at all. Not at all." Dumbledore paused. "Remus is a good man, Severus. As are you. He may understand more than you think. It is an option you should consider. You think about it. And I shall see you at lunch."

Dumbledore left Snape to his potions and his thoughts.

xxxxxxxxxx

"Malfoy, may I have a word with you?" Teachers and students were leaving the Great Hall after lunch, and Snape took advantage of the opportunity to call the boy aside.

"Certainly, Professor. What can I do for you?"

Malfoy's attitude was a bit cockier than Snape expected. "Perhaps in my office?" he said. Malfoy followed him into the dungeon.

Once inside, Malfoy immediately sat down in the chair next to the desk. "Haven't been here in a long time. Doesn't change much, does it?"

"Not all change is good. How is the arm?"

Malfoy flexed it a little. "Getting better, I think. Madam Pomfrey's been working at the scars. They're almost gone. I'll be happy to see the last of these bandages."

"Your parents are well?"

"They're fine. Father isn't any happier about the condition of this place, though. Thinks it's a disgrace Dumbledore hired that pathetic Lupin to teach Dark Arts. Odd, too, that you and he find so much to talk about. Is it true, Professor, that you were attacked by one of the dementors? Kind of like a tiny taste of what Azkaban is like."

_This boy knows something. Is this a threat, or a warning? Whatever he's playing at, power in the hands of a thirteen-year-old is not a pretty sight._ "It's of dementors I wished to speak to you. You've been going around imitating them in front of people. Some members of this house have relatives in Azkaban. A couple of people, and yes the rumor about me is true, have been too close to them to find you amusing. One person on staff was in Azkaban for a few days. Your joke is in bad taste."

"They should've kept him in Azkaban. That's another decision of Dumbledore's Father isn't happy about. That oaf's no teacher. They're almost finished with the investigation of his attack on me, though, and that class 'll be history. They may even investigate old Dumbledore for hiring him in the first place. Wouldn't you like a change of headmaster, Professor?" The gleam in Malfoy's eyes was unmistakable gloating.

"What you change to is usually more important than what you change from. Until I know that, I'll reserve my judgment. Keep in mind what I said."

"Sure, Professor." Malfoy left the office.

That was impressive. _He's better at this than his father. Now what? Do I take him on, or do I take the hint? If only I had a way to know how serious the threat to Hagrid and Dumbledore is._

xxxxxxxxxx

"Severus!" It was Tuesday afternoon, and Lupin was once again back teaching. "Severus, I'd like to talk to you."

"Certainly. Always at your disposal."

"Not here. My office, maybe."

Once inside the office, so much larger and brighter than Snape's, with its grindylow swimming peacefully in the large tank, Lupin turned to face Snape, clearly angry.

"What's this game you're playing with my students?"

"I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about."

"Do you think I'm an idiot? You gave them that werewolf assignment to try to expose me. I want to know why."

"Let me see. We have a werewolf with unpredictable reactions to a calming potion sleeping three nights a month in an unguarded shack, and we also have a madman running around with inexplicable access to a barricaded castle in which a friend of his resides. I would hazard a guess that student safety had something…"

"I would never! never! do anything to endanger the students!"

"No? Your very presence is a danger. What happens if you get careless?"

"I'm not going to get careless."

"It only needs once, Lupin. Winter's on us. Long nights, a werewolf roaming the halls who forgot to take his medicine, unsuspecting children on their way to bed. You've never had any close calls?"

Lupin was silent, but the flicker in his eyes was all the answer Snape needed. "Do what you like about the assignment," he said. "They've looked at it. They don't need to write about it."

Snape walked out of the office, leaving Lupin standing there in thought.

xxxxxxxxxx


	42. Chapter 42 – Treading Water

**Two More for Azkaban: Treading Water**

Friday third year Potions class was always a torment.

_One of these days I'm going to talk to Dumbledore again about changing the master schedule. It's insane to have Slytherin and Gryffindor students in the same classroom together for two hours. If I could just stand in one place and watch them, it would be one thing, but checking one student's progress means turning your back on another. The number of parchment pellets and paper airplanes I get from this class alone…Not to mention the teasing…_

Malfoy was being particularly obnoxious, as if he knew he could get away with anything. His bandages had come off a few days earlier, and he was strutting around like a bantam rooster, spoiling for a fight. And he was doing dementor imitations again for the benefit of Potter when Snape's back was turned.

_At least he isn't doing it while I'm clearly watching him. Does he think I don't notice, or is he showing me he isn't afraid of me, or is he not thinking about it at all, just teasing out of habit?_

Snape walked over to Malfoy's table. The boy looked like a butcher, as did all the students, since he had a long apron over his robes and was holding a large bloody knife to cut up a crocodile heart. Snape leaned close to his ear. "Have you forgotten our conversation?"

Malfoy smiled up at him. Under other circumstances it might have been an angelic smile, if not for the glint in his eyes. "The investigation ends just before Christmas. Did you know, Professor? I'll be interested in what the panel decides."

"As will I. Keep your attention on your assignment."

A few minutes later the whole class was in an uproar, for Weasley 'd thrown a crocodile heart across the room straight into Malfoy's face. Malfoy's cauldron overturned, and there was blood on the floor and on Malfoy's face. _Please let it be just crocodile blood_. Millicent Bulstrode was trying to pick up both Malfoy's and Weasley's hearts, but the things were slippery and slithered out of her hands.

Snape pulled Malfoy over to his desk and wiped blood off his face. Malfoy's nose was bleeding as well, so Snape had him tip his head back and gave him a cloth and an ice pack to try to staunch the bleeding. _Why do Gryffindors always overreact? Why do they always overreact with physical violence? Why don't they just think up some creative little hex and get back at him that way? Outside my classroom._

Turning to Weasley Snape said coldly, "You attacked and injured a fellow student. Fifty points from Gryffindor."

McGonagall caught Snape at lunch, slipping into Hagrid's seat and generally forcing everyone to move one space down the table. "Fifty points, Severus? A little steep. I understand Malfoy was teasing."

Snape sighed. "It's more complex than that, Minerva. First, yes Malfoy was teasing, but you don't punch someone in the face for clowning around. That heart, well luckily it wasn't a whole one, but the piece he threw weighed about a pound and almost broke Malfoy's nose. In addition to the violence, you know the Board of Governors is going to hear about this. Second, have you any idea how hard it is to get fresh crocodile hearts? Most crocodiles are considered endangered species, so we have to buy them from zoos when the animals die or monitor them in the wild and harvest them from recently deceased specimens, then hold them in biosuspension until we need them for the class…"

"All right, all right. It was more than just a spot of temper." McGonagall was laughing now. "I'll talk to Weasley."

"By the way, have you seen the list of people leaving for the Christmas break?"

"No, is it unusual?"

"Unusual! It's a mass desertion. Everybody is going. The only staff we'll have in the castle are Dumbledore, the heads of houses, Trelawney and… Lupin. Plus Filch and Hagrid. It's worse with the students. I think out of the whole school we have about half a dozen."

"Do you blame them, with dementors stalking the perimeter? If I didn't have to stay as head of Gryffindor, I'd be leaving, too." McGonagall smiled. "I just realized. If we count Dumbledore, the teachers will outnumber the students. That should be fun. Speaking of which, are you going into Hogsmeade for the last weekend before break?"

"Can't. I have some special potions to work on. I'm excused." That weekend was one week before the full moon, and Lupin would have to start taking his calming potion. In a way, Snape would have preferred going into Hogsmeade, despite the supervisory duties. The castle was beginning to feel like a prison

It turned cold after the beginning of December. The ground was covered in the mornings, not with snow, but with frost. The dungeon rooms turned icy, and for the first time since he started teaching, Snape was bothered by the winter cold. _It can't be me. I'm not thirty-four yet. It's those dementors. Another thing Black's responsible for._ He put in an order for more firewood with Filch, enduring the caretaker's surprised look, because real fires warmed you better than magical ones.

Lupin's potions seemed to be taking up all of his time. They took several days to brew, had to be taken daily for at least a week before the full moon, and were followed up by the secondary potion to get Lupin back on his feet after the cycle was over. It seemed as if half of every month Snape was either brewing or administering the medication.

On the last Saturday before the break, the school had its pre-Christmas Hogsmeade trip. The castle was blessedly quiet as Snape brought the first dose of potion up to Lupin.

Lupin opened his office door at the first knock, his face settling at once into a cold mask that matched Snape's. "Aren't you a day early?" he asked.

"Last month you started feeling ill a day early. I thought we might forestall that by starting the doses early this month."

"You're the expert."

Snape set the small covered goblet on Lupin's desk. "It'd be best if you drank it now, while it's still warm. Then I could take the cup back with me."

Lupin sipped the mixture. "It tastes terrible," he said. "It always has. Does it have to be foul tasting to work properly?"

"I'll take it up personally with the wizard who discovered the potion."

Downing the contents without another word, Lupin handed the goblet back to Snape. "You didn't happen to see Potter on your way up, did you?" he asked as Snape turned to go.

"No. Were you expecting him?"

"After the dementor attack, I promised to work with him on something when the holidays were over. Since he can't go into Hogsmeade, I thought it might be an opportunity…"

"I'll mention it if I see him."

"In a way that dementor attack was a lucky break for you, you know."

"Why would you think that?" Snape's hand was on the door handle, but he paused, puzzled.

"When Potter's broom was blown into the Whomping Willow it was smashed to pieces. They can't repair it. He told me. It's a good thing for Slytherin that he'll be on a Shooting Star instead of that Nimbus when Gryffindor plays against you."

"If you think it makes an ounce of difference to me what sort of broom Potter's flying… "

"Just trying to have a conversation."

Glaring at Lupin, Snape turned and stalked out of the office.

_What was that all about? How dare he imply that Slytherin can only beat Gryffindor if Potter is on an inferior broom! Make conversation indeed! Why doesn't he look for Potter himself anyway, or send a message to Gryffindor Tower? What does he think I am, his errand boy?_

Snape looked down at the goblet in his hands. _I am an errand boy._

Supper that evening was pandemonium. The fun of the day at Hogsmeade, coupled with the excitement of knowing that the next morning they would be on the Express back to London, spiced with every kind of joke Zonko's could provide, electrified the students. A food fight even broke out at the Hufflepuff table.

Snape was beginning to tire of having nearly every other teacher come over, wish him a happy holiday, and tell him how glad they were that they didn't have to spend the break at Hogwarts this year. _One student. I'll be here to baby-sit one Slytherin student. Just like Sprout and Flitwick. McGonagall has the hardest job. She has three._ He looked over at the three: Potter, Weasley, and Granger.

Potter seemed withdrawn and upset about something. _Not surprising if he couldn't go into Hogsmeade with the others. I wonder if Lupin ever had that chat with him. Someone else I have to baby-sit. One student and a werewolf._

After supper, Snape went back to his cold office and room, stoked the fire, and checked Lupin's potion. Everything seemed in order. For some time he sat huddled in front of the fireplace, staring into the flames and wondering if he would ever feel warm again.

xxxxxxxxxx

_Sunday, December 19, 1993_

Nobody was at breakfast the next morning. That is to say that Sprout and Flitwick were there, and a handful of students, but that was it. Most of the students were rushing to complete the packing for their holiday that they hadn't done the day before because of the Hogsmeade excursion. The teachers who were also leaving were helping supervise the boarding of the train before disapparating themselves. It was going to be a very quiet two weeks.

Snape sat next to Flitwick and started to help himself to eggs and toast.

"You didn't happen to bring the… uh…" Flitwick whispered.

"Didn't think of it, actually. Did you...?" Flitwick nodded so emphatically that Snape got up from his place. "I'll get it now, and we can have a game or two over breakfast." He headed back to the dungeon for the cribbage board.

In the entrance hall, Snape almost ran into McGonagall, who was hurrying in from outside. "Can't stop to chat," she called as she sailed past him. "Owl just came in from the Ministry, and Dumbledore wants to see me."

Wondering what that was all about, Snape retrieved the cribbage board and returned to the Great Hall, where he and Flitwick enjoyed a leisurely breakfast along with the cards.

It was some time later that McGonagall joined them, looking very sober indeed.

"So?" Snape asked, as she started loading a plate with toast and marmalade. Marmalade was a comfort food for McGonagall, and an excess of it tended to signify stress.

"The Ministry has issued its report on the hippogriff case. Dumbledore has just gone down to speak with Hagrid."

That did not sound good at all. Flitwick and Sprout were now both listening. "He hasn't lost his job, has he?" Snape asked, voicing the question that everyone was thinking.

"No, no. But for poor Hagrid it might be worse. They've decided to have a hearing to determine if the hippogriff is a dangerous creature that should be put down."

"That's terrible! When is the hearing to be, do you know?"

"On the twentieth of April next year."

Snape thought for a moment. "That's after the Easter break," he said. "If they really think the beast is so dangerous, why are they delaying the hearing until then? Why leave a dangerous animal around the students for four months?"

McGonagall looked at Snape shrewdly. "And what game do you think is afoot, Sherlock?"

"I wouldn't be surprised if Malfoy Sr. was using this as a hold on Dumbledore for most of the term. I wonder what they want."

"They?"

"Nobody in particular. The perennially amorphous 'they.'" Snape got up, backing quickly away from the conversation. He certainly didn't want McGonagall to start thinking about the Dark Lord and Death Eaters at this time. He had no idea how much she already knew. "I may go down and see Hagrid later today."

_[Note: Once again, JKR's time does not fit real time. Easter in 1994 was on April 3, but she has the Easter break come after April 20. At no time in the 1990s did this occur. Easter came after April 20 in 1984 and in 2000. I have chosen to stay with a real timeline for 1994.]_

xxxxxxxxxx

In fact, he started out to see Hagrid almost immediately. Donning a warm cloak in his office, Snape returned to the entrance hall and went out the great oak doors into the world of frost and ice outside. Once there, however, his footsteps gradually slowed.

From the hill he could see the dark shapes of dementors clearly against the white frost and ice of the lake. They kept to the far shores, but they were hungry. Who knew what might draw them in.

Below, where Hagrid's hut stood, the Forbidden Forest crept disturbingly close. It, too, was a place where the dementors lurked, and the hut was too close to their threat for comfort.

Snape tried to force himself down the hill, but it was no use. Despising his own fear, he finally had to admit that the very memory of the dementor attack was enough to control his actions. _Am I going to act like a coward for the rest of my life because of one incident on one morning in August? Moody would have a field day with that information._

Reluctantly Snape reentered the castle and returned to his office. He promised himself that he'd speak to Hagrid later in the day, ashamed of the compromise, but at that moment powerless to do anything else.

One of the amazing things about Hogwarts was that so much preparation could go into a holiday that was shared by so few. Only fifteen people remained in the castle: Dumbledore, seven teachers (including Hagrid), Filch, and six students. Since Trelawney seldom left her tower, Lupin might be 'sick' on Christmas, and Filch didn't care, it worked out to one Christmas tree per person. Truly extravagant.

It didn't take Hagrid long to recover from the Ministry's news about Buckbeak the hippogriff. On Monday he was at breakfast, and Snape asked if there was anything he could do.

"Nope, but thanks for the offer. I got me a team working on it already."

The team turned out to be Potter, Weasley, and Granger. _Granger is certainly thorough and intelligent. The other two… couldn't do any damage. Might do some good. It will keep them occupied and out of trouble. And it helps Hagrid. Worse could have happened._

Christmas Day dawned bright and clear. Breakfast was very casual, with food laid out on one table for people to take when they wanted it. Snape went up to check on Lupin, and was disappointed to find that once again he was feeling 'ill' a day earlier than he was supposed to.

"That clearly wasn't the right adjustment to that potion," said Snape, not bothering to hide his puzzlement. "Have you experienced any difficulties once the transformation starts?"

"No, that part's the same. I'm calm, I know who I am, I sleep a lot. Look, don't wear yourself out over this potion. Even with the extra day not feeling good, it's infinitely better than not having it. It isn't your fault I'm allergic to something in it."

Lupin stayed in his rooms, but Snape went down to the Great Hall to join the rest for Christmas lunch. To his surprise, there was only one table – staff and students were expected to dine together.

Dumbledore sat at the head of the table, with McGonagall at his right hand. Snape took the seat next to McGonagall, while Sprout sat on his other side, then Flitwick and Filch. Hagrid wasn't there, and Snape rather suspected he was celebrating Christmas with Buckbeak. The Slytherin, Ravenclaw, and Hufflepuff students were already seated on the other side of the table. The three seats across from Snape were empty.

Empty, that is, until the appearance of the Three Musketeers, Potter, Weasley, and Granger, who were forced to sit opposite. _Wonderful. I have to look at them for the next half hour. I sincerely doubt they're pleased with the arrangement either. Let's restrict conversation, eat quickly, and leave._

It was unfortunate that Dumbledore was in one of his more puckish moods. He insisted in handing out Christmas crackers to everyone and cheering as they popped open to reveal comical hats. Snape rather pointedly didn't take one.

"Come, come, Severus, you must have a hat, too!" cried Dumbledore, laughing, and held out a particularly large silver noisemaker. Left with no choice, Snape took the end proffered to him and pulled. A very large bang, a small puff of smoke, and there on the table lay a pointed witch's hat topped with a vulture.

This fit so perfectly the description Snape and the others had heard of Longbottom's boggart dressed in his grandmother's clothes that McGonagall immediately began fizzing with suppressed laughter. Snape didn't look at Sprout and Flitwick, not wanting to see the glee on their faces. Across from him the three Gryffindor students were trying their best not to giggle and succeeding very badly. Snape turned to the irrepressible Dumbledore, seething internally and pushing the hat toward the Headmaster. _You did that on purpose._

Dumbledore's eyes flickered in surprise, then he smiled and took the hat, removing his wizard's cap and putting the vulture on his own head. "Dig in !" he commanded, and they all began to eat.

Little happened during lunch except that they were joined by Sibyll Trelawney, an event welcomed by Snape since she and McGonagall never got along, and McGonagall baited the Divination teacher all the way through lunch. Aside from its being highly amusing, it caused everyone else to forget the vulture hat.

The students left as soon as it was polite for them to go, Potter and Weasley being the first. Granger for some reason wanted to confide in McGonagall, and the others drifted off to their rooms to relax. Dumbledore put a hand on Snape's sleeve.

"Stay for a moment, Severus."

"Yes, Professor?"

Dumbledore leaned closer, his elbows resting on the table, chin on hands. "Something happened earlier. Something that has not happened before. You spoke to me and told me that I planned that little hat trick. Which I did, of course, but that is not the point."

"I didn't speak to you. That's what I was thinking, but I didn't…" Snape stopped as the full import hit him.

"I did not 'read' your mind, Severus. You projected. You projected a clear, concisely worded message to me. Not a memory, not an emotional feeling – words. Words intended to tell me something specific."

"I don't know how I could've done that."

"It doesn't matter. What matters is that it can be done. Do not tell anyone else. I think that the fact that I can communicate silently with one of my teachers is not something that should be public knowledge. It may never be necessary. It is nonetheless good to know that it exists. Another weapon in the arsenal."

As Snape was leaving the table, McGonagall came over. "Sit down, Severus. We have another mystery that may be a problem. Potter has received a new broom to replace the broken Nimbus."

"That's wonderful!" exclaimed Dumbledore. "I had hoped he would still be able to play at top form."

"Where did he get it from?" was Snape's reaction. "Clearly it didn't come from either of you, and my understanding was that his aunt and uncle never bought him anything. "

"That is the problem, and the reason why Granger wanted to talk to me. Potter himself doesn't know who gave it to him."

Snape and Dumbledore exchanged a glance. "Quirrell once tried to get rid of Potter through a broom accident. What if Black intends the same? Maybe the broom is cursed," Snape suggested.

"That is what Granger is afraid of," replied McGonagall, and Snape's opinion of Granger went up a little. "I am going up to Gryffindor Tower now to confiscate the broom. I'd prefer to have Madam Hooch look at it, but she isn't here. Professor Flitwick can check it for charms. Maybe you can look at it, too, Severus."

"I don't know anything about brooms."

"You know as much about dark magic as anyone here. If the broom's been jinxed, you'd probably know it."

"Excuse me, Minerva, but Professor Lupin handles Dark Arts," Dumbledore interjected.

Snape and McGonagall looked at Dumbledore and then at each other. It was clear they agreed on this. "I'd rather not have Remus involved," said McGonagall. "He was one of Black's best friends, and it wouldn't be fair to put him into the position of investigating a friend."

"Besides," added Snape, "he's ill and won't be available for the next few days."

"Very well," conceded Dumbledore. "Have Flitwick look at the broom. If there is any indication that it has been jinxed, then you Severus should check it more thoroughly. I am sure, however, that you will find it is in perfect working order."

The question of the broom brought all of Snape's suspicions back to the fore. He was certain the gift came from Sirius Black. _And how might Black have learned that Potter needed a new broom? Lupin told him._ Hadn't Lupin admitted earlier that he'd discussed the broom with Potter? Then he passed the information on to Black, who got Potter exactly what Potter wanted – a new broom, a wonderful broom. And Potter was just the type – his father's type – to take the gift without question, as something he deserved just by virtue of being Harry.

This was something Snape couldn't discuss with Dumbledore. The headmaster had made it abundantly clear that he wanted to hear nothing against Lupin. Lupin and Potter – two perfect people in Dumbledore's eyes. _Why won't he listen? Black escapes from Azkaban, and suddenly Lupin is available for a job at Hogwarts. Someone has gotten Black past the dementors and into the castle. Someone is encouraging Potter to be careless of his own safety. Someone passed a message to Black that Potter would welcome a new broom. Who could it be but Lupin?_

They couldn't find anything wrong with the broom. Both Snape and Flitwick checked it for every charm, hex, jinx, curse, or enchantment they could think of, and the broom turned out clean every time. When the Christmas break ended, and students and teachers returned to Hogwarts, Madam Hooch was given the broom. She intended to strip it down completely and have the two professors individually check each part. She estimated this might take a month to accomplish. Neither Snape nor Flitwick grudged the time and effort.

The first Quidditch game of the year was between Slytherin and Ravenclaw. It was a hard fought battle, but Slytherin won by a narrow margin. At about the same time, news of Potter's new broom filtered through the ranks of the teachers. It was like a replay of the time two years earlier when Snape had asked to referee a Quidditch game in order to find out who was attacking Potter.

"So, you've confiscated Potter's new broomstick, eh," commented Sinistra at supper. "I suppose without that broom Gryffindor's chances of beating you get slimmer and slimmer."

"It wasn't my idea to check the broom," Snape protested. "McGonagall wanted me to go over it. And it's Hooch who's holding it back now, not me."

"Right. It's hard to miss how much it helps out Slytherin, though. I still think…"

"It isn't my fault. I didn't make the decision."

"Professor Sprout! Severus here is trying to tell me that it's nothing to do with him that Potter can't use his new broomstick."

"A likely story, Snape. Anything to keep Slytherin on top, in my opinion."

Snape knew they were teasing, but he hoped Hooch would be finished with the broom soon.

Mid February was the Quidditch match between Gryffindor and Ravenclaw. Snape paid little attention during the weeks leading up to it except to note that immediately before the match McGonagall gave Potter back the new broomstick. At breakfast on the Saturday morning of the match, it seemed as if every boy in Gryffindor was escorting Potter to their table. The boy had actually brought the broom with him to breakfast.

Why soon became apparent. Gryffindor was not paying any attention to Ravenclaw. Gryffindor was taunting Slytherin.

After observing the interplay between the two houses for a few minutes, Snape got up and slipped into a seat next to McGonagall. "You know, they might have the courtesy to show some respect to the team they're actually playing today."

"Nervous, Severus? How does it feel to know you might soon be toppled off that throne of yours?"

"So that's where they get this cutthroat competitive streak. Direct from the Head of house herself. I should stop being surprised and go right to the source."

"You are going down in May. You are going to lose. You should practice living with the idea, laddie, so it's not so great a shock when it happens."

"Such an exemplar of kindness and consideration. Not to mention modesty."

"Do you want to back up your team with a wee wager?"

"Just exactly what do you consider a 'wee wager?' I'd hate to end up penniless in the event of a Gryffindor win."

"Ten galleons."

"Not on your life. The gesture is purely symbolic in any case. One knut."

"As I recall, you've always been a bit of a penny-pincher. Weren't you the boy that tucked every sickle he made tutoring into a locked chest and would never even go into Hogsmeade for fear he might be tempted to buy one Jelly Slug?"

"I still haven't bought that Jelly Slug. One knut, take it or leave it."

"Deal."

Snape broke tradition by sitting with McGonagall that day. Flitwick was gracious enough to accept the explanation of the wager, knowing that all of Slytherin was cheering for Ravenclaw in any case. Lupin was in the Gryffindor box as well, sitting behind Snape and McGonagall.

Quidditch as purely a game was not something that Snape was particularly interested in. He'd been a student at Hogwarts for several years before he saw his first match, and that only because Lily'd insisted. He found the game somewhat boring. The better the seeker, the more boring the game. In fact, he had a tendency to cheer for the bludgers.

As the game progressed, even Snape had to admit that the Firebolt broom that Potter was riding was a technical marvel. Some of the dives were spectacular. Then, as both Potter and the Ravenclaw seeker closed in on the snitch, gasps came from the crowd. Three dementors were gliding onto the pitch.

Snape froze, his heart pounding and his breathing suddenly shallow. The spectators around him had risen to their feet, while he remained on the bench. Above the field, Potter suddenly pulled a wand from inside his robes and pointed it at the dementors.

Light sprang from the wand, light in the wispy, uncertain form of a deer. It radiated a powerful glow as it advanced on and struck the dementors, felling them to the ground. Then the stands erupted in wild cheering as Potter caught the snitch and ended the game.

McGonagall was already halfway to the dementors, Lupin not far behind her. Snape sat for a moment in the stands, eyes closed, then rose and joined the throng pouring out onto the pitch. Shakily he made his way to the crowd around McGonagall.

She was in a towering rage. "…cowardly attempt to sabotage the Gryffindor seeker! Detention for all of you, and fifty points from Slytherin…"

Fifty points! Snape suddenly began to push forward. There on the ground were Malfoy, Crabbe, Goyle, and Flint, still entangled in the black robes they'd used to impersonate dementors. Snape was furious, but said nothing, leaving the punishment of the four in McGonagall's very capable hands. Now that it was clear there had never been any dementors, he was beginning to calm down and focus on what had happened.

Harry Potter, a thirteen-year-old boy, had just produced a very impressive patronus.

xxxxxxxxxx

_A patronus! The boy can produce a patronus, and a good one. Is that what Lupin has been working with him about? Why? To use against dementors? But there are no dementors in the castle. All right, he was attacked by one on the train, and again at that first Quidditch match, so maybe there's some justification, but isn't it terribly risky as well?_

_Lily's son is safest when he stays with other people. When he goes off by himself, he's vulnerable, a walking target. One of the things that keeps him from wandering off alone is his fear of the dementors. By giving him a reason not to fear the dementors, you increase the chance that he'll walk right into Black's hands. Now what will keep him inside the castle? Is that what Lupin wants? A reason for Potter not to be afraid of the dementors? Something that will make it easier for Black to reach him undetected?_

The whole castle knew that Gryffindor was partying with serious intent. It wasn't the first time that Snape was glad to be as far as possible from Gryffindor Tower. _At least this will ensure that Potter stays where it's safe._

Shut in the peace and quiet of his dungeon office, Snape pondered every angle of Lupin's possible involvement in the patronus and with Potter. There was no way around it. He found far more in it to worry him than not, and very little comfort.

The alarm jolted Snape out of sleep at two o'clock in the morning. All staff were being asked to report to the Great Hall at once. Dragging himself out of bed and throwing a dressing gown on over his nightclothes, Snape made his way through the dark corridor to the Hall. He was almost the first one there. The others were filtering in from the floors above.

McGonagall was already waiting, in a tartan dressing gown with her hair in a net.

"What's happening?" Snape asked, stifling a yawn.

"He's back. He was in Gryffindor, in the dormitories. In Potter's dormitory."

"Who?"

"Sirius Black. He went after young Weasley with a knife."

All sleepiness, all fatigue was instantly gone. "Is the boy all right? Was anyone injured? When did this happen?"

"Not ten minutes ago. The boys are fine, badly frightened is all. Weasley most of all. Black slashed through his bed curtains, but the boy woke and yelled, and he fled. The others were asleep when it happened."

"Then Black must still be in the castle."

"That's why you've been called out."

By this time the rest of the teachers had gathered. Quickly briefed by McGonagall, they split to search the castle from top to bottom, Snape once again taking the uninhabited towers and the upper floors. Once again the search proved fruitless.

By morning the story had leapt from Gryffindor to Ravenclaw, and from there to Hufflepuff and Slytherin. Everyone knew that Sirius Black had attacked Ron Weasley, and everyone also knew that he'd gotten the Gryffindor passwords from a crib list dropped by Neville Longbottom. Weasley was the hero of the school, and Longbottom the goat, and Snape was totally dissatisfied with the story.

"Listen, it doesn't make sense. You tell me that Longbottom lost the list some time before Friday afternoon. That means he lost it somewhere inside the castle. So for Sirius Black to find it, he would already have to be inside the castle, and no one could have found the list before him. Now, who helped Black into the castle, and where was the list of passwords that no one else found but Black did?"

"Well you know now that you put it that way, it does seem a bit suspicious. Are you saying that you think someone in the castle is helping Black enter, and that person found Longbottom's list on Friday and gave it to Black on Saturday?" McGonagall's face wore a puzzled look.

"Doesn't that fit the facts better? No mystery to that one."

"But who…"

"Severus?" A benignly smiling Dumbledore interrupted the breakfast conversation. "I am sorry to spoil your little chat, Minerva, but I really must speak with Severus for a moment."

Snape followed Dumbledore to a corner of the Hall.

"Severus, you were about to voice to Professor McGonagall your suspicions about Professor Lupin. I really must insist that you do not talk of this with the other teachers."

"Headmaster, someone is helping Black enter the castle and someone gave him that list. The lives of our students are at stake. You have to at least consider the possibility…"

"No, Severus. I am completely confident that no member of this staff is to blame for what happened. I forbid you to carry this any further. You will not speak of your suspicions, and you will not act on your suspicions. Do you understand?"

"Yes, Headmaster." Snape turned away from Dumbledore and strode angrily from the Hall.

_Don't talk to the other teachers. Don't talk to the other teachers. I promise you this, Professor High-and-Mighty, I-know-what-everybody's-thinking Dumbledore – when Harry Potter is lying bleeding to death on the floor of the Gryffindor common room, I swear I'm going to mention it to someone!_

Furious now at Dumbledore's shortsightedness where Lupin was concerned, Snape decided to start checking and patrolling the whole castle himself. Black had to be getting in somewhere. Snape was going to find out where. All of his free time was now gone. When he was not teaching classes, or correcting papers, or mixing Lupin's potions, Snape was prowling the corridors of Hogwarts trying to find any place where Sirius Black might enter.

Shortly after, the school had another Hogsmeade excursion. Potter, luckily, was still unable to join the rest of the school because his aunt and uncle had not signed the form. In Snape's opinion this was a most sensible way to protect the boy, as long as he was smart enough to stay in the Gryffindor common room. Since the last incident when Black entered the castle, the entrance to Gryffindor was once again held by the Fat Lady, who knew Sirius Black, and she was protected by security trolls. It was unlikely that Black would ever get into Gryffindor again.

It was with some surprise, therefore, that on the morning of the excursion Snape saw both Potter and Longbottom standing together in front of the statue of the humpbacked witch on the third floor, far from Gryffindor, the library, or any place else they might be expected to be.

"And what are you two doing here?" he asked. "An odd place to meet..." Snape suddenly had a feeling that the statue had something to do with Potter's actions. He wasn't certain why or how, but the feeling was there.

Potter was evasive. "We're not – meeting here. We just – met here."

_It's still not someplace where you should be with a crazed killer after you._ "Indeed? You have a habit of turning up in unexpected places, Potter, and you are very rarely there for no good reason… I suggest the pair of you return to Gryffindor Tower, where you belong." _And where you'll be safe._

As the boys obeyed, Snape stepped up to the statue of the witch. He touched it tentatively, wondering why he was getting such an odd feeling about it. There seemed to be nothing unusual, however, and he finished his rounds and returned to his office.

The afternoon was not far gone when there was a commotion outside Snape's office and then a banging on his door. Snape opened it to admit an extremely flustered Malfoy, who was babbling something about Potter's head. Malfoy's own head was spattered with mud. Crabbe and Goyle were in the corridor behind him, and they were muddy, too.

It took several minutes to calm Malfoy down to the point where he was coherent. Then Snape heard the unlikely story of mud hurtling out of empty space, and Potter's disembodied head floating near the Shrieking Shack. Malfoy was hysterical, but to Snape it all made perfect sense.

_He has James's invisibility cloak. That little brat has been defying school rules and going into Hogsmeade without permission using that invisibility cloak. How…? Not by the gate, but maybe that's the purpose of the witch._ Sending the three Slytherin boys to the common room, Snape raced up the stairs to the third floor.

And there Potter was. Standing next to the witch, trying to hide the fact that he had mud on his hands. There was no sign of the cloak. _And if you can get in and out of the castle that way, Potter, maybe Sirius Black can, too._

"So. Come with me, Potter." Snape led the way back downstairs to his office in the dungeons, a rather subdued Potter right behind.

"Sit." Potter sat. Snape did not. "Mr. Malfoy has just been to see me with a strange story, Potter. He tells me that he was up by the Shrieking Shack when he ran into Weasley – apparently alone. Mr. Malfoy states that he was standing talking to Weasley, when a large amount of mud hit him in the back of the head. How do you think that could have happened?"

Potter was forced to answer the direct question. "I don't know, Professor," he said, his eyes wide.

"Mr. Malfoy then saw an extraordinary apparition. Can you imagine what it might have been, Potter?"

"No."

"It was your head, Potter. Floating in midair."

Potter tried to pass it off as a joke, but Snape didn't let him finish. "What would your head have been doing in Hogsmeade, Potter? Your head is not allowed in Hogsmeade. No part of your body has permission to be in Hogsmeade."

_You think you can brazen your way out of this, don't you? You don't realize that I know about James's cloak. I know you were in Hogsmeade, and I know how you managed it, you and that witch statue. Mocking all our attempts to keep you safe._

"So. Everyone from the Minister of Magic downward has been trying to keep famous Harry Potter safe from Sirius Black. But famous Harry Potter is a law unto himself. Let the ordinary people worry about his safety! Famous Harry Potter goes where he wants to, with no thought for the consequences. How extraordinarily like your father you are, Potter."

That got a rise. The boy was not pretending innocence anymore. He was angry. Snape pushed it. Angry people say things without thinking. "He too was exceedingly arrogant… Strutting around the place with his friends and admirers…"

"My dad didn't strut. And neither do I."

"Your father didn't set much store by rules either… His head was so swollen…"

"SHUT UP!"

"What did you say to me, Potter?"

"I told you to shut up about my dad! I know the truth, all right? He saved your life! Dumbledore told me…"

Locking down, shutting off, the cold moment before the volcano erupts. _Bullied, threatened, intimidated, beaten up, nearly killed in front of a crowd of people, lost the only friend I ever had, and driven into Bella's waiting arms, and all he told you was that James saved my life! Am I nothing that he gives ammunition to this arrogant little imp who thumbs his nose at every rule Hogwarts has!_

"Have you been imagining some act of glorious heroism? Your saintly father and his friends played a highly amusing joke on me that would have resulted in my death if your father hadn't got cold feet at the last moment. There was nothing brave about what he did. Had their joke succeeded, he would have been expelled from Hogwarts. Turn out your pockets, Potter! Turn out your pockets, or we go straight to the headmaster!"

Potter hesitated, then produced a bag from Zonko's Joke Shop and a folded up piece of parchment. "Ron gave them to me," he said lamely.

"And you've been carrying them around ever since? How very touching." Snape took the bag automatically, but his attention was riveted on the parchment. Old parchment. "And what is this?" he said as he pulled it from the boy's hand, but he didn't need an answer. He'd seen it before.

_This is the map Sirius had the day he tried to jump me outside the library. It's blank now, but I remember the look, the feel of it. The map Filch confiscated from him. The map they must have gotten back from Filch somehow. The map only Lupin could have given to Potter._

Snape looked at Potter, who was pretending the parchment was unimportant. Moving closer the to fire, Snape said, "Why don't I just – throw this away?"

"No!" Potter cried.

"Or is it – instructions to get into Hogsmeade without passing the dementors?"

The look on Potter's face was all Snape needed. The boy was using the map. _There is a passage behind the statue of the witch! Idiot child! Sirius Black helped make this map. Black knows where every passageway on it is. Lupin is sending you down where Black might be waiting for you. To kill you. And all you care about is buying tricks at Zonko's. Your mother died for this?_

Pulling out his wand, Snape unfolded the parchment on his desk and tried a few revealing spells to force the map to show itself. None worked, but the parchment began to form sentences, insulting sentences. Lupin, Potter, Black, and Pettigrew, each in turn taunted him – he could practically hear their voices in the mocking words. Potter looked as if he was going to be sick.

"So," and Snape's voice was icy. The cold calm before the nuclear blast. "We'll see about this…" He strode to the fireplace, grabbed a fistful of floo powder, and flung it against the grate. "Lupin," he hissed, "I want a word!"

Lupin came at once. Stepping out from the hearth, he brushed the floo powder from his clothes. "You called, Severus?" he asked in a voice that oozed innocence.

"I certainly did," said Snape, barely able to keep his anger under control. "I have just asked Potter to empty his pockets. He was carrying this," and he pointed to the parchment.

There was no doubt. Lupin tried to control his expression, but Snape knew he recognized the map. "Well?" Snape insisted.

Lupin was silent. He was clearly trying to think of what to say. Snape pressed forward, his voice dripping with sarcasm. "Well? This parchment is plainly full of Dark Magic. This is supposed to be your area of expertise, Lupin. Where do you imagine Potter got such a thing?"

_Did he just look at Potter? Warning him to be quiet? Warning him not to interrupt?_

"Full of Dark Magic? Do you really think so, Severus? It looks to me as though it is merely a piece of parchment that insults anybody who reads it. Childish, but surely not dangerous? I imagine Harry got it from a joke shop -"

_Do you think I'm an idiot? Or didn't Sirius tell you how he lost the map. Do you think I don't know?_ "Indeed. You think a joke shop could supply him with such a thing? You don't think it more likely that he got it directly from the manufacturers?"

Lupin had the gall to pretend he didn't understand. "You mean by Mr. Wormtail or one of these people? Harry, do you know any of these men?"

"No," Potter replied, a little too quickly.

_No, I don't mean Mr. Wormtail. I mean Mr. Moony, who's standing right in front of me this very moment pretending butter wouldn't melt in his mouth._

"You see, Severus," Lupin continued. "It looks like a Zonko product to me –"

Then, as if part of the plot, Weasley came bursting into the office claiming to have bought everything and given it to Potter. At the sudden distraction, Lupin snatched the map off the desk, folded it, and put it in his robes.

"Well! That seems to clear that up! Severus, I'll take this back, shall I? Harry, Ron, come with me…"

Snape stepped forward, but short of wrestling Lupin for the parchment, there was nothing he could do. Seething, his heart pounding and breathing like a winded runner, Snape watched Lupin slip away with Potter, Weasley, and the map.

Less than five minutes later, Hogwarts had lost another seventeen glass potions beakers.

xxxxxxxxxx

"There is a passageway to Hogsmeade somewhere around that statue!" Snape knew his voice sounded wild and strident, but he couldn't control it. "Potter's been using it to go to Hogsmeade without permission, and he has his father's old invisibility cloak to hide him while he's there!"

"Severus, Severus, you must calm down. We have checked the statue and found no passageway. And an invisibility cloak, surely not."

"James. Had. An. Invisibility. Cloak. He told me about it himself when he was trying to patch things up with me so that he could have a chance at Lily. That obnoxious, arrogant little piece of owl dung has the cloak, and his disembodied head is appearing all over Hogsmeade! You have to do something about it!"

"We've looked through his things. There was nothing there. No invisibility cloak at all. You are overwrought, Severus, and you need to calm down or we'll be sending you to St. Mungo's in a straitjacket."

"But Lupin is handing Potter to Black on a silver platter."

"Not silver. Not for a werewolf. And you seem to have forgotten that I told you not to speak of these suspicions. I have complete faith in all my teachers. I assure you that no one on the staff is doing anything to harm the boy."

The urge to strike Dumbledore was almost overpowering. _The demon. I have to control the demon. So many years, so many years, and it's still there. Waiting to pounce. Waiting to leap out. Why won't he listen? Why won't he pay attention? Why won't he take me seriously?_

"Yes, Headmaster," was all that Snape said. He left Dumbledore's office feeling more alone than he'd felt in over twelve years.

And that was where things stood for weeks. Snape's days were filled with classes, homework, Lupin's potions, and patrolling the castle. At night he slept badly. He was noticeably even thinner than usual, and he had pretty much stopped talking to anyone. This was principally because there was no one he could talk to about what had become an obsession.

Dumbledore was out of the question, of course. It was Dumbledore who'd muzzled him. Hagrid was understandably preoccupied with Buckbeak and seldom came to the castle for meals anymore. He'd lost the case and was now preparing an appeal against the hippogriff's execution. Snape missed Hagrid, but he still couldn't bring himself to go near the forest where the dementors lurked.

Snape still had to see Lupin all the time about the calming potions, but now their conversation, which had never been extensive, was limited to commenting on the potion's efficacy. Snape was giving Lupin small doses of each ingredient one by one to see if he could isolate the particular herb that Lupin was allergic to. So far he'd had little success.

McGonagall and the others were a different matter. The whole school was talking about the upcoming Quidditch match between Slytherin and Gryffindor, and all McGonagall wanted to discuss were Gryffindor's chances of beating Slytherin for the Quidditch cup. It was all Flitwick and Sprout wanted to discuss, too, and they sided with McGonagall. _It's apparently a tactical error to have the best Quidditch team every year. It promotes jealousy and ill feeling, especially against me._

Monitoring the students became a major chore. Both Gryffindor and Slytherin students were harassing and jinxing each other in the corridors and in classrooms. A couple of small fights even broke out between classes. The only good thing about this was that the Gryffindor captain ordered Potter to be guarded everywhere he went, and the boy was effectively prevented from doing anything stupid because he was constantly surrounded by his teammates and housemates.

The Saturday morning of the match, Snape paused at the Slytherin breakfast table to wish Flint and the others good luck. The hall was packed, and the Gryffindor team chose that moment to enter, clearly playing for maximum effect.

The Great Hall erupted in cheering. Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, and Hufflepuff all joined in, as did the teachers at the high table, including Dumbledore, who enthusiastically applauded. The Slytherin table was booing and hissing, and Snape made no effort to stop them. He'd completely lost his appetite.

Rather than endure McGonagall's teasing at the teacher's table, Snape stayed with his own house, walking along the table and talking to the students, encouraging the team, and generally waiting until he could gracefully leave the hall, which only happened after the Gryffindor team departed, again to tumultuous applause.

Going back into the dungeon area, Snape was stopped by Marcus Flint. "Begging your pardon, sir, but the whole house is going out to the field together, and we were wondering if… well…" He pulled a small bundle from under his robes. It was another robe, a green one. Slytherin green with silver trim. "We were wondering if you wanted to be part of it, is all."

Snape took the robe. "I would be proud to be part of it, Mr. Flint," he replied, and took the robe with him to his office, where he exchanged the usual academic black that he always wore for the brave green and silver.

Slytherin came last of all the houses down the hill, chanting their fighting song, emerald banners with their silver serpent waving in the breeze. Three quarters of the school stood against them, but they were not going to give up. Snape eschewed the VIP bleachers, and sat in the stands with his students.

From the beginning, the game went badly. The announcer was so clearly biased that the Slytherin team quickly lost all sense of proportion and concentrated on stopping Gryffindor either legally or by fouls. Gryffindor responded, but Madam Hooch noticed the Slytherin fouls and not those committed by Gryffindor. The score seesawed back and forth. Gryffindor needed a win of more than two hundred points to capture the Quidditch cup, and its team was doing all they could to keep Malfoy away from the Snitch until they were leading by sixty points.

In the end, the game was won by the Firebolt. Malfoy saw the Snitch before Potter did, and it was a race. The Slytherin stands were on their feet, Snape with them, as the more powerful broom swept down on Malfoy and edged him out. Potter struck Malfoy's arm away from the Snitch and reached for it himself, and the game was over. Gryffindor had won the Quidditch cup.

Snape joined his team on the field, congratulating them on a well-fought game. The green and silver crowd was quiet and dejected. Nobody else came to speak to them, for they were all concentrating on Gryffindor, and the Slytherin team couldn't get close to the Gryffindor team to congratulate them because of the throng. _Not that they particularly want to. It would have been different if Gryffindor had been winning for ten years, and we were the underdog team. _He wasn't in the mood to remember that there'd been a time when that was true.

Depressed and dejected, Snape nonetheless swallowed his own feelings and went over to congratulate McGonagall on her win. "I owe you a knut," he said as they shook hands.

"And I'm going to see that you pay it," she answered. Then they were swept apart by cheering students and teachers, and Slytherin house made its way back up the hill to the castle, leaving the field to the victors.

xxxxxxxxxx


	43. Chapter 43 – Struck from Behind

**Two More for Azkaban: Struck from Behind**

xxxxxxxxxx

By supper time, Snape was a bit more ready to deal with the situation.

"How does it feel not being on top anymore?" Sprout called from halfway across the Great Hall.

"Very comfortable, in fact. Much less like a moving target."

"Bit of a shocker for you today, wasn't it my boy?" commented Flitwick.

"We just couldn't bear to see you lose all that money you bet on Gryffindor. And don't say I never did you a favor."

Hagrid was almost contrite. "I sort of lost my head there, Professor. It's just that me and Harry, we've been like that since I first took him to Diagon Alley. Nothing against you, just that me and Harry, well you know."

"I know, Hagrid. No hard feelings."

Then there were final exams. Nothing special happened except that Potter, contrary to all expectations, was totally unable to pass the practical portion of the exam. His potion was a disaster.

_If it weren't for your eyes and your nose I'd refuse to believe you were Lily's son at all. Is there nothing of her in you? You have money, you have fame, you're good at Quidditch, and you're a mediocre student. There is no doubt, even apart from your appearance, who your father was, but does your mother live in you at all? She was good at potions, and at charms, and at many things. Aside from broomsticks, what are you good at? Ah, one thing. Getting yourself out of the trouble that you got yourself into._

Hagrid, too, was reaching crisis. On the Thursday that was the last day of exams in early June, Hagrid's hippogriff Buckbeak was scheduled for his appeal. The appeal was taking place at Hogwarts, and if lost would mean the execution of Buckbeak at sundown of the same day.

The Minister of Magic arrived that day at Hogwarts around noon. He was actually visiting in regard to the search for Sirius Black, but was doing double duty as a witness at the hippogriff's execution, should it come to that. With him were two representatives of the Committee for the Disposal of Dangerous Creatures.

Snape had been thinking of talking to the Minister, Cornelius Fudge, about Hagrid and the hippogriff, but on arriving in the entrance hall was arrested by the sight of the representatives of the Committee. The older wizard was unknown to him, but the younger was not, and he immediately recognized Snape.

"Well hello there, Snape old boy," he boomed, his black mustache quivering and the axe in his belt bobbing. "Fancy seeing you here."

"Hello yourself, Macnair. It has been ages, hasn't it. What brings you to Hogwarts?"

"Hippogriff to put down. Malfoy's keen on it. Looking forward to it myself. Hard to get a good job these days."

"I heard there was an appeal."

"Don't go placing bets. It's a done deal. When you get down to it, the beast attacked the boy. Enough said. And you don't want to go getting in the way of Lucius Malfoy. Better for me, too. And for you. You ever hear anything really good about a hippogriff? Best to chop 'em all, I say."

"You're probably right. I can't tell you how to do your job."

Macnair lowered his voice to a whisper. "You hear what's on the grapevine? They say he's coming back, that he's shown himself. I'm waiting for the summons. Is it true you saw him here at Hogwarts?"

Snape hesitated. Macnair was one of the more brutal Death Eaters, and Dumbledore considered it imperative that Snape's position regarding the Dark Lord remain ambiguous. "I stood as close to him as I am standing to you right now, but he felt that communication at that time was not wise. He's not yet regained bodily form."

"Lucky man, to have the chance to see and talk to him after all these years. When he returns…"

The Minister called to Macnair, "We're ready to go up and see Dumbledore now. Best come along."

Snape watched them go. With Macnair standing by to see and hear everything, there was no way to speak to the Minister about Hagrid. At least Dumbledore would be able to intercede, and after all, Dumbledore's word carried far more weight than his own did.

Hagrid lost the appeal, and the hippogriff was sentenced to be executed at sundown the same day. Since it was June, that was well after dinner. Hagrid, naturally, was not in the Great Hall that evening, though the three from the Ministry were. Snape had the feeling that Macnair was watching him all during the meal.

There was no question of going to see Hagrid. Aside from the dementors, Macnair would be there. _What has he heard that he's waiting for a summons from the Dark Lord? How many others know? How?_ As soon as Dumbledore was finished with the 'visitors,' Snape would have to tell him about Macnair's information.

Potter and his friends were at dinner, which was some relief. Snape had thought they might try to sneak out of the castle to see Hagrid. There was always that dratted invisibility cloak, but it didn't appear that Potter had it with him.

Snape returned to his own rooms after dinner to avoid Macnair. Shortly after sundown (the execution is over now, poor Hagrid), Snape suddenly thought of Lupin. It was an odd full moon that reached its full in the early hours of the morning. Lupin had not been certain whether he would transform that night or the next. He'd wanted to wait in his office rather than the shack, since other than the weakness, he'd had no problems with the potion.

Snape decided to check on him, and to take an extra dose of the calming potion just in case.

The corridors of the castle were deserted as Snape made his way to the second floor with a goblet of potion. He knocked at Lupin's office door, but there was no response. Fearing the transformation had happened, but knowing that Lupin had been taking his medicine, Snape opened the door and went into the office.

Lupin's office was empty. On the desk, untouched, was the goblet of potion that Snape had brought him earlier in the day. _He's done it. He's been careless about his medication. He's going to transform into a full-blown, uncontrollable werewolf as soon as the moon rises._ It was then that Snape noticed the map.

He hated that map. Like the invisibility cloak, it had been used to separate him from Lily's friendship. Lupin was obviously using it to monitor the movements of everyone at Hogwarts because the whole castle was clearly visible with its little moving dots.

Snape paused for a moment in front of the parchment. Dumbledore and the Minister were coming up the hill by the road. Lupin's dot was moving down the hill, not by the road, but straight towards the Whomping Willow. Snape looked closer. There in the tunnel between the Willow and the Shrieking Shack were Potter and Granger, their dots almost off the edge of the map.

_How does Potter know about the tunnel? Is Sirius Black already in the Shack waiting for him? Has Lupin gone to block his retreat?_ Snape was out of Lupin's office and running down the stairs to the entrance hall as fast as he could go.

Dumbledore and the Minister had not progressed far enough to waste time hailing them. For all Snape knew, Potter was dead already. He followed the path of Lupin's dot, across the summit of the hill and down the side closest to the Willow.

Alarm bells were ringing in Snape's brain. _Macnair is coming up the hill – he'll see me and be suspicious. There are dementors in the Forbidden Forest – I'll alert them by my movement. Lupin's about to transform into a werewolf – how do I handle him? Potter's heading for the Shrieking Shack where Black is probably waiting for him – I have to stop him._

Approaching the Willow, Snape sensed two things: the Willow wasn't moving, and there were dementors nearby. He stopped. _Slow down, Severus. How close are the dementors? Maybe they haven't marked you yet._ He had to force himself to take the next step. _How close before they notice and attack? Don't think of that. Think of Lupin turning into a werewolf in the same room as two students. Stop him. Have to stop him._

Step by forced step he edged closer to the Willow, which was starting to sway. There, on the ground by its roots, was the invisibility cloak. An evil thing. A wicked, filthy thing. And yet there was a homicidal maniac and a werewolf ahead of him. Up there in the Shack with Potter and Granger. _Don't be a fool! You need all the help you can get._ Picking up the horrid, evil thing that had helped destroy his life, Snape put it on, took a deep breath, and entered the tunnel.

It was a long way from the Willow into Hogsmeade. Unable to use a Lumos spell for fear of alerting Lupin or Black, Snape stumbled along in the darkness. The end of the tunnel was not light, but rather a lessening of the dark. There Snape crawled up through the floor and groped his way to the stairs. Voices were coming from the room above.

Snape recognized Granger's voice. "…there have been only seven Animagi this century, and Pettigrew's name wasn't on the list –"

Lupin laughed. "Right again, Hermione! But the Ministry never knew that there used to be three unregistered Animagi running around Hogwarts."

Light began to dawn for Snape. It came nearly twenty years too late, but it was light. _That's how they tracked me! It wasn't just the map!_ He edged nearer.

Another voice broke in, a well-hated voice. Sirius Black's voice. "If you're going to tell the story, get a move on Remus. I've waited twelve years, I'm not going to wait much longer."

There is no longer any doubt. _Black and Lupin are working together to kill Potter!_

_What am I facing? Lupin must have a wand. Does Black? Are the children free or bound? Do they have their wands? Let Lupin keep talking, let him brag if he wants. It'll give me more time._ Snape put his hand on the knob of the door that separated him from the voices. Gently, quietly, he opened it. At the moment he managed to slip into the room, the door creaked, attracting Black's and Lupin's attention, but Snape, under the invisibility cloak, was already inside.

"This place is haunted!"

Snape looked towards the voice. _Why is Weasley here? What's wrong with his leg? Did they attack Weasley to lure Potter in? This complicates things if the boy can't walk. We can't retreat down the tunnel – I have to finish it with both Black and Lupin here. I can't see if they have their wands, but if I move they'll hear me._

Lupin was telling the students how he became a werewolf and the history of the Shack. _I need to watch him closely. The moon is rising. He may transform any moment. Does he want to attack them as a werewolf? Will Potter and Granger be able to react quickly? If they can, it'll be three to two instead of two to one._ Snape didn't dare shift his position for fear of creaking boards making his presence known. Yet as he listened, he found the focus of his anger changing.

"…Finally, in our fifth year, they managed it. They could each turn into a different animal at will." _In our fifth year they separated me and Lily. They used the map, the cloak, and the shape shifting – two of the most popular boys in the school, surrounded by girls everywhere they went, and she was the only friend I had… That must be how he's been getting by the dementors, too. And into the castle. We were looking for Sirius Black, not an animal._

"…there were near misses, many of them. We laughed about them…" _Careless. Still careless. Still taking chances with people's lives. Like tonight. Can't be bothered to take his medicine. The most important thing he has to do, and he can't be bothered. Where is the moon? Steady… watch for the change._

"…felt guilty about betraying Dumbledore's trust… forget my guilty feelings every time we sat down to plan our next month's adventure. And I haven't changed…" _I know you haven't. Even you admit it. Still deceiving Dumbledore, still more concerned with yourself than the safety of others._

"…I convinced myself that Sirius was getting into the school using Dark Arts he learned from Voldemort… Snape's been right about me all along." _There! Black was in the service of the Dark Lord! Even Lupin knows about it! He destroyed Lily, and now he wants to kill Lily's son to finish his Lord's work!_

"Snape? What's Snape got to do with it?"

"He's here, Sirius. He's teaching here as well… you see, Sirius here played a trick on him which nearly killed him…"

"It served him right," Black sneered.

_Served me right? Served me right! Black still thinks I deserved to be killed because I wouldn't give in to his intimidation and threats? After all these years he still wants me dead! Wants Potter dead. Wants anyone dead who doesn't agree with him. Of course, killing people who get in your way is just second nature to Black. Look what he's doing now._

"…Jealous, I think, of James's talent on the Quidditch field…"

_You filthy bastard. How dare you tell Lily's son I cared anything about puffed-up Potter or Quidditch. You know what went on between us, and you dare, you dare to trivialize it by pretending it had anything to do with Quidditch! You petty little sneak. It isn't enough for you to glorify yourself, you have to tear everyone else down. You're going to kill him, and you still can't tell him the truth._

"So that's why Snape doesn't like you, because he though you were in on the joke?" Potter asked.

_Joke? One student tries to kill another and he thinks it's a joke? My death is a joke?_ Unable to take any more, his voice dripping with sarcasm, Snape hissed, "That's right" as he pulled of the invisibility cloak, his wand pointing straight at Lupin, his attention still partly on the window where he could see the light of the rising moon.

Snape could feel his heart pounding, and his breathing was uneven. He tossed the cloak disdainfully to one side, still hating the sight and feel of it. "I found this at the base of the Whomping Willow. Very useful, Potter, I thank you. You're wondering perhaps how I knew you were here. I've just been to your office, Lupin. You forgot to take your potion tonight, so I took a gobletful along."

_He doesn't care. He knows he's going to transform into a wild killer in a few minutes, and he doesn't care. Black doesn't care either, but now I know why. But what is wrong with the children? Don't they realize…? Maybe they don't know tonight is the full moon. But Lupin does._

"Lying on your desk was a certain map. One glance at it told me all I needed to know. I saw you running along this passageway and out of sight. I've told the headmaster again and again that you're helping your old friend Black into the castle, Lupin, and here's the proof."

"Severus, you're making a mistake. You haven't heard everything…"

_Don't try to wiggle out of this. If you're helping Black now, maybe you were helping him twelve years ago. Maybe you helped kill Lily._ "Two more for Azkaban tonight. I shall be interested to see how Dumbledore takes this…" _Refusing to listen, refusing to even consider the possibility. Insisting Lupin was safe when even now he's trying to buy time to allow the transformation…_

"You fool. Is a schoolboy grudge worth putting an innocent man back into Azkaban?"

_You filthy lying toad! Jealous about Quidditch and schoolboy grudges! Do you really not have a clue?_ Then, suddenly, it was crystal clear. Every piece fell into place. Sirius Black and Bella Black – they were working together all along! Servants of the Dark Lord even in school. _You were pushing me into her hands! You wanted me to be a Death Eater! You gave me to Bella!_

Cords leapt from Snape's wand at his unspoken command, binding the werewolf and pulling him to the floor. Lily's murderer charged, but Snape was faster, his wand now practically touching Black's forehead. Never in his life had he so much wanted to kill someone.

"Give me a reason," whispered Snape, cold fury now icing his voice. "Give me a reason to do it, and I swear I will."

A voice behind Snape filtered through his rage. "Professor…?" He didn't hear all the words, but twelve years of Hogwarts took hold, and he found himself shifting into automatic gear. "Miss Granger, you are already facing suspension from this school. You, Potter, and Weasley are out-of-bounds in the company of a convicted murderer and a werewolf. For once in your life, hold your tongue."

She would not, but kept pushing, pushing… and he exploded. "Keep quiet you stupid girl!" _This man will kill both of us given the smallest chance!_ "Don't talk about what you don't understand!"

He concentrated on Black again. _You gave me to Bella. Gave me… sent me out to hear a prophecy and set the hunt afoot, then you sold her… sold her…_ "Vengeance is very sweet. How I hoped I would be the one to catch you…" _For Lily. Vengeance for Lily._

"…I'll come quietly…"

_So you can go on deceiving Dumbledore. So Dumbledore will let you slip away again. _"Up to the castle? I don't think we need to go that far. All I have to do is call the dementors once we get out of the Willow…" _I can even face dementors for the satisfaction of knowing you're back in Azkaban._ "Come on, all of you."

Then, inexplicably, Lily's son was blocking the way. James was blocking the way. Standing up for his betrayer. Blind to the end. Sacrificing wife, child, to the sham friendship of a psychopathic killer…

"Get out of the way, Potter."

"You're pathetic! Just because they made a fool of you at school…!"

"I will not be spoken to like that!" _Lupin's lies. Lupin's lies from Potter's mouth._ "Like father, like son… You'd have died like your father, too arrogant to believe you might be mistaken in Black. Get out of the way!"

They took him the way Potter and Black had always taken him. While he faced one, the other hit him from behind. Snape's mind registered that Potter raised his wand, but even as the spell struck him, another slammed into his back, and the combined force flung him into the wall like a rag doll thrown by an angry child.

Blackness engulfed Snape before his body touched the floor.

xxxxxxxxxx

Consciousness came gradually, and the first thing he was really aware of was a splitting headache. Slowly, Snape opened his eyes. Moonlit dark surrounded him and he was – suspended in midair like a broken marionette. _Must be… Mobilicorpus. Wand. No wand. Think. Concentrate._ Snape focused on his invisible bonds, thought the word Liberacorpus, and collapsed onto the grass.

His head was spinning. Cautiously lifting his hand to the side of his head, Snape found his hair matted with dried blood. His forehead, when he probed the skin with tentative fingers, felt tender and bruised, as if someone had been beating him on the head with a stick. Who? There were students. And Lupin. And…

Adrenaline shot through him. Alert at once, Snape glanced around, but there was no one. No, there was someone. Someone lying on the grass near the Willow, unconscious. He crept to the other's side. Weasley. Immediately Snape checked the boy's breathing and pulse. A spell. _Have to get him back to the castle. Madam Pomfrey._

Snape stood somewhat groggily, shaking his head to clear his mind. He looked around and found three wands, his own, one he recognized as Lupin's, and one that must be Weasley's. He was about to conjure a stretcher when he saw the faint light from the lake. Someone was casting a spell – a patronus spell. Someone needed help. He started toward the lake.

The cold of the dementors was like a barrier. _I can't fight them. I've never been able to produce a strong patronus. It won't do any good._ Still Snape forced himself forward. Potter and Granger were out there somewhere. Black, too, but as an animagus who could escape dementors. Lupin, but he was a werewolf. _Potter and Granger. It must be Potter and Granger._

Then, from across the water, there came another patronus. A patronus whose light grew and radiated in front of it like a beacon of strength. A patronus that lit the night and paled the moon. Below in the darkness the dementors hesitated, quailed, and at last fled. Snape stood, transfixed at the image of the radiant creature that paused, stamping its hooves, then returned to its creator across the water. _A stag. Potter conjured a stag at the Quidditch match. Was that Potter?_

But it could not have been Potter, for Potter was lying unconscious near Black and Granger there where the dementors had attacked. Snape tried to puzzle it out, but his head was aching and he felt nauseous. Things seemed blurred and uncertain, and he wanted to lie down and sleep.

Instead he returned to Weasley, conjured the stretcher, and lifted Weasley onto it. Moving the stretcher in front of him, he then went down to the lake and conjured three more, one by one lifting Granger, Potter, and Black, the last of whom he bound to the stretcher with magical cords.

.

Four stretchers were a lot to handle, but Snape managed to maneuver them up the hill, into the castle, and to the hospital wing on the first floor. Madam Pomfrey went into a flurry of activity. She was asking him questions, questions he didn't totally understand because he was so sleepy, and feeling so sick…

xxxxxxxxxx

"He has a concussion. He's fine now, but it's a good thing he got up here to the infirmary. If he'd fallen asleep there…"

"Thank you, Madam Pomfrey. I shall not keep you from your other patients." There was movement, and then Dumbledore's voice. "Severus? Are you awake?"

"Yes, Professor. I… are the students all right?"

"Fine, fine."

"And Black?'

"He's in custody. You are not to fret about this. You have had quite enough trauma to the head this evening."

"Professor, there was someone else out there. Someone who conjured a powerful patronus to drive the dementors away. It looked… it looked like the patronus that Potter conjured at the game against Ravenclaw."

"Indeed?"

"Do you know who's out there? Who might have done it?"

"Severus, listen carefully. I do not wish you to speak of this patronus to anyone. Not to anyone. It is very important that this remain a hidden thing. Like the mind speech."

"Yes, Professor."

Footsteps approached and Cornelius Fudge appeared. "Ah, excellent Professor Snape. You're awake and, I trust, well? Do you think, Albus, I might speak with Professor Snape for a few moments? It's about the children's story and this Black business."

"Black?" Snape sat up instantly. "Where's Black."

"In custody in the West Tower. Interesting thing – the children insist he's innocent."

Dumbledore watched Snape with concern in his eyes. "Are you certain you feel all right, Severus? You do not need to discuss Sirius Black with the Minister right this minute."

"Where is Black?"

"He is in custody. That is what I mean, Cornelius. That is the third time he's asked that question. How does your head feel, Severus?"

"It hurts. Especially on this side." Snape touched the spot where his head had been bleeding.

"Still," said Fudge, "I do have to ask a couple of things. Professor Snape, during the time you were in the Shrieking Shack, did anyone talk about Peter Pettigrew?"

"Pettigrew? Yes, they talked about learning how to become animagi, and Pettigrew was Wormtail."

"Did they say anything about Pettigrew being the Potters' secret-keeper?"

"No. I don't think so. Why? Black was the secret-keeper." Some parts of the evening were very clear, others foggy. Snape was relieved the Minister was asking about the clear parts.

"The children are saying that Pettigrew betrayed the Potters to… You-Know-Who."

"No, Black was the one. In fact, Lupin said that he assumed Black got into the castle using dark magic he learned from the Dark… from You-Know-Who." Snape looked around in sudden agitation. "Where's Lupin? He didn't take his medicine today. He's out there, maybe attacking people."

"Do not worry about Professor Lupin," said Dumbledore quickly. "He will be all right."

"I'm not worried about Lupin!" Snape exploded, jumping to his feet. "You might try thinking of someone else for a change! Like the people in Hogsmeade who could be attacked by a rampaging werewolf. Or muggles in nearby towns. Do you know how far he could travel in a night?"

"Werewolf?" Fudge glanced at Dumbledore, clearly puzzled. "Do we have a werewolf to deal with, too?"

"Now, Cornelius, Severus is suffering from the effects of a blow to the head. I am sure that by tomorrow morning…"

"I'm not crazy! Lupin is out there – dangerous to everyone around him – and Black…"

"Sirius Black is going back to Azkaban tomorrow, Professor," said Fudge gently. "You captured him, you know."

"I did? No, I don't think…"

"Indeed. Captured him and rescued all three children. Brought them up here on stretchers. An amazing piece of work." Fudge smiled benignly. "I think you should be commended. The children are confused. One was stupefied and the other two attacked by dementors. It's enough to confuse anyone."

Dumbledore raised a hand. "Would you be so kind as to stay with Professor Snape for a few minutes, Cornelius? I wish to speak with Black. Maybe you could walk around for a bit. A little air is good for clearing the head." He walked quietly out of the room.

The stroll with Fudge did help clear Snape's head somewhat, and the Minister was kind enough to help him with some of the points where his memory was still fuzzy.

"It's good to have you as a witness to all of this, especially with what the children are saying. After all, it really isn't possible that we would have incarcerated the wrong person all these years. You did say the children were placed under a Confundus Charm?"

"I did?"

"I'm sure that's what you said. And Black attacked you."

"No, I really think that was Potter."

Fudge changed the subject slightly. "Why was Black there at all?"

The fuzziness was instantly gone. "He was a servant of the Dark Lord. He betrayed the Potters twelve years ago, and came back to Hogwarts to finish the job. He and Lupin together. Lupin was working on Potter, trying to get him to trust…"

"You said it was a Confundus Charm. You recognized it at once."

"I did?"

Slowly, with the Minister's help, the unclear parts were all coming back, clearer and more focused with each passing moment. Potter, Weasley, and Granger had been confounded by Black and Lupin, tricked into believing Black innocent and blaming the dead Pettigrew. It all made sense.

Only two things didn't fit. For some reason the Minister thought Black had knocked him out, and that he, Snape, had captured Black in a fight. Snape was fairly sure that wasn't true, but he wasn't sure where the truth was.

And of course the – thing – that Dumbledore had told him not to mention.

Someone was approaching from behind. Snape turned to face Macnair, whose black mustache bristled alarmingly. "How did the execution go?" Snape asked, trying to keep the bitterness out of his voice.

Macnair looked at him oddly. "Thought you'd heard. Wasn't one. Minister, did you need me for something?"

"Ah yes, Macnair," said Fudge. "Get down to the perimeter and bring back one of the dementors. We need a 'kiss' performed tonight before we take our prisoner back to Azkaban."

"Kiss? You're doing that here? Dumbledore won't be pleased." That said, Macnair left on his task.

"Was he serious?" asked Snape. "There was no execution? I understood that the hippogriff lost the appeal."

"He did," replied Fudge, "but when we went down there to carry out the sentence, the beast had disappeared."

"Hagrid let him escape?"

"No, odd thing about that. The beast was chained up when we arrived, the three of us. And Dumbledore. We went into Hagrid's hut to finish the paperwork, and when we came out the beast was gone. Hagrid was with us the whole time. No one else was there."

"Potter," muttered Snape. "You didn't see… No, of course you didn't see him. That's what they were doing down there."

"Come again?"

"No, it's nothing."

"Anyway, it's been a shocking business… shocking… miracle none of them died… it was lucky you were there, Snape…"

"Thank you, Minister."

"Order of Merlin, Second Class, I'd say. First Class, if I can wangle it."

_For conjuring four stretchers? I'm sure I didn't…_ "Thank you very much indeed, Minister."

"That is a nasty cut you've got there… Black's work, I suppose?"

_We talked about this. I think we talked about this._ "As a matter of fact, it was Potter, Weasley, and Granger, Minister."

"No!"

Now Snape felt more sure of himself. He'd gone over the story with… Fudge? "Black had bewitched them. I saw it immediately. A Confundus Charm, to judge by their behavior."

It was coming back now. Potter was getting too used to having the glory. First with the Stone and Quirrell, then with the basilisk in the Chamber of Secrets. This year it was going to be the single-handed capture of Sirius Black. He put everybody at risk with his thirst for fame. He needed to remember he was just another student in the school, not the center of the whole universe.

"What amazes me most," Fudge was saying, "is the behavior of the dementors… you've really no idea what made them retreat, Snape?"

"No, Minister…" _That is most certainly the truth. The only patronus I've seen even remotely like that is Potter's, and he was unconscious. Dumbledore said…_ "by the time I had come 'round they were heading back to their positions at the entrance…"

They talked a moment more, going back over the events that were now well fixed in Snape's mind. Suddenly there was a yell from inside the ward where the children were. Both men ran to the sound.

Potter was awake and raving that Black was innocent. Raving about seeing Peter Pettigrew. Raving that the Weasleys' rat – a longtime resident of Hogwarts – was somehow Peter Pettigrew. Snape's head was beginning to throb again.

Madam Pomfrey was trying to calm Potter with chocolate when Dumbledore returned and asked to speak with Potter in private. "I've just been talking to Sirius Black..."

A terrible sense of foreboding was growing in Snape. Dumbledore had the air of a man about to turn the world on its head. "You surely don't believe a word of Black's story?" Snape whispered. He held Dumbledore's gaze. _Don't do this. Don't let him go. He killed her. He'll kill again._

Dumbledore's voice, faint and clear, sounded in Snape's head. _I do not believe that Sirius is a killer, nor that he deserves the punishment he has received._

Snape stepped closer to whisper, "Sirius Black showed he was capable of murder at the age of sixteen. You haven't forgotten that, Headmaster? You haven't forgotten that he once tried to kill me?"

"My memory is as good as it ever was, Severus."

It was like being slapped in the face. Raging inside, Snape turned and strode out of the ward, Fudge behind him.

"I don't know that it's good for you to be worked up like this," said Fudge as he caught up to Snape, "considering your injuries and all."

"I'll be fine once this headache goes away. I only hope Dumbledore's not going to make difficulties. The Kiss will be performed immediately?"

"As soon as Macnair returns with the dementors." Fudge rambled on, clearly reveling in the thought of the favorable publicity the Ministry was going to receive for the successful capture of Black.

Dumbledore joined them a few minutes later, as did Macnair, bringing a dementor with him. Snape moved quickly away from them, watching nervously as Fudge, Macnair, and the dementor followed Dumbledore upstairs.

It was almost over. _When Dumbledore told me all those years ago that Black betrayed you, Lily, I promised that if he ever got out of Azkaban I would kill him myself. I didn't keep that promise – you don't kill an unconscious man – but at least we have the next best thing. We can close the book and write 'finished' to the story. Black will never be part of my life again._ Snape walked over to the window and watched the full moon, Lily's moon, waiting for word from above.

Word came sooner than expected. Fudge came hurrying down the stairs, Macnair and Dumbledore behind him, hollering, "An owl! We send an owl to the Ministry at once! Macnair, round up some of the dementors! He can't have gotten far!"

Snape strode forward, blocking the Minister's path. "What happened? Black's escaped!" He looked past Fudge to Dumbledore. The Headmaster's expression was inscrutable. Things were clicking into place, and the volcano was nearing critical.

An invisibility cloak, an escaped hippogriff, and a prisoner who suddenly vanishes from a tower. "Potter!" Snape hissed, and headed back toward the hospital wing at a run. Fudge and Dumbledore caught up to him and tried to slow him, but Snape was beside himself. "Potter is responsible for this! He won't get away with it this time!"

Fudge was trying to be reasonable. "He must have disapparated, Severus. We should have left somebody in the room with him. When this gets out..."

"He didn't disapparate! You can't apparate or disapparate inside this castle! This. Has. Something. To. Do. With. Potter!"

Dumbledore chimed in as they approached the door to the ward. "Severus – be reasonable – Harry has been locked up..."

Snape's wand was out and pointed at the door with murderous fury. It crashed open in front of them to reveal a shocked Madam Pomfrey and the three students. "Out with it, Potter! What did you do?" Snape yelled at the mock-innocent face – James's face – that watched his approach with such evident satisfaction. "They helped him escape, I know it!" Snape continued in uncontrolled rage as both Madam Pomfrey and the Minister tried vainly to calm him down. "You don't know Potter! He did it, I know he did it..."

Dumbledore's face was grave. "That will do, Severus. Think about what you are saying. This door has been locked since I left the ward ten minutes ago. Unless you are suggesting that Harry and Hermione are able to be in two places at once, I'm afraid I don't see any point in troubling them further."

It was like a bucket of cold water. Snape stared at Dumbledore in shock. _Hermione? I never mentioned Granger. Potter yes, but Granger too? You lying, deceitful old man! You're laughing at me. The three of you are laughing at me._

There was no recourse. There was no justice. Snape wheeled and stormed out of the room and down the stairs.

Out the great double doors into the dark, wand still in hand – Snape wasn't sure where he was going or what he wanted to do until he was halfway to Hagrid's hut. Then it obsessed him. He left the path and headed straight down the hill toward the Whomping Willow. As he neared the Forbidden Forest, he began to yell.

"Lupin! Lupin! You miserable son of a she-wolf! Come out and face me! For once in your life, face me!"

There was no answer – there couldn't be an answer. But somewhere in the forest there had to be a werewolf, and Snape had to do something or he would go insane. Unwary, uncaring of dementors or of anything else, Snape plunged into the forest. "Lupin!" he screamed, "Come on, Lupin! Come and get me, you cowardly cur!"

The pain in his head increased – it was pounding now like a second heartbeat, and Snape staggered a little, clutching at a tree for support. "Lupin!" he shouted again, and a shape loomed up to his left. It wasn't Lupin. It was Hagrid.

Snape spun at the sound of movement, his wand pointing at Hagrid's chest. "Don't stop me!" he hissed at Hagrid. "This has nothing to do with you. Get out. Leave me to my own business."

"Your business don't include hunting in the forest. Specially not what you're hunting. You come along with me now. You need rest and somewhat t' eat and drink."

"Stop nursemaiding me! There's a job to do. Nobody else 'll do it – nobody else cares – unfinished business – so I have to…" Hagrid took a step closer and Snape screamed, _"Stupefy!"_

The spell bounced off Hagrid's chest. "Now you know that won't work 'less ya can concentrate better 'n what ya can now." Snape stumbled forward, and Hagrid caught him around the waist to support him, taking his wand at the same time. "I ought t' pick ya up and carry ya, but I doubt ya'd thank me for it. Lets see if ya can walk t' my place."

They progressed slowly, and by the time they reached the hut Snape's breath was coming in gasping sobs. He was utterly exhausted, and the throbbing in his head overrode everything else. Hagrid wrapped him in a blanket and sat him in front of the fire supported by enormous pillows. After a few sips from a cup of warmed mead, Snape fell asleep.

When he woke around daybreak, Dumbledore was sitting at Hagrid's table drinking tea and chatting. "Ah, Severus. Good to see you awake. How are you feeling?"

"Terrible. Why are you here?"

"Hagrid sent word by Fang that you had turned up with him. I came to make certain you were all right."

"It's a little late to start caring, isn't it?"

"I suppose I deserve that. Now, I want you to consider that you might be wrong about Sirius."

"I knew you weren't here because you cared about me."

"This may end up being more about you than you realize. Tell me why you have trouble believing that Sirius may have been imprisoned unjustly."

Snape thought for a moment. It helped that he no longer had a headache. "It makes no sense. Not one iota of the story makes sense. First, who in his right mind would ever suggest Peter Pettigrew as a secret-keeper for anything? Pettigrew couldn't stand up to a large cat even before he became an animagus. Only someone who wanted a secret revealed would've made Pettigrew its keeper.

"Then there's the explosion that killed him. Black's magic was powerful enough to do that, but Pettigrew's? And why stay a rat for twelve years? A Weasley rat, at that? Who was he afraid of? Black was in prison, everyone else thought him dead, the Dark Lord was gone… Why stay a rat at Hogwarts when he could go off and be a wizard in France, or America? Even Pettigrew wasn't that pitiful."

Dumbledore nodded. "All very logical. Yet the children saw Peter."

"And I could make them see a cow jump over the moon. Illusion isn't that hard."

"So you will not be convinced?"

"Headmaster, it isn't believable."

"Then we must leave it at that. I only ask that you keep your mind open to the possibility – in the future, of course – that the illogical and the unreasonable may sometimes be the truth."

Snape did not reply.

"Come then, Severus. It is time to be going. Breakfast will be served soon, and we do not want to be too late."

The three of them walked together up the hill to the Castle.

Cornelius Fudge was at breakfast that morning, seated next to Dumbledore. He came over to speak briefly to Snape during the meal.

"Well it's good to see you looking better than you did last night, Professor. We were worried about that bump on the head. Clearing up now, though? Good. You know, the Headmaster was explaining to me last night after you left us, about Professor Lupin and how he was probably trying to protect the children from Black as well. We're not planning to press charges."

"So the Ministry approves of uncontrolled werewolves roaming the grounds of a school?"

"Werewolf?" exclaimed Professor Flitwick, who couldn't help overhearing. "Is there a werewolf at Hogwarts?" Others nearby were now listening.

Before Dumbledore could stop him, Fudge was explaining. "We're just talking about Professor Lupin is all. Terrible to have a problem like that."

Snape glanced down the table. This time it was Dumbledore who was having trouble controlling his anger. Snape was not sympathetic.

Around noon, Snape took a gobletful of the calming potion up to Lupin, who was shut in his office. "I think I should stay to make sure you actually drink this one."

"Don't treat me like an irresponsible child."

"You were responsible yesterday? I recall that in the Shack both you and I mentioned this potion, and it didn't jog your memory at all that you still needed to take it. How many times have you transformed, Lupin? Well over three hundred, no? How could you not remember it was a full moon?"

"I'm sorry, Severus, that you missed your chance to get the Order of Merlin. I hear Fudge has withdrawn the offer since I'm not guilty and Sirius escaped."

"Typical. You told Potter I was jealous of his father's Quidditch skills. Are you now going to tell him I'm angry because I didn't get a medal? Is it because you're so petty yourself that you assign petty motives to others?"

"I'm not going to quarrel with you."

"I'm still going to wait here until you drink that."

xxxxxxxxxx

It was a few more days until the end of the term. It couldn't come quickly enough for Snape. Even though Lupin left early and the dementors were gone, there was nothing at Hogwarts that could make Snape feel anything but depressed and bitter. There was some relief watching the train pull away in the distance – some, but not enough.

_Last year this time I was telling myself that things couldn't get any worse. How is it possible to be so wrong? Ever since Potter came to this school, each year is worse than the one before. I hate to imagine what next year will bring._

Dumbledore greeted him when Snape reentered the castle. They were on speaking terms again, though it was an effort for Snape, and he rather imagined it was an effort for the headmaster as well.

"Another year under our belts," said Dumbledore. "I am certain you are pleased to say goodbye to that one."

"Pleased hardly does justice to the feeling."

"What will you do during the summer holidays."

"Stay as far from here as I can."

"An excellent idea. That way you will be well rested for the autumn term." Dumbledore continued upstairs, leaving Snape in the entrance hall.

_Do you know what really rankles, Headmaster? There are other prisons besides Azkaban. Other prisoners with life sentences. What really rankles is that Sirius Black escaped his prison. He's free._

Snape walked quietly into the dungeon of the castle, to store his potions ingredients and to lock up his office and his rooms for the coming summer.

xxxxxxxxxx


	44. Chapter 44 – Not What Meets the Eye

**If You Are Ready...: Not What Meets the Eye**

_Monday, August 1, 1994 (two days after the last quarter)_

Professor Severus Snape apparated just outside the village of Hogsmeade at 9:05 on Monday morning, the first of August 1994. He was beginning his fourteenth year as the Potions instructor at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and he was not looking forward to it.

The primary reason he was not looking forward to it was a student by the name of Harry Potter. It would be Potter's fourth year at Hogwarts, and for Professor Snape every year of Potter's presence had gotten progressively worse to the point where the Professor was beginning to doubt whether or not he would survive.

The first one to greet Snape's arrival was Alastor Moody. This was a yearly ritual, since Moody was looking forward to welcoming Snape at Azkaban prison the instant Snape slipped from under the protection of Hogwarts' headmaster, Albus Dumbledore.

"Top o' the morning to you, Snape old boy," Moody called cheerfully from a bench as Snape entered the village on his way to the school gates.

"You're not Irish," was Snape's response.

"And how would you be knowing that, me boyo?"

"If you were Irish, you'd be less careful about what you drank."

Moody drew a hip flask from his pocket and took a swig. "You'd better watch yourself," he winked, "or you'll be up for cultural defamation. Are you dropping by to visit this year? Your room is still ready."

"We caught the show off-Broadway last year. Wouldn't want to overdo a good thing."

"Oh, dear. And the dementors worked up a couple of new routines just for you. They'll be so disappointed."

"Better them than me."

"Dumbledore talk to you yet about Dark Arts?"

Snape was suddenly wary. "I've not had that privilege yet, no."

"At last! I know something you don't know about Hogwarts. Sleep well, Snape. Look for me in the gloamin'."

"You're not Scottish either."

But Moody was gone, and Snape made his way up to the gate where Filch was waiting to let him in. _What could Moody possibly know about the new assignment for Defense against the Dark Arts? He's just trying to get on my nerves._

xxxxxxxxxx

Snape had to spend the next month with the other teachers getting ready for school to start on September first. In his case the work was light, for Snape always ended a school year with his accounts in order and his materials on hand. There were a few perishables that had to be ordered last minute, but basically everything was in place.

Apart from his own classroom, however, Snape found things at the school very much not in order.

The first concern was the announcement at the first staff meeting of the first day that Hogwarts was going to hold the first Triwizard Tournament in a few hundred years. This meant the hosting of representatives from both Beauxbatons and Durmstrang, the canceling of the Quidditch matches, and the disruption of classes.

Equally momentous and equally disruptive was the Quidditch World Cup final game that was to be held on August twenty-second. Snape himself had little use for Quidditch, though as the head of Slytherin house he had to support the Slytherin team, and he was a touch impatient with the other instructors for being so immersed in everything to do with the World Cup. It made for very boring mealtime conversations.

The last concern, the one that would grow to override all the others, started out small about a week before the World Cup game.

xxxxxxxxxx

_They were having a party. Wilkes wanted him to play the piano because Avery was dancing with a lampshade on his head. 'I don't know how to play,' he answered, but it didn't matter since the piano could play itself. Everybody was slightly drunk and laughing very loudly. He was happy and enjoying the party, except the corner of the room was dark. In the darkness there was a small brazier where they all got their tattoos. He was pleased with his tattoo – the snake was green and silver with red eyes. The snake couldn't sit still, though, and every time it twisted its body, his left arm itched. 'Stop wiggling,' he told it – _and woke up.

Lying there in the darkness in his bedroom, Snape realized he was rubbing his left arm because it was itching. He picked up the wand that lay by his bedside and said, "Lumos." In the faint green light he examined the arm. The tattoo of a skull with a snake coming out of its mouth appeared no different than it ever did, but for some reason the skin where the snake was tattooed itched slightly. Snape rubbed it thoughtfully.

_Why would it do that when it hasn't bothered me for nearly thirteen years? Not even when the Dark Lord was watching me from the back of Quirrell's head did it affect the Mark in any way. What's happening now?_

Breakfast without the students to watch was much less formal than during the school year. Snape wished the others good morning, and went straight to Dumbledore.

"May I speak with you privately when you're finished?"

"Certainly. Lately, I must say, I am pleased when you wish to speak to me at all."

"This might be important."

"Pity. I was rather hoping it would be social. Ah well, I take what I can get."

Up in Dumbledore's tower office, the headmaster examined Snape's arm carefully. "It does not look any different to me."

"Nor to me, but it's never itched before. When he calls us, it burns. I don't know what this means."

"I think we need to take it very seriously, even though the last I heard Riddle was in Albania. One never knows. Things could develop slowly and take years to reach a crisis, or they could engulf us overnight."

"What should I do?"

Dumbledore regarded his potions master with a touch of sadness. "I had hoped, after all these years, that I would never again need to require you to put yourself in danger for me. Now I must ask you to prepare yourself for the possibility."

"Wasn't that why you always wanted me to keep my opinions… ambiguous?"

"Well, yes. One never throws a useful tool away when even the smallest chance still exists that it might come in handy. Nonetheless, I would have been more pleased if the eventuality had never arisen."

"So, what do I do?"

"If you were to ever come face to face with your old master, would it help to have prepared yourself mentally for the ordeal, or does that just happen instinctively?"

Snape studied his hands for a moment. "I think it would help to have memories and images at the forefront of my mind. It's been a long time. He'd want to know about the whole thirteen years. I'm not sure I have enough to convince him I'm not holding anything back."

"Would it help if I yelled at you – humiliated you in front of the rest of the staff – treated you like scum?" Dumbledore was smiling, but the import of his words was not a laughing matter. Memories handed to a skilled legilimens could not be fabricated out of thin air. They had to be actual memories.

"It may come to that. Let me see what I have of my own first, though. I'd hate to shock McGonagall at the breakfast table."

Back in his own rooms, Snape began a thorough and methodical ordering of the rooms and boxes of his mind. Images of Dumbledore, of the other teachers, of students, of visitors, of his home. There were things that could be used in multiple ways, and things that he could never let the Dark Lord even glimpse. It amazed him sometimes how much the human mind could store.

After a couple of hours of careful meditation, it was clear that the process would take weeks, months to do right. _Keep your eyes open and wits about you, Severus. Who knows what images might pop up that you could store for the benefit of the Dark Lord?_

The whole of the next week seemed to center on Quidditch. It was Ireland this, and Bulgaria that, and what a great seeker Krum was, even if he couldn't hold a candle to Eunice Murray in her prime and, of course, odds and betting. Snape was completely bored by the whole thing until Flitwick and Sprout got into a screaming match the Friday before the World Cup. Sticking his fingers in his ears, Snape realized that he had some wonderful mental images of angry Hogwarts teachers with no clue of what they were saying.

For the next three days Snape turned into the worst sort of argument starter – one who gets two other people at it, then sits back and watches.

"Minerva, weren't you saying that the Pride of Portree were the best team in Britain, because Poppy told me yesterday it was the Montrose Magpies."

"No, I'm sure it was Pomona who mentioned that the Chudley Cannons never won a championship where they didn't cheat at least twice in the game."

"Puddlemere had a winning season last year? Then Filius must have been joking when he said that hadn't happened since 1372."

By the day of the World Cup match, Snape had stored away scores of choice images of discord at Hogwarts for the potential future delectation of the Dark Lord.

The evening of the actual game, however, Snape chose to spend reading in his own rooms, Professor McGonagall having acquired a radio, which was set up in the Great Hall where the other teachers listened avidly to the broadcast from the stadium.

xxxxxxxxxx

"Severus! Severus! Have you heard what happened? How unutterably awful!"

Snape paused to listen to Professor Sinistra's news, which turned out to be more disturbing than he would have imagined.

"Death Eaters! Death Eaters torturing innocent muggles and setting the Dark Mark in the sky! And the Ministry absolutely powerless to do anything to stop it. So horrible!"

That was indeed a horrible piece of news, and Snape hurried over to Professor McGonagall, who was buried in the Daily Prophet.

"Spill. What happened?" he said as he sat beside her and reached for toast, sausages, and eggs.

"Disgusting spectacle, that's all I have to say about it. A crowd of masked wizards attacked a family of muggles after the game last night and tormented them, holding them suspended upside down in the air and bouncing them around. Two of them were children. They must have been terrified."

Snape froze, his toast halfway to his mouth. "Upside down? Up in the air?" _Oh, no. That sounds like my spell. The one I invented that James Potter stole in fifth year and taught to the entire school._

"Like sacks of grain. Not only that, someone set the Dark Mark up over the woods, and there was whole-scale panic in the crowd. It's lucky people weren't trampled to death. Ministry wallahs all over the place, and no one under arrest. It's shameful!"

"Wallahs?"

"Ach, I'm showing my age. An expression from when we were still an empire. The Raj, you know. Officials – officials all over the place and no one under arrest."

"The Dark Mark's set up when someone's killed. Was anyone…?"

"No. No, thank goodness. Just scared. But who would think there was such a large crowd of you-know-who's supporters still around and willing to risk exposure with a prank like that? And then get away with it?"

"It's a sad world we live in, Minerva."

Dumbledore entered the Great Hall then, glanced around, and raised his eyebrows in Snape's direction.

"Excuse me, Minerva," Snape said as he rose from his unfinished breakfast. "I think the Headmaster wants to see me."

"Better you than me," replied McGonagall, who went back to reading the newspaper.

As Snape and Dumbledore met at the entrance to the Hall, Dumbledore said quietly, "I assume you have heard."

"Yes, sir," Snape answered.

"Let us go to my office then. This news disturbs me greatly. Especially coming on top of what you told me last week."

"I don't think the Dark Lord was behind it." Snape was sitting in a comfortable chair by the fire in Dumbledore's office, drinking a cup of Turkish coffee. "It was far too amateurish. And he always wanted the Dark Mark to mean something specific, terrifying – not an empty threat, but a deed already accomplished."

"And yet we have followers of… Riddle… who are no longer afraid to show themselves openly. Have they felt what you have felt?"

"It's very probable. I've no special link to the Dark Lord. They may sense he's nearer and let their close proximity at the World Cup get the better of their judgment. We have no proof the Dark Lord… Riddle, would even have approved."

"Who might have been involved?"

"How would I know?" At this, Dumbledore had such a hangdog look of disappointment that Snape relented. A little. "Of those that I personally know are still around and not in Azkaban – Malfoy, Crabbe, Goyle, Avery, Macnair, Nott… but he never let any of us know the extent of the organization. We knew our contacts – that was all. I was London and the south. Silly, really, because I was born in Lancashire. Those who might have come from the Midlands, Anglia, the Marches, the North… I really don't know."

"Another reason for eliminating as many Death Eaters as possible. Not only does it reduce Riddle's following, it forces the different regions of his organization to communicate with each other and to learn who the others are."

Snape eyed Dumbledore thoughtfully. "You're probably right but I, as a Death Eater, would still be intimidated from revealing myself to other parts of the organization. You get punished a lot less for inactivity than for the wrong kind of activity."

"A serious flaw. And a good piece of information to know." Dumbledore waited a moment, but Snape didn't elaborate. Finally Dumbledore voiced the thought. "He will not think that you have been engaged in the wrong kind of activity, will he?"

"I don't know. I won't know 'til I face him."

"When it is too late to back out."

"That's the game."

"How can I help?"

"Think of questions he'll ask that I can prepare answers to that mustn't sound prepared when I give them."

"Such a tangled web."

"One thing you can do right now."

"Which is…?"

"Try to read me. Be angry with me and try to read me. No joke, no games, really try."

"I do not think your idea will work. What I will do to read you and what Riddle will do are so completely different…"

"Your managerial style leaves a lot to be desired, you know." Snape stood to provoke Dumbledore, letting his voice drip with sarcasm. "You play your cards so close that one wonders if you really do have an idea or you're just bluffing so we'll think you're clever. Maybe that's why you play favorites so shamelessly. Half-baked plans turn out wrong, so you coddle the victims to assuage your own guilt. What a fraud you are. If you knew my real opinion of you…"

As Snape spoke, Dumbledore slowly turned to face him, eyes glinting with rising anger, and advanced until his blue eyes locked with Snape's black ones. Snape could feel the probes enter his brain, seeking, searching, examining. He began to close down, shutting thoughts and images into corners and nooks, setting up other images as blinds to conceal the doors, and still Dumbledore bored into him, forcing him to use every trick he knew to block without appearing to block, to hide without seeming to hide, to escape the grasping tentacles that were trying to rip his thoughts from him…

Then, quite suddenly, Dumbledore blinked and turned away. "You are very good," he said, smiling gently. "Do you think that will be enough to fool Riddle, or shall we do it a few more times, maybe in different places, to give you more images?"

"Not right away, certainly. It isn't my most pleasurable experience." Snape sat again, resting his head on his hands. "Though different images would help. He needs to know that you tried, and to know that you didn't succeed."

"I can do that. Just let me know whenever you are ready to give it another go."

"I will. Thank you, Professor." Snape left the office and went back to the Great Hall to see if any breakfast was left.

xxxxxxxxxx

_Thursday, September 1, 1994 (three days after the last quarter)_

"Has it ever actually rained for forty days and forty nights?" Snape asked of no one in particular as he watched the downpour from the windows of the Great Hall. It had been raining most of the week, and now on the morning of the first day of the autumn term it looked like the primeval deluge.

Professor Vector, the Arithmancy teacher, was the only one who appeared interested in the question. "I understand the number forty was just used to express 'a very long time,' ancient Hebrew being a language that dealt in specifics rather than generalities."

Snape's eyes widened. "Do you know Hebrew?" he asked.

"Cabalistic numerology is a major part of my subject. I thought you realized that." Vector grinned. "Hey, McGonagall! I just found out that I know something Snape doesn't!"

McGonagall joined them at the window. "I know lots of things Snape doesn't, but I can't tell him what they are because then he'd know them, too, and I'd lose my advantage."

"Well how do you know I don't know them then?"

"Tidbits gleaned from casual conversation. Every now and then you let something slip. I treasure those moments and store them in the recesses of my mind to pull out and hit you with if the opportunity ever arises."

"Has the opportunity ever arisen."

"Alas, no. But my luck is bound to change."

Dumbledore joined them. "Are we all picking on Severus again? We have to be careful about that or people are going to think we do not like him."

"But Headmaster," exclaimed Vector, "he twitches so nicely when we score a hit."

"I do not twitch."

"See! Just like that!"

"Changing the subject," interposed Dumbledore, "our new Defense against the Dark Arts instructor will not be arriving until this evening. He had a little trouble with an intruder at his home last night and now has to do the paperwork at the Ministry."

"Who is it, Headmaster?" Snape asked. "Considering our luck with the last two, I would prefer some time to set my affairs in order."

"Now, now. All in good time. He has asked to be seated next to you at dinner tonight, so you will learn all you need to learn then." Dumbledore nodded 'good morning' to the teachers and swept majestically out of the Hall.

"Well!" said McGonagall, "Is that a good or a bad omen?"

"I don't know." Snape was thoughtful. "At my annual get-together with Alastor Moody, he intimated that there was something interesting about the new person, but refused to tell me what it was."

"There, you see!" McGonagall was triumphant. "He doesn't want to lose his advantage either."

The rain continued into the night. Fortunately there was neither wind nor lightning yet, or the arrival of the first years by boat would have been rendered impossible. As it was, most of the students were drenched either by the downpour or by the antics of the poltergeist Peeves, who seemed to have recently discovered water balloons and was trying to initiate the entire school into their use.

The older students were seated at the long tables in the Great Hall, and at last Professor McGonagall led the procession of first years forward for the ceremony of sorting. Snape was generally only interested in the Sorting if the son or daughter of one of his old Death Eater colleagues was entering Hogwarts. Otherwise the children were total unknowns whose personalities would only emerge over time. And nothing now could surpass the Sorting of three years earlier, when Draco Malfoy, Neville Longbottom, and Harry Potter had all been sorted at the same time.

Sorting over, the feast began. Here again, there was nothing unusual except the weather. The electrical storm finally arrived – flashes of lightning and peals of thunder punctuated the meal. No longer at the far end of the table, Snape talked with Professor Sinistra on his right about the Magellan probe of Venus and about the comet Shoemaker-Levy, and from time to time leaned across the empty seat on his left to exchange a word with Dumbledore.

While the students were finishing dessert, Dumbledore rose to make announcements. All was pro forma, boring really, until he mentioned the canceling of the Quidditch matches. Dismayed cries arose from all four houses. Dumbledore was about to explain about the Triwizard Tournament when thunder crashed overhead and, as if on cue, the doors of the Great Hall flew open and the new Defense against the Dark Arts teacher strode into their midst. Looking up at the sudden sound, Snape stared at the newcomer in utter shock.

It was Alastor Moody.

Moody's presence stunned the Hall into silence. Snape was used to Moody's appearance, having been greeted by the former auror on the first of August every year for well over a decade, but now he had a chance to look at Moody from a fresh point of view, through the students' eyes. It was truly amazing how ugly Moody was.

Moody approached the high table and shook Dumbledore's hand, the two of them murmuring a greeting that not even Snape, as close as he was, could hear well. Then Moody sat down. Sat down in the seat reserved for him next to Dumbledore. Sat down where he had requested Snape to be at his right hand. _Sneaky old coot. If he thinks I'm going to partner him at every meal for the whole year…_

"So this is what you meant," Snape said quietly as Moody pulled a plate of food toward himself and began to eat, while Dumbledore rose to introduce him.

The plump sausage paused halfway to his mouth, and Moody turned to fix Snape with his enchanted eye. There was an instant, just an instant of contact, then Snape was shutting down, locking, and covering everything in his mind. He jerked his head away to break the link and stared at his own plate. Around him the Hall was silent, only Dumbledore and Hagrid clapping to welcome Moody, so Snape's own silence went unnoticed. Then Dumbledore began to explain the Triwizard Tournament, and Moody was forgotten in the rising excitement.

Not forgotten by Snape, though. _He knows. That blasted blue enchanted eye knows. He can read me._

It was only a short time until the feast was ended and students and teachers went to their dormitories and rooms for the night, but to Snape it seemed an eternity.

Once alone, Snape paced his office until past midnight.

It wasn't really that Moody could read him at will – Snape knew he could block the legilimency. But Moody would know that he was blocking it. Rather, that cursed eye would know he was blocking it. It was a frightening thought, for Snape's future safety depended on the Dark Lord's belief that he saw everything there was to see. _Dumbledore knows I can deceive him, but Dumbledore won't kill me for it._

_Why didn't I ever notice this about Moody's eye before? Because he never tried to read me before. All those August meetings at Hogsmeade, and he never tried. What's changed since the beginning of August? The appearance of the Dark Mark. The fact that mine is itching. Maybe the prisoners in Azkaban feel it, too. Moody knows something's happening and he's watching me._

_What other enchanted items am I powerless to deceive? Sneakoscopes? Foe-glasses? Pensieves? Items I don't even know exist? What if the Dark Lord uses one of these against me? No. No, he's too confident of his own powers to stoop to relying on gadgets. But one of the others might carry something that'll give me away._

_I knew this was going to be a terrible year._

It was about to get worse.

The following day was the first of classes, and Snape spent most of his time in his dungeon classroom setting up the evaluatory labs and cleaning up the inevitable messes that occur when unprepared or out-of-practice wizards attempt a potion a touch too complex for them.

The final class of the day was finished, and Snape had set up for the next day's lessons. He was locking the classroom – a required precaution since there were poisonous materials inside – when he sensed a commotion from the entrance hall. Something was exciting the students.

As he made his way up from the dungeons, Snape heard McGonagall's voice ringing out. "We give detentions, Moody! Or speak to the offender's Head of house!"

Snape hurried forward, and had reached the entrance hall in time to catch Moody saying, "Now, your Head of house 'll be Snape, will it?" and Malfoy's affirmative response. "Another old friend," Moody continued. "I've been looking forward to a chat with old Snape… Come on, you…"

They met at the steps leading to the dungeon, Moody clutching Malfoy's arm as he dragged the boy along. Snape immediately averted his gaze to avoid the eye, and Moody laughed unpleasantly.

"I've got a matter to take up with you about this sneaking little coward," said Moody, shaking Malfoy just a bit, "and then I thought you and I might catch up on old times."

There was no way out of the encounter, so Snape led the way back to the dungeon office, Moody and Malfoy right behind him.

As soon as Snape's office door was unlocked, the burly Moody elbowed his way past the slender potions master, pulling Malfoy behind him. If the move was intended to intimidate Snape, it was successful, for he'd had far too many experiences of being bullied by larger classmates to be able to ignore physical pressure.

Moody shoved Malfoy into the chair next to the desk while he himself slouched into the more comfortable chair by the fireplace, lounging with his feet spread before the flames. "You've got some obnoxious, cowardly little beasts in your house, Head of Slytherin," he growled.

"What's Malfoy done now?" Snape stayed near the door, in a position where it would not be easy for Moody to establish eye contact without turning around.

"Attacked another student with a spell from behind. Tried to get him in the back. A lot like his father, this one. He's a back-stabber, too, Lucius is."

"Who did he attack?"

"Should it matter? Harry Potter."

"So is that why McGonagall was upset?"

"She didn't approve of my disciplinary techniques."

"Which were?"

"I turned him into a ferret and bounced him around the entrance hall a bit."

Snape glanced at Malfoy, who managed to look angry and shamefaced at the same time. "No wonder McGonagall was angry. I'll thank you not to manhandle my students in the future. I'll have to take this up with the Headmaster…"

"Will you? Will you indeed?" Moody rose in a surprisingly fluid motion for such a large man and advanced on Snape, staring him straight in the face. Snape backed a step and glanced to the side to avoid eye contact. "Wouldn't it be better to accept that as punishment in lieu of detention and let it go at that? We wouldn't want a confrontation between you and me and Dumbledore, would we, Cursemaster?"

It was Rabastan Lestrange's old nickname for Snape from their school days. _How does Moody know that? Rabastan's in Azkaban. Maybe he's told them other things about me. I don't know how much Moody knows._

Snape looked away from Moody toward Malfoy. "Are you all right, Draco?" he asked. The boy nodded. "Go back to Slytherin house, then, or to dinner if you're feeling well enough. I'll call for you if I need you further. 'Professor' Moody has said there's no detention."

"Yes, sir. Thank you, sir." Malfoy escaped from the office without a word of protest.

"That's better," said Moody once Malfoy was gone. "I got what I needed from him anyway. Sit down."

"You don't order me around in my own office."

"No? We can change. A nice little cell in Azkaban with a dementor or two. You'll be jumping to obey my orders like a trained dog. I'll come out of retirement just for the pleasure of holding your leash."

As he talked, Moody advanced and Snape retreated until Snape was backed against the counter work station. "Dumbledore… spoke for me…" Snape said, too nervous to notice that his childhood stutter was returning.

"I believe he did. Something about…" Moody leaned forward, breathing in Snape's face and gripping Snape's jaw with a hand, forcing brief eye contact. "Something about changing sides… about selling out your old master… Well, Dumbledore has a trusting heart. Not like me. You're a cagy old leopard, Snape, and I don't see any change in your spots. Just a bit of camouflage."

Releasing Snape, Moody strode quickly over to the door, opened it, and turned back with a twisted smile. "I got what I needed here, too. I'm going to enjoy teaching at Hogwarts, Snape. I may ask Dumbledore to extend my contract. Then you and I can share loads of good times." Laughing, he left the office, closing the door behind him.

_Where did I ever get the idea all these years that Moody might be a decent human being? I let him fool me with a few minutes of cheerful banter once a year, but it was all sham. He's as black hearted as the worst of them, and he's not going to rest until I'm in Azkaban for good. I have to talk to Dumbledore about this. That man is dangerous._

Snape sat at his desk for a moment, his head in his hands, collecting his thoughts and calming his nerves. _I have to go to dinner. I have to face him at dinner and let him know I'm not cowed by his threats. He'll know anyway because I can't look at him. But I won't run. Besides, if I'm not there, Hagrid will ask, and Moody will joke about it, and everyone will know._ Snape left his office and reached the Great Hall while the last of the students were filtering in for dinner.

Pausing first to exchange pleasantries with Flitwick and Sprout, Snape eased into his seat between Sinistra and Moody. Moody seemed surprised to see him, Snape thought with some satisfaction. _He really was trying to scare me away. He said he'd gotten what he needed. I wonder what his game is._

The two didn't talk over dinner. Snape chatted with Sinistra, and Moody with Dumbledore. When Dumbledore left the table for a moment to speak to Filch, however, Moody began to rumble a low song, clearly meant only for Snape's ears.

_Oh the walls of Azkaban_

_Are too high for any man,_

_And the servants of the Dark Lord shut up there_

_Wail and whimper through the night,_

_Quail and cower in their fright,_

_While dementors leave them twisted with despair._

_But the Dark Lord's greatest slave,_

_A cunning, sly old knave_

_And one of those who managed to escape_

_Sits at Dumbledore's right hand_

_And obeys his least command –_

_The skinny black-eyed stooge, Professor…_

"You might at least find something that's decent poetry," snapped Snape, and Moody broke off his doggerel to laugh.

"It was the best I could do on the spur of the moment. Catchy tune, though. I'd bet the students could pick it up like a shot if I was to start teaching it."

Snape pretended to be interested in his food, but Moody was not to be put off now that conversation had started.

"It's the lot of you that never had to pay that riles me. Said they never really did anything, or claimed to be under Imperius curses, or turned on their mates and sold them to the Ministry to cover their own deeds. That's what riles me. Got more respect for the ones that stayed loyal and took their punishment like men instead of finding the nearest rock to crawl under and hide like sniveling cowards."

Snape moved to rise, but Moody laid a hand on his arm to restrain him. "Do you want the whole school to know I can get under your skin any time I want to, and that you'll run from me when I do? Didn't you come out here to dinner just to show me that you weren't going to run? Sit. Keep me company."

Snape sat. Like a trained dog. Dumbledore returned as well, so Moody was distracted for the rest of the meal. When dinner ended, Snape retreated to his rooms, there to brood over the snare he found himself trapped in.

From that day on, Snape was in a foul mood that exploded into rage or vicious sarcasm at the slightest provocation. Every meal next to Moody was torment, and even patrolling the corridors was an exercise in dread because he never knew where he might run into Moody. Snape asked to speak to Dumbledore, but Dumbledore was occupied with planning the upcoming Tournament, and busy with the Ministry and the two other schools. He requested, if it was not urgent, that Snape wait until the following week.

The first Potions class with the fourth years went more smoothly than usual, probably because Malfoy was still suffering the ill effects of being a ferret and therefore abnormally quiet. Snape actually had the temerity to dare believe the session would end without any problems until Longbottom, perennially incompetent Longbottom, managed to melt his sixth cauldron in just over three years, sending across the floor a viscous, evil-smelling ooze that was supposed to remove warts if done properly, but since it had been prepared by Longbottom…

Students jumped onto chairs and tables in panic, several other cauldrons were in danger of overturning, and Snape was yelling at the cowering Longbottom. "You blithering fool! Where does it say newt's tongue? I didn't even set out newt's tongue! You had to make a special trip to a cabinet to get newt's tongue! You will stay during dinner on detention!"

Which turned out to serve two purposes, since Snape now had an excuse not to go to dinner and sit next to Moody.

Snape's next morning class needed horned toad intestines, so Snape gave Longbottom the task of disemboweling a cask of pickled horned toads to save the other students the time. Longbottom was so nervous that he made a horrible mess. _Too bad you can't dress me in your grandmother's clothes and say 'Ridikulus.'_

That was when Snape realized that Longbottom's fear could help save his own life. An image of a frightened auror's child to show the Dark Lord. _Not a situation I would've created for that purpose, but since I have it, why not use it?_

"He hates me." It was the next week, and Snape was in Dumbledore's office where the headmaster finally had some time to spare. "He called me a sniveling little coward and said Hogwarts was a rock I crawled under to hide."

"Sniveling? Interesting choice of words." Dumbledore was brewing a pot of tea.

"I don't think it was intentional. He wasn't at school with us." Snape drummed nervously with his fingers on the arm of the chair. "He wants me punished. He keeps talking about what it's going to be like in Azkaban. And he can read me."

There was no response, but Dumbledore paused in his preparations and waited.

"It's that enchanted eye. He can tell that I'm concealing things from him. He can't see the hidden thoughts, but he knows they're there. He knows when I'm lying."

"That is disturbing news. Do you think Riddle would employ such a device?"

"The old Riddle – no. But it's been thirteen years. Who knows?"

"How are you planning to handle it?"

"Compartmentalizing. I have a whole section just for you. Another on students and so forth. If Riddle sees I'm hiding things, but he thinks I'm doing it to conceal them from you, I may get away with it."

"And if you don't?"

"I don't want to think about it." Snape studied his hands, then went back to the drumming. "I mean, no one ever left him. After he was gone, of course, it was every man for himself, but no one ever left him while he was in power."

"Except…"

"Me."

"I shall tell Moody to ease up a bit. You have quite enough to worry about without having to deal with him, too." Dumbledore handed Snape a cup of tea, and Snape sipped it absentmindedly while staring into the fire.

Word filtered out through the students that Moody was demonstrating the Unforgivable Curses to fourth years and above. Snape went again to Dumbledore, who confirmed that it was on his instructions and with his full consent. The reasoning was sound, but it nonetheless resulted in Snape's overhearing some rather disturbing conversations.

"Whoa, did you see how that spider's legs just collapsed under and it kept just twitching and twitching on its back?"

"I didn't know a spider could twist its legs like that. I thought it was going to tie them into knots."

"Do spiders scream, do you think? I bet if that was a person…"

Having watched people being tortured by the Dark Lord with the Cruciatus curse, Snape could have confirmed some of the students' speculations, but he really did not want to think about it.

And so September melted into October. Snape had his fourth year students researching the antidotes to various poisons. This class had been, from the beginning, one of the least competent he'd ever taught. About the middle of October, however, Snape found a way to get them to study harder.

"You never know, Weasley, when an antidote may prove useful. I mean, it would be a shame to miss the Christmas break just for the want of a good, effective antidote."

"C-Christmas break, sir?"

"Well, maybe not you. Maybe Longbottom, or Finnegan. Or Potter. You never know who you may be called upon to assist in an emergency. I wouldn't worry over much, though. A good student could learn enough by then to deal with just about anything. You never know."

"No, sir. I guess you don't."

Madam Pince in the library said she'd seldom seen students knuckle down and work so diligently on a subject.

And Dumbledore was true to his word about talking to Moody. For a while Moody stopped trying to intimidate Snape. Things were looking up.

At the end of October, the representatives from the other two schools arrived to start the Triwizard Tournament.

One of the surprises of the whole Triwizard affair was that Dumbledore asked Snape to be involved in the administration of the tournament.

"Why me? I hate competitions. I'm hardly the congenial sort to make people feel welcome. None of the other houses will welcome Slytherin being in a position above them…"

"But consider, Severus, who else could it be? Minerva and I are already involved. Surely you do not want the Tournament supervised by Professor Trelawney? Or Professor Binns?"

"What about Sprout or Flitwick? Or… or…"

"Hagrid? He would want to turn the challenges into pets. Sinistra? She would be up all night and asleep during the competitions. Hooch? An excellent coach, but hardly an administrator on a grand scale. You must face facts, Severus, we are short of talent in this area. You are not only organized, but you have that wonderful muggle sense of practicality that purebloods never seem to master."

"In other words, I have no choice."

"Not a shred. There is an added attraction. An old… colleague of yours is heading the Durmstrang delegation."

"The only old 'colleagues' I have are…"

"Igor Karkaroff."

"Joy unbounded. The knell is sounded of grief and woe."

"Ah, the advantages of a classical education. Rogers and Hart?"

"Gilbert and Sullivan."

"There you have it. Back to Karkaroff. I thought you might want to discuss any recent phenomena he may be noticing. Easier if there is a reason why you two have to be together."

"Understood, sir. Try to keep Moody away from us."

"Thank you, Severus."

Luckily, none of Snape's duties involved preparing the castle itself. That was one of the advantages of having a hundred house-elves managing the household. Windows were washed, and walls and floors scrubbed. Armor was polished and tapestries beaten. Hearths were swept out and new wood laid, and sections of the fifth and sixth floors were made into temporary dormitories for the Beauxbatons and Durmstrang students, dormitories with stunning views of the lake and hills.

On the thirtieth of October, Snape was, for once, quite relaxed. He'd had the distinct pleasure of being able to dismiss his dreaded fourth year potions class a half hour early, and none of the evening's festivities were his responsibility. He had only to shepherd Karkaroff around and sit next to him at dinner. But since Dumbledore was on Karkaroff's other side, Snape knew that little of the chore of conversation would fall to him.

At six o'clock in the evening, everything was ready. The four houses lined up in their hundreds to welcome the guests, with the four heads at Dumbledore's side. It was expected that the two continental wizarding schools would try to make a dramatic entrance, and they did not disappoint.

Beauxbatons arrived first, an enormous pale blue carriage pulled by a dozen great winged steeds came swooping over the treetops of the Forbidden Forest. It landed on the lawn in front of the entrance stairs, and Dumbledore welcomed the majestic Madame Maxime and her twelve boys and girls from what clearly must have been sunny France, for all were lightly dressed in silk, and shivered in the cold highland autumn of northern Scotland. _Note to self: Get the house-elves to sew up some warm cloaks. Fashionable warm cloaks in… royal blue._

Durmstrang arrived by boat, its great pirate hulk rising from a submarine passage under the lake, and docking at the foot of Hogwarts hill. These students, all boys, were warmly dressed in fur cloaks, obviously used to northern climes. At their head came a tall thin wizard with sleek silver hair and a goatee. As he greeted Dumbledore, Snape assessed him from his own place a little to the rear.

_Hardly changed at all, I would say. Probably still far more concerned with himself and his own welfare than with the school. Bit more of a dandy than before. How has your arm been feeling lately, Igor? I hear a good number of our former comrades are in Azkaban because of you. I'd have been one of them if not for Dumbledore. You gave my name to the Ministry, too, I heard. No hard feelings, of course, since I'd already sold you out._

Then one more flurry of true excitement rustled through the Hogwarts students as the Durmstrang delegation entered the school. With Karkaroff, a student among other students, was a hefty, coarse-looking young man who drew everyone's attention.

"Who's that?" Snape asked McGonagall.

"You are hopeless! That's Bulgaria's Seeker. That's Viktor Krum."

The students were now filing into the school and the Great Hall for the welcoming feast. The Hogwarts teachers would follow, and then Dumbledore with his guests. Dumbledore called McGonagall and Snape over as the others were straightening out the order of their entrance.

"Madame Maxime, Professor Karkaroff, I should like to present the Deputy Headmistress, Professor McGonagall, head of Gryffindor house, and our potions master, Professor Snape, head of Slytherin house, who will be assisting her in making your stay enjoyable."

"Enchantée, delighted," they replied, and Karkaroff bent to kiss McGonagall's fingertips, then shook Snape's hand.

"I didn't realize you were here," Karkaroff muttered. "I'm glad of it, though. There's something I'd like to talk over with you when we have a private moment."

"I'm at your disposal," Snape answered, equally quietly.

Dumbledore spoke, and their attention shifted to him. "Minerva, Severus, there has been a slight change of plans. We shall be adding two places at the high table as we shall be joined by Mr. Crouch and Mr. Bagman, representing the Ministry. Mr. Crouch will be seated between Madam Maxime and Professor McGonagall, and Mr. Bagman between Professor Karkaroff and Professor Snape."

_And Moody will be salivating in a corner. Three former Death Eaters in a row, all out of his reach._

"I do hope that arrangement is acceptable, Minerva – Severus."

"Oh, eminently, Headmaster," Snape replied. _So much better being next to Bagman than Crouch. Think how awkward it would be to place two avoiders of Azkaban on either side of someone who let his own son die there. Real conversation killer, that combination._

Karkaroff intruded on Snape's thoughts. "Which is your house? Green and silver it seems."

"Yes, Slytherin is green and silver, with the serpent."

Karkaroff turned and spoke briefly with one of his own students, then returned to Snape. "I've told them to sit with Slytherin house. If our students are friendly, we have more reason to talk without alerting suspicion."

"Excellent idea," said Snape, then took his place in the opening procession.

With the students all in place, the teachers entered two by two, those on the outside of the high table first, and the center group last. Snape noted that the Durmstrang students had joined Slytherin while the Beauxbatons students chose Ravenclaw. _Probably because Ravenclaw's color is blue._ Snape took his place at his own chair, leaving two places between himself and Dumbledore's center seat. Karkaroff left an empty seat between them. Snape noted that the Beauxbatons students stood at the entrance of Madame Maxime, and did not resume their seats until their headmistress was seated. _A little continental formality wouldn't hurt Hogwarts at all. Quite refreshing, really._

Dumbledore made no formal speech of welcome, merely expressing his wish that the guests be comfortable and announcing the beginning of the tournament at the end of the feast. Then all were seated and the feast began.

The menu selection was wonderful. Escargot a la Bourguignon, paté de foie gras, bouillabaisse, and a risotto with truffles. Zakuski, Polish borscht, chicken Kiev, and a real Stroganov on straw potatoes. _We need to do this at least once a year just for the food!_

A minor spot of activity around the Gryffindor table attracted Snape's attention. One of the Beauxbatons students had risen and seemed to be interested in a tureen on the Gryffindor table. Snape glanced at her, looked away, glanced back, and was riveted.

The first thought that entered his head was 'Narcissa.' This vision of silver and blue was his snow-queen, the ice princess who'd captured his thirteen-year-old heart in the Black's London townhouse so many years ago.

Only a few moments later did Snape realize he was staring practically openmouthed at the girl, and a glance around told him he was not the only one. Nearly every male in the Great Hall, except Dumbledore, had the same stupid, dumbfounded expression that Snape knew was on his own face. He leaned across the empty seat towards Karkaroff.

"What is she?" Snape whispered.

"A veela," was Karkaroff's response.

_Oh. Well. That – explains everything. You've gone all… weak in the knees because of some… highly evolved, pheromone-producing, mutant – glorious goddess. Nothing at all to be concerned about in that. Except she's a student. – Out of bounds. Students are out of bounds. Even Madame Maxime's gorgeous veela students are… out of… bounds…_

Fortunately, Mr. Crouch and Mr. Bagman chose that moment to enter the Great Hall and be seated, thereby distracting Snape from a highly… moving… experience.

Ludo Bagman was the stereotype of a former athlete gone to seed. He was paunchy and out of shape, yet seemed to think that if he dressed like a young man, no one would notice. His tight clothing and loud style merely underlined his rotundity, which would not have been so bad if his mind had reflected his chronological instead of his emotional age. As it was, dinner conversation with Ludo Bagman was about the most boring experience of Snape's life.

Snape tried to enliven the evening by imagining Moody's face as he watched the three together. It was a sore disappointment that the one time Snape actually wanted to look at Moody, Moody was down the table to Snape's right, and looking at him would be far too obvious.

Still, the thought of the three of them together must be galling Moody. Karkaroff spent some time in Azkaban, but not for want of trying. He'd spilled every name he could think of to the Wizards' Council, and it was just his bad luck that they'd all been captured or killed. _Except me, but I'd already been handed to Dumbledore on good behavior. Poor Karkaroff, not one decent name left to buy his freedom with. Wonder what Moody thinks of him. Took his punishment, but not like a man. He was searching desperately for that rock._

Bagman had supplied information to the Death Eaters, but had never been one. His plea of ignorance and stupidity had been accepted without murmur by the Council, since he had long had the reputation of being both ignorant and stupid, and no one really expected him to understand the politics of the situation. _But does Moody accept that too obvious defense? Is there a possibility that Bagman isn't as dumb as we think he is?_

_And then there's me. How would Moody take it, I wonder, if I sat down with him and told him about needing Bella's protection in school, and Nana's death, and that idiot Trelawney's prophecy, and Lily? Or if I described the powerful intensity of existence, walking into Headquarters knowing I'd already drawn up my own death warrant, and living on a razor's edge for love of something I could finally believe in? No, he'd never accept that story. It doesn't fit into his world view._

The conversation had turned to the upcoming Triwizard Tournament, and Bagman was explaining the rules. Snape became suddenly interested at learning that only wizards of legal age would be allowed to compete.

_Well, well. For once precious Potter will not be the center of everyone's attention. Three other people will come first in the public eye by right. Wonder how he'll take it. Will he just accept it and take a back seat to the school champions, or will he try to do something that'll make everyone pay attention to him? Fake a kidnapping, for example, or introduce another troll into the dungeons. I'm actually interested in seeing how he reacts._

Then the feasting was over, and Dumbledore rose to explain the conditions of the tournament. It said something about the Hogwarts students that there was widespread disapproval of the age limitation. Snape was particularly amused at the passions aroused by the announcement. _If the Sorting Hat had witnessed the level of ambition expressed in this hall tonight, every one of the them would have been placed in Slytherin house. Imagine me being head of house for Fred or George Weasley. The mind boggles._

In the end, Potter was not to be denied. Despite being on the other side of the Hall, he managed to place himself strategically in the path of the Durmstrang students as they made their way out to their dormitories. With Potter's hair swept aside to reveal the lightning-shaped scar, it was impossible for Karkaroff not to notice him. Karkaroff stopped, pointed Potter out to all the Durmstrang students, and Potter again had his moment of fame.

_Some day someone is going to shoot that boy down, and the crash of his landing will be glorious._

Potter's glory was short-lived, however, for Moody, unable to contain himself, intervened to intimidate Karkaroff. _That man is obsessed. This is going far beyond what would be required of an auror. Dumbledore has got to rein him in._

The next day was highly entertaining. First of all the Beauxbatons and Durmstrang students, all of whom were of age, placed their names into the judging goblet with great dignity and sense of history. A few of the Hogwarts students did the same, but for the remainder it was a free-for-all. Snape heard about it and started inventing excuses to be in the Great Hall just to watch. He was there for the hilarious debacle of the Weasley twins, which in and of itself made the entire semester.

Snape also stored up as ammunition for later the fact that most of the would-be cheaters were Gryffindor students. The other houses, particularly Slytherin, seemed more willing to accept and abide by the rules. Snape was not going to let McGonagall forget this for a long time.

Hour by hour and minute by minute the clock ticked down to supper time and the moment when the enchanted goblet would announce the school champions, the competitors in the Triwizard Tournament. For once, even Snape was excited.

The Great Hall was decorated in its usual Halloween finery for the feast and the selection of champions. Snape entered a bit early to be sure everything was going well. The Goblet of Fire, the magical cup that chose the champions, was in front of Dumbledore's place, having received the names of all the qualified students who wished to enter the competition.

"Who do you think it will be from your school?" said Karkaroff's voice behind him, and Snape turned.

"Good evening, Igor," Snape replied. "I haven't a clue. I'm not even certain who's put their name in. Who'll it be from your school?"

"We are all expecting Krum to be chosen, but one never knows." There was a moment of silence, then Karkaroff cleared his throat. "Severus, have you noticed anything… different… recently?"

"Different?" said Snape innocently. "Why, what do you mean?"

"A sense of… constant irritation. An itching."

It would be disingenuous to pretend he didn't know what Karkaroff was talking about. "Yes. It started in the middle of August."

"Mine as well. Do you think…? What do you think it means?"

"Have you heard that he's come back?"

"We got a rumor to that effect. I was not sure if it was true."

"It was true. He – or what's left of him – was here at Hogwarts two years ago. He was inhabiting another teacher. I sat next to him without realizing it."

Karkaroff stared at Snape with horror and pity. "How awful for you! What do you think he knows now?"

"I'm not sure. I can't remember every conversation I ever had with that professor, after all. With luck, it was all noncommittal or ambiguous. Quirrell and I weren't friends, luckily. Hardly even friendly." He looked at the nervous expression on Karkaroff's face. "Don't worry. I am sure that I never once mentioned or even thought about you."

Maybe Karkaroff really did miss the sarcasm in Snape's voice because he seemed relieved. "Look, we are almost ready. The tables are full. But who in the world is that?"

Snape looked, then looked quickly away, trying to control the expression on his face. Madame Maxime had just entered the Great Hall accompanied by Hagrid. But it was not a Hagrid that Snape would have recognized by anything except size, for this Hagrid was wearing a suit and tie, and had slicked his hair down with grease. Most British wizards had alarming senses of style, and Hagrid was no exception, looking like a sore thumb next to the fashionable Madame Maxime.

Then Dumbledore entered with Crouch and Bagman, and all took their places for the feast.

Two feasts in two days was a lot of food. Snape had nowhere near the appetite this Halloween that he'd had the evening before. He was not alone. Whether it was too much of a good thing, or everyone was too excited about the naming of the contestants to be hungry, the feast was over in relatively short order. In front of Dumbledore, the Goblet prepared its selections.

Dumbledore rose just before the fateful moment to instruct the named contestants to proceed directly to a room off the high end of the Great Hall, and then with dramatic flair extinguished all but the jack o' lanterns to highlight the blue fire of the Goblet.

The Goblet's flames turned red and it sent a piece of parchment spinning into the air. Dumbledore caught it and read, "Viktor Krum!" As this was no surprise to anyone, the applause was hearty and affectionate.

The second piece of parchment flew into the air, and Dumbledore read, "Fleur Delacour!" This, apparently, was a surprise, for several Beauxbatons students were clearly disappointed in the Goblet's choice. Snape noted that the student in question was the veela girl, and also noted that with the element of the unexpected gone, she had less effect on himself and the other males than she'd had the evening before. _Thank goodness._

Then it was Hogwarts' turn, and the Hufflepuff table went wild when Cedric Diggory's name was called. The other tables were less enthusiastic, but that was only to be expected. Snape leaned back, looked down the teachers' table, and gave Professor Sprout a 'thumb's up.' It was, after all, about time that Hufflepuff was in the limelight.

As one of the school administrators of the Tournament, Snape was supposed to go with the contestants and their school heads, so he rose to follow Diggory into the side room. It was then that the Goblet turned red again and tossed up a fourth name.

_That's impossible! There can only be one contestant per school._ The entire Hall was silent as a clearly shocked Dumbledore stared at the piece of parchment. Then, in a strange, hesitant voice, he read, "Harry Potter."

Astoundingly, Potter didn't seem to want to join the others in the side room. He sat stubbornly at the Gryffindor table shaking his head as his house mates plied him with questions. But Snape couldn't think about Potter for long because a quite different situation was nearing critical at his side.

"What kind of base trickery is this?" growled Karkaroff next to him. "Does Dumbledore take me for a fool?"

At exactly the same moment, the mark on Snape's arm gave him a sudden twinge. Snape looked around in surprise, but no one was watching him except Moody. If Karkaroff's arm had felt the same twinge, Karkaroff did not seem to notice. He was too upset.

Small as it was, however, the twinge brought a remarkable clarity of purpose to Snape. Any thought he might have remotely entertained about solving mysteries, or about truth, justice, or fair play, vanished immediately.

The only thing in his mind was the image of Karkaroff kneeling to the Dark Lord. _And when you cower there before him, your soul naked and exposed, and your mind spread open like a gutted fish, what will you show him of me? So whom now do I support? What course the least likely to enrage the Dark Lord?_

"It can't be Dumbledore," Snape said soothingly to Karkaroff. "His reputation is too much on the line. He wouldn't do anything to damage that. It's the Potter boy who's responsible. He must have gotten someone else to put his name into the Goblet. He wants everyone to notice him. It's been like that since the first day he came to this school."

Karkaroff didn't answer. He was on his feet and trying to get Dumbledore's attention even as Potter, on the Headmaster's orders, came up the aisle and went into the side room. Snape kept trying to deflect Karkaroff away from Dumbledore, especially here in public. "Igor, it can't be his fault. He has nothing to gain by such a transparent ploy. It has to be Potter's doing."

Then they were in the side room with the – could it be possible – four champions. Everyone wanted to talk at once.

"Madame Maxime! Zey are saying zat zis little boy…"

"What is ze meaning of zis, Dumbly-dore?"

"Two Hogwarts champions? I don't remember anyone telling me the host school…"

"'Ogwarts cannot 'ave two champions!"

"We were under the impression that your Age Line would keep out…"

Snape tried to catch Karkaroff's attention. "It's no one's fault but Potter's. Don't go blaming Dumbledore for Potter's determination to break rules. He has been crossing lines ever since he arrived here..."

"Thank you, Severus," said Dumbledore suddenly, and Snape was as suddenly quiet. _Resentment. I resent his slapping me down, the meddling old fool. Remember that feeling._

Dumbledore began questioning Potter, and Snape allowed himself several vocal expressions of disbelief, including sighs and one soft snort. He could tell that Dumbledore was not pleased, but he'd explain later. _Besides, isn't it obvious that Potter really is concealing something?_

McGonagall was beside herself. The concept that a Gryffindor student might cheat at sports was so counterintuitive to her that the mere suggestion of it threatened her very sense of self worth. _Odd that the thought that one might cheat academically does not have quite the same effect._

"Really," she sputtered, "what nonsense! Harry could not… and as Professor Dumbledore believes… I'm sure that should be good enough for everybody else!" Snape could tell from her glare that the two of them were on the outs again.

Karkaroff appealed to Bagman, who reluctantly confirmed that whomever the Goblet named was bound to compete. Since the Goblet had gone out, not to be ignited again until the next tournament, the ranting and raving of the principles was irrelevant. They had four champions, and that was it.

At this pronouncement, Karkaroff was livid. "I have half a mind to leave now!" he exclaimed, only to be stopped by a new, lionine voice.

"Empty threat, Karkaroff! You can't leave your champion now. He's got to compete. They've all got to compete. Binding magical contract, like Dumbledore said. Convenient, eh?" It was Moody, who'd pushed his way into the room.

Then Moody, amid protests from Madame Maxime and Karkaroff, advanced the theory that Potter's name had been submitted by someone who wanted Potter dead.

And that was when Snape began to quietly panic. He could feel – feel! the blood drain from his face, and his joints tense with the need to run. _For the only one he knew who would want Potter dead was the Dark Lord, and this meant a servant of the Dark Lord was in the castle._

And Snape didn't know who he was.

Madame Maxime and Karkaroff continued to protest, but to no avail. A student whose name came out of the Goblet had to compete, and that was that. Taking Miss Delacour and Krum, they left the room, still offended by the evening's events. Ludo Bagman announced that he was staying at Hogwarts for the whole tournament, while Mr. Crouch bade everyone goodbye and returned to his duties at the Ministry. They exited the chamber together, leaving Dumbledore, McGonagall, Snape, and Moody.

McGonagall looked over at Dumbledore. "You don't really think someone will try to kill Potter, do you?"

"It's the only explanation that fits." Moody laughed, the only person Snape had ever heard who could make a laugh sound sour. "You could tell from the boy's face he wasn't expecting it, didn't want it, and would like to be rid of it."

"There," McGonagall said to Snape. "No student could have done that by himself. Potter was the victim. Moody understands the situation. You might try adopting some of his viewpoints."

"Are you honestly telling me that you would support Malfoy if his name came out of the hat?"

McGonagall's furious glare was priceless, and Snape immediately filed it with the other images of bad relations with the rest of the staff. _Stay a few minutes longer, and I can get several more._

Dumbledore, however, was ready to break up the meeting. "Severus, I should like to speak with you for a few minutes in my office. Minerva, Alastor, it has been a long, tiring evening. I suggest we all turn in for the night. Tomorrow will be another exciting day."

The look on Moody's face as he watched Snape follow Dumbledore out of the room was not calculated to make Snape feel comfortable.

In his office, Dumbledore poured them both a glass of mead, and they settled into the comfortable chairs in front of the fire.

"One of these days," Snape said reflectively, "our glaring contradictions are going to catch up to us and we'll have to pay. You are lucky, you know, that it's the Dursleys."

"Come again?"

"Think of the inconsistency. We insist on the signed permission of a parent or guardian to let Potter go on a school sponsored outing to Hogsmeade, but we require him to compete in a life-threatening tournament, also school sponsored, without even notifying the same parent or guardian of its existence. Granted the Dursleys don't care what happens to Potter, but it might occur to them that they could sue you. I would. Wrongful death, or loss of affection. Could be worth a lot of money."

"Am I to take it, then, that after you retire from teaching Potions you are planning on becoming legal counsel to Hogwarts parents?"

"Think how rich I could be! Here I am killing myself trying to cope with hundreds of hormone crazy preteens and adolescents, when I could be living on the proceeds of a few lucrative cases. Think of life without homework!"

"Uh-hem. I had been intending to talk about Karkaroff."

"Oh, right. I just got caught up in the moment there. Karkaroff's been feeling the same thing I have. His mark's been itching, too. It started at the same time. I am presuming that every single one of us has felt it. It may be one of the things that inspired the unfortunate 'demonstration' at the Quidditch World Cup. I mean, they all felt that the Dark Lord is coming back."

"I am equally concerned that Alastor is correct, that someone is using the Triwizard Tournament to kill Potter. Maybe as a result of knowing that… Riddle… is coming back."

"Who? Tell me that. Who? Because I've been trying to think of an answer ever since Moody proposed the idea. It had to be someone in the castle in the last twenty-four hours. We know everyone who was here. Which of them are you suggesting is the one?"

"We do not know everyone who might have been here. Just last year we found that we had harbored three unregistered animagi for several years. For all we know, someone has slipped in that we would never recognize as an agent."

"Problem with that idea. This required a powerful spell to confuse the Goblet. I agree with Moody on that. Someone coming in as an animagus wouldn't be able to use a wand without transforming, and the Goblet was being watched. I don't know any – maybe one or two – wizards who could do that kind of magic wandless."

"Do you prefer the idea that someone, someone we know, in the castle is a strong supporter of Riddle?"

Snape looked bleakly up at Dumbledore. "I can't ever let down my guard, can I?"

The tension in the school was palpable. Gryffindor was strongly behind Potter, but despite all McGonagall's efforts, none of the other houses would support him. Snape was, in spite of all his other worries, ecstatic.

_It wasn't just that it was us. It was that we were the winners! While Slytherin was winning, the rest of the school would support anyone trying to bring us down. Now that Gryffindor is ahead, Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw resent their ascendancy, too. The world is an orderly and predictable place, and more fair than I had been daring to imagine._

Much of the animosity was directed against Potter personally. This was not unexpected, given the number of times he'd been allowed to be the hero. It was a form of comeuppance. Despite the clear unfairness of this shift in public opinion, Snape was not at all averse to taking advantage of it. After all, there were more important things at stake, and any image he had of disliking Potter, or vice versa, would shield Snape from some of the Dark Lord's wrath.

It was nearly two weeks later when another opportunity presented itself

That day, Snape did not join the other teachers for lunch. He had a problem to sort out and plan for, and needed some extended quiet time in his own office.

The problem was Potter. Or rather, the problem was how to explain Potter to the Dark Lord, for an explanation would be demanded. _If I live that long._

_Thank goodness I don't like the boy and he doesn't like me. There's nothing I have to hide, and no false situations I have to create. Just plenty of good, honest images and emotions, except…_ The exception was the time Snape had prevented the Dark Lord from killing Potter.

_Luckily, I didn't know at the time that the Dark Lord was involved. Unfortunately, at the time I didn't know it was Quirrell either. Just that it was very powerful dark magic. How do I explain taking action to prevent an event that would avenge my master's destruction? To keep in good standing with Dumbledore? But why, if I believed the Dark Lord to be dead? And how to explain not recognizing the source of the power behind that spell on Potter's broom?_

The great bell sounding the beginning of afternoon classes rang throughout Hogwarts, and Snape was startled out of his reverie. _There'll be students already waiting in the corridor._ He quickly left his office for the classroom.

There was a sudden panicky scramble of students in Snape's path, a pause, and the unmistakable hiss and sparkle of spell casting. _A fight! In front of my classroom!_ Snape pushed his way forward to find Malfoy and Potter both armed with wands, Goyle and Granger obviously victims of some spell, and pandemonium among the rest of the students. Intimidation was the only course of action.

"And what is all this noise about?" Snape said in a soft voice, more deadly than any yelling could be. Pointing at Malfoy, he ordered, "Explain."

"Potter attacked me, sir –"

Potter interrupted at full volume. "We attacked each other at the same time!" _He didn't accuse Malfoy of starting it. Potter must have pulled out his wand first._

"– and he hit Goyle – look –"

Snape examined Goyle. No real problem except that the boils on his face were ugly and probably itched. "Hospital wing, Goyle," he said quietly.

Then Weasley spoke up. "Malfoy got Hermione! Look!"

The poor girl had been hit by a tooth-growing spell. Her already large front teeth had grown to the point where she looked like a beaver. Snape opened his mouth to say 'Hospital wing' when the image of himself kneeling to the Dark Lord interposed. Without pausing to reflect, he said, "I see no difference," and as the shocked, tearful girl ran crying towards the entrance hall, both Potter and Weasley began yelling names at Snape that he was surprised two fourteen-year-olds would know.

_Perfect. Pure hatred from both of you. It couldn't be better if I'd planned it._ "Let's see. Fifty points from Gryffindor and a detention each for Potter and Weasley. Now get inside, or it'll be a week's worth of detentions." At no point had Snape raised his voice.

The students entered the room, which was when Snape noticed the 'POTTER STINKS' badges. He collected images while pretending not to notice. He was about to pull more anger from Potter when Creevey came into the class and informed him that Potter was needed for Tournament business. Snape had no choice but to let the boy go.

_Do you see, Lord? Do you see how I favor the children of Death Eaters, and how I treat mudbloods, mongrels, and blood traitors? Please let him look at my evidence before…_ But that was the part that Snape didn't want to think about.

The week before the first task of the Triwizard Tournament, Snape was in the Potions classroom, setting up for his first afternoon class before he went to lunch. Light from the corridor dimmed suddenly, and Snape looked up, then quickly down again. Moody stood framed in the doorway.

"Mind if I come in? Just for a chat."

"I'm on my way out," Snape replied, deciding to leave the rest of the setting up until after lunch. He moved quickly to the door, but Moody blocked his path.

"You shouldn't make it so obvious that you're trying to avoid me. It hurts my feelings. Then I get angry and lose my temper, and start bouncing things off the walls. Like ferrets, for example. You ever been a ferret, Snape?"

Snape bristled. "Are you another one that goes around shooting people in the back? Because that's the only way you're going to transform me into anything."

"You think I can't take you?"

"I know you can't take me. Not face to face."

"Then why are you scared of me?"

"There are things one is wise to be wary of. Rabid dogs, for instance."

Moody barked a loud laugh. "So now I'm 'Mad Dog' Moody! Well, sonny, watch your back. Someday I may decide to take you, and I always heed warnings. But that wasn't what I came about today."

"So you're going to let me leave my classroom now, right?"

"Chat first. Then you can go. You're helping administer this Tournament. I need to know if all the safeguards are in place for the first task."

Snape's antennae were out immediately. "Shouldn't you be asking that question of Professor Dumbledore?"

"Dumbledore has a lot on his plate now, so I'm asking you."

"You're asking the wrong person. I'm not involved in the tasks."

"They don't trust you with information, eh? Can't say as I blame them. I wouldn't trust you myself."

"I notice that you're the one asking the question. I guess they don't trust you either."

"Touchy, Snape. Touchy."

"I think you mean touché. Now if you have nothing else to pump me about, I'm going to lunch."

Moody stepped aside and allowed Snape to pass through the door, then accompanied him to the Great Hall for lunch, where the two sat next to each other through the meal without exchanging another word.

That weekend was the first Hogsmeade excursion for the third years and above, joined this time by the Beauxbatons and Durmstrang students. Snape was one of the teachers assigned to supervise, and he managed to slip out the gate a good half hour ahead of the hordes so that he could find a small nook, preferably in a quiet corner of the Three Broomsticks, before things got too crowded. The table he chose was hidden from the door by part of the counter, and while Snape couldn't see the whole room from his table, neither could they see him. Which was, of course, the point.

Nothing, however, could hide Hagrid from anyone. When the gamekeeper's bulk crossed the threshold, Snape knew it. He huddled down closer to the table, hoping that even from his great height Hagrid wouldn't be able to see him over the counter. Snape was in no mood to talk, not even to Hagrid.

He needn't have worried. Hagrid wasn't alone. Behind him stumped Moody, and the two sat together in the middle of the room talking like old friends. Some of what they were discussing appeared to be confidential, for Hagrid bent his head down near to Moody's ear and was obviously whispering.

_And you, Severus, are obviously spying. What difference does it make to you what Hagrid and Moody are talking about?_ But curiosity was not to be denied, and Snape continued to watch.

The two rose after a while and went to another table where Granger was sitting by herself. _By herself? Must be Potter and his invisibility cloak. Maybe he doesn't want to deal with the teasing._ Moody bent down to talk to thin air, a jolting reminder to Snape that his enchanted eye wasn't fooled by magical tricks or items. _He can see through the cloak!_ Then Moody and Hagrid left the Three Broomsticks.

_Note to self. Find out what Moody was talking to Hagrid about This could be interesting._

xxxxxxxxxx


	45. Chapter 45 – The Tasks Begin

**If You Are Ready...: The Tasks Begin**

Snape didn't follow Hagrid and Moody. If he had, Granger and the invisible Potter would have seen him and probably told either Hagrid, or Moody, or both. While he wasn't worried about Hagrid, Snape had no desire to let Moody know he'd witnessed the conversation in the Three Broomsticks.

At dinner that evening, Snape kept an eye on Hagrid, who was clearly keeping an eye on Madame Maxime. It didn't surprise Snape at all, for romantic possibilities were rare to nonexistent for Hagrid, and he imagined for Maxime, too. As soon as Hagrid made movements indicating he was about to rise from the table, Snape got up and quickly left the Great Hall. One cannot be accused of following another if one is first, after all.

In fact, Snape left the castle altogether and went out onto the lawn. The moon had not yet risen, since it was halfway between full and last quarter and the stars were glittering in a clear sky. Snape sincerely hoped that Hagrid and Madame Maxime were not intending to go strolling on the grounds because it would be awkward to interrupt such a tête-à-tête.

Fortunately, when Hagrid appeared he was alone.

Snape pretended he was walking back into the castle, stopped, and said, "Good evening, Hagrid. How are you enjoying all the excitement about the Tournament?"

"It's grand, Professor. And even better being smack in the middle of it."

"Smack in the middle? How is that?"

"Well, I'm gamekeeper. Magical creatures. They'd have to work with me, now wouldn't they?"

This was going much smoother than Snape had anticipated. He always preferred short conversations. "I imagine loads of people would like your viewpoint on what's happening."

"That's what Professor Moody was saying just this afternoon. Something about my 'unique perspective.' I told him there weren't nothing unique about it, just a talent for handling dragons, but he went on like it were something special."

"So Moody knows about the dragons, too?"

"Well odd about that. I got the feeling at first that maybe he didn't, but nothing I said were no surprise to him, so I guess Dumbledore told him. Good thing, too, 'cause he warned me that something were afoot."

"Afoot? You shock me Hagrid. What could go wrong?"

"You wouldn't believe it to look at him, but seems Professor Karkaroff ain't above tipping the scales in his favor. Moody says he's planning to come down tonight to watch the shipment arrive. That'd give that Durmstrang school a big advantage. I thought I'd take Madame Maxime for a stroll."

"So you're planning to balance things out."

"Just leveling the playing field, Professor. Just leveling the playing field."

"Had you thought about leveling it Hogwarts' way?"

"Got that covered, too, Professor."

"I don't want to hear about it, Hagrid. I have an official position to protect."

"Mum's the word, sir."

Snape pondered this as he reentered the castle. On a whim he checked to see if Karkaroff was still in the Great Hall. Peeking in, he was surprised to see Karkaroff talking to Moody in a clearly animated fashion. Snape backed away and waited until Karkaroff came out.

"Good evening, Igor. You seem in quite a rush tonight."

"And why not? I have just found out about your little plot to shut Durmstrang out of the competition." He advanced on Snape, hands clenched into fists at his sides. "I thought we were friends as well as colleagues. I thought you would support me in this. But now I see where your loyalties lie. You abandon me when most I need help."

It was a godsend. Better than Snape could ever have planned. Thinking fast, he replied, "You know I'd help you in almost anything else, but I've been waiting and hoping for this for nearly a decade and a half, and you're not going to take it away from me. Don't count on my support. Not in this."

Karkaroff stopped dead, and stared at Snape as if he were a madman. "Are we talking about the same thing?"

"Maybe not," Snape said, and walked past him into the dungeons.

On the day of the first task of the tournament, it was impossible to get any work done. The morning classes were basically useless, and the afternoon classes were canceled. The four champions were taken away from the castle to a special holding area, and after lunch the rest of the school trooped down to a stadium area with a huge barrier fence that had been created during the night just for the competition.

Snape was not certain he wanted to attend. He was now one of only a few teachers (Hagrid and Moody being two others) who knew that the task involved dragons. Snape had never seen a dragon in his life, and honestly had no desire to. Once again the incongruity struck him that the weekend excursion to Hogsmeade required permission, but sitting only yards away from a dragon in an open air stadium did not. _I need to study law and work on negligence suits. It would pay better._

In the end, Snape had to go. Dumbledore asked the whole staff to be present, partly as a show of school spirit, and partly to have extra adults on hand to supervise in case of problems.

The competition turned out to be quite exciting, which was no more than Snape expected, and interesting as well. Diggory, Delacour, and Krum all tried various spells against their dragons, with various levels of success. Potter's trial, the last of the day, was different. Potter used his wand to summon his broomstick, and suddenly it was a match between a Seeker trying to catch a Golden Egg, and the biggest, baddest Bludger the world had ever seen.

Flitwick was sitting near Snape, and from the moment Potter cried, _"Accio Firebolt!"_ he was bouncing up and down in his seat trying to see. "A summoning charm! Potter used a summoning charm! I've been trying to teach him summoning charms since the semester started, and he finally got it!"

Spectators rose spontaneously to their feet as Potter and the dragon matched wits and flying speeds, until suddenly Potter had the egg, and the competition was over. Potter had the fastest time of any of the contestants.

The crowd in the stands began to break up. Snape noticed that Moody joined McGonagall in seeing that Potter was whisked off to the nurse to tend a few cuts. Everyone around him was discussing the last task, some even reenacting Potter's flight with arms and hands. Snape and the other teachers tried to keep the crowd orderly and steer everyone back to the castle for supper.

As he himself was finally walking up the hill back to the castle, part of a rearguard shepherding the students, Snape looked back and saw Moody heading for the gate into Hogsmeade.

A few minutes later, as he was going toward his dungeon office, Snape felt pain stab through his left arm. Frightened, he hurried into the office and locked the door, then rolled up the sleeve of his robe to check the Dark Mark. The pain was subsiding, but the mark was more clearly etched on his skin than it had been before.

_Not a summons. Thank goodness, not a summons. I'm not ready yet. An urgent summons from the Dark Lord would have caused the mark to burn black with a fiery pain, and this was nowhere close to that._ It was bad enough, however, that it forced Snape to consider something he'd been trying to avoid, to ignore since August. It could be ignored no longer, and Snape left his office to find Dumbledore.

That took a while to do. Dumbledore was busy with Crouch and Bagman, with Madame Maxime and Karkaroff, with a horde of other visitors and with the press. Clearly it would be a couple of hours before he was free. Karkaroff saw Snape and waved to get his attention, then pointed to his arm. Snape nodded to confirm he'd felt it, too, but the two of them didn't talk.

Not until long after dinner, when most of the dignitaries had left and the students were in their common rooms, did Dumbledore receive Snape in his office.

Snape's request was an odd one. "I want you to cast a Cruciatus curse on me."

Dumbledore paused, a glass of mead held out in his hand for Snape. "I beg your pardon?"

"I want – no, I need – you to cast a Cruciatus curse on me."

"Severus, I have never cast a Cruciatus curse in my life. I have no intention of doing what you ask."

"I've never cast one either, though I've watched while others did. More important, I've never felt one."

"Why would you want to?"

Snape showed Dumbledore the mark on his arm, clear and bright now where before it had been faint. "It hurt. It made me think of the pain. Then I thought of what's going to happen when I face him. All this work preparing for his Legilimency – what if it's all in vain because I'm not strong enough to stand up to the pain?"

"Severus, the casting of an Unforgivable curse…"

"You let Moody use the Imperius curse on the students."

"That was in a controlled situation, with their consent…"

"This would be a controlled situation."

"Let me consult Moody…"

"No! I don't want Moody to know anything about this!"

Dumbledore gazed at Snape for a long moment. "All right, Severus. Let me think about it. I shall let you know when I have decided."

The following Saturday, Dumbledore asked Snape to come up to his office.

"Sit down, Severus, make yourself comfortable. Mead?"

"I'm not sure. This doesn't sound like good news." Snape didn't sit down.

"Am I so easy to read, then? Very well. I have thought long and hard, and I do not think that I can accede to your request. The Unforgivable curses harm both caster and victim in ways that no other spells can, and I fear…"

"You want me to face him cold. Unprepared. No defenses at all."

"That is not what I said. I want to protect you from the effects of the Unforgivable…"

"Who's going to protect me from the effects of his curses?" Snape started to pace, highly agitated now. "Will you be there with a shielding spell? Are you going to give me armor he can't detect? When I face him, I'll be alone in a circle of Death Eaters. I'm going to need all the preparation I can get. Why won't you help me?"

"I will give you all the help I can, but the Unforgivable curses are beyond the pale. You cannot ask me…"

"No, but you can ask me. You can ask me to walk blindfolded into a mine field. Isn't it true the curses only hurt the caster if done with malice? This isn't malice, this is charity – _caritas_."

"Severus…"

"Headmaster, please!"

They faced each other across the silence, and it was Dumbledore who gave in. "Come tomorrow at lunch, Severus. I shall study until then on the best way to proceed in order to achieve the maximum benefit with the minimum damage."

"Thank you, Professor."

The first session was awkward in the extreme, since neither Snape nor Dumbledore had any idea what they were getting into.

"We do not need to recreate the whole experience, do we? Surely something of lesser intensity would serve equally."

"When you say the Cruciatus spell, you're supposed to mean it. It doesn't have the same effect if you don't mean it. It doesn't sound as if you…"

"Well, it is very hard to mean to hurt someone you are trying to help. Excuse me if my heart is not in it. Now, where should you be for this? Sitting? Standing? Lying down?"

They settled on Snape sitting in the chair before the fireplace. Dumbledore stood a bit behind him and to the side, so that Snape couldn't see him. "I'd best start with something mild," Dumbledore said.

"It's hard to picture you doing anything else."

"Are you ready?"

"No, but go ahead anyway." Even so, it was a surprise.

"Crucio!" cried Dumbledore, pointing his wand at Snape.

Pain that could not be ignored washed through every fiber of Snape's being. It wasn't that he could say, 'My hand hurts' or 'My stomach hurts' for he wasn't aware of hand or stomach or any other part of his body. It was as if his brain was disconnected from the rest of him, floating in a sea of pain, and that sea permeated everything, so that around him and in him and through him there was only pain. He had no sense of time or place, no sense of who was near, no memory of why this was happening. Only pain.

Then the pain was gone, and Dumbledore was sitting next to him, offering Snape a goblet of mead. "What happened?" Dumbledore asked.

Snape's hand trembled as he reached for the glass, then he shivered, took the mead, and drained the goblet. "I'm not sure. I thought this was going to be mild."

"I thought it was."

"Either you don't know your own strength, or this is going to be harder than I thought… But there was something wrong." Snape waited for his head to clear a bit more. "When the Dark Lord uses this spell, he talks to the one being punished. Questions are asked and answered. I wasn't aware of you at all. Why not?"

"I do not know," said Dumbledore.

They thought to try at least once more that afternoon. This time Dumbledore would stand in front of Snape and attempt to establish eye contact, even ask questions. It was a good half hour before Snape was ready, but he agreed that if he couldn't do it in Dumbledore's office, then he couldn't do it anywhere.

"Crucio!" cried Dumbledore again.

Again Snape's body vanished and he floated in the sea of pain, but this time he was aware of Dumbledore's eyes. The eyes promised release, and he longed for them to free him. A thought formed between his consciousness and the pain. 'What is your name?' the thought said, and he knew release came with the answer.

"Severus," Snape gasped. "Severus Snape."

The pain was gone, and Dumbledore sat beside him. "Eye contact seems to be a key," Dumbledore said, and Snape agreed.

"Next," Snape said, "I have to try not to answer."

"Are you sure that is wise?"

"If I can't control it, then everything we're doing is useless."

Snape refused another glass of mead, wanting to be sharp and aware. Dumbledore spoke the Crucio spell, and the pain and eyes returned. 'What is your name?' the eyes asked, and this time Snape clenched his whole being into one obstinate lump and withheld the answer. Pain washed him, but it didn't increase in intensity. 'What is your name?' pressed into his brain more insistently this time, but still he fought the pain, and still the pain was static, unchanging. 'What is your name?' came a third time, and this time Snape thought a conscious, independent thought. 'Why are you doing this?' the thought said, and Snape answered, "Severus, Severus Snape."

"Now you have to tell me what happened," Dumbledore said in Snape's ear.

"The longer I held out, the more my own thoughts were able to come through," Snape panted, trying to control breath and heartbeat, both of which were racing. "The pain remained the same, but I was beginning to think again."

"That," said Dumbledore, "is a major piece of information."

They agreed to work on weekends, and the first half of December, as the school prepared for the Yule Ball, Snape and Dumbledore practiced with the Cruciatus curse. The second Sunday, Dumbledore increased the intensity of his curse, and Snape was dazzled with the pain, but by the third try, gasping and struggling with the agony of it, he was able to endure until his own thoughts began to break through. It seemed progress was being made.

The third Sunday, as Snape settled into the chair before the fire, he suddenly began to cry. "I can't do this," he wept. "I can't do this anymore."

Dumbledore couldn't hide the concern in his expression. "What will happen on that day if you can't do it anymore?"

"I'll tell him everything I know."

"What will he do then?"

Snape watched Dumbledore with tired eyes. "He'll punish me."

"Will he kill you?"

"Not for a long time."

"Then I cannot send you to him. It is too much to ask. I cannot do this to you."

"No, it's worse than that. I have to go. If I don't go when he summons me, then he'll hunt me down and kill me. You don't leave the Dark Lord's service."

They sat for a while, then Dumbledore said, "Shall we try it again? I shall keep it gentle."

Snape nodded and waited for the Crucio spell. Through the pain he felt the question 'What is your name?' With all his strength he tried to resist, but knew he was weakening. Then, suddenly, there was a new question, or rather a new command.

'Tell me about Lily.'

The effect was electric. Every door in Snape's psyche began to shut down, and adrenaline poured into his system. He was alert, in terrible pain, but alert. Nothing about Lily, not the tiniest shred of information, was coming through. The probe came again, 'Tell me about Lily,' and Snape's mind began to respond, "I don't know Lily. I know nothing about Lily. Who is Lily?"

The pain stopped, and Dumbledore was smiling. "That was the problem," he said. "We were just asking the wrong question."

The Sunday before Christmas was the last session. Neither Snape nor Dumbledore had any desire to continue beyond that. As Snape sat before the fire in Dumbledore's office, Dumbledore toyed with his wand.

"Are you sure you want to do this again?"

"Something different this time. I have to know it works."

"Very well. What do I do?"

"Read me. The first time, try to find if I'm hiding anything. Try hard."

The curse was cast, and Snape let the pain sweep through him. He had more control over it now, though he didn't know what would happen if it intensified further. He felt the Legilimency probe enter his mind and registered that the pain made it harder to resist. _I need to adjust, maybe through several stages._ Then Dumbledore backed away.

"Nothing. Clear, open, and honest. Where do you hide all the skeletons?"

"Professional secret. Now, try again."

"Are we expecting a different result?"

"Maybe."

The second time lasted longer, and when the pain stopped and Dumbledore stood, there was a curious expression on his face.

"I found a locked door. You're hiding something from me. Is that what you wanted?"

"Yes. If something like Moody's eye can see them, I want the Dark Lord to think he can find them, too. Unaided. Was it difficult?"

"A little. It was well hidden. Camouflaged behind something else."

"Perfect. Now, last time. Count how many doors you find, and try to open one."

Again the mind probe entered his brain, and Snape didn't resist until Dumbledore selected a group of thoughts and tried to force his way in. Then without warning the pain spiked, and Snape cried out with the agony of it. Dumbledore stopped immediately. When Snape could focus again, he found Dumbledore sitting beside him with a goblet of mead.

"Three. I found three doors, nothing else. What happened?"

"Three is good. Three is what I wanted you to find. But when you tried to break through, the pain got worse. It's a good thing I want to let him see what's in those boxes. What scares me is if he finds the ones I don't want him to see."

In the entrance hall on the way to Sunday supper, Snape ran into Moody.

"Good to see you back on solid ground, Snape old boy. That rarified atmosphere up in Dumbledore's office must make you giddy."

"Are you monitoring my movements?"

"I like to know where all my little Death Eaters are at any given moment. It makes me feel safer."

"I make Alastor Moody feel unsafe. I must be doing something right."

"Got a date for the Yule Ball? Or is it hard for an old man like yourself to find a date?"

"You must have one foot in the grave, Moody. You never used to fixate on my age before. You've been calling me 'old man' and 'old boy' since you got here. Maybe it's because you're in your second childhood now."

To Snape's great surprise, Moody didn't respond. Instead he stared at Snape for a few seconds, then turned and stumped in to supper. Snape watched him speculatively before following him into the Great Hall. They sat at the high table in silence, and all through supper Snape wondered what he'd said that shut Moody up so completely. He rather wanted to be able to repeat it.

The evening of the Yule Ball arrived, and all the students were making their way to the Great Hall dressed in their finest robes. The Hall was decorated in frosty white with green garlands, and instead of the long medieval tables with their benches, there were round banquet tables.

Snape was not wearing dress robes, nor did he take a seat in the Hall for the feast. The moon was in its last quarter again and wouldn't rise until midnight, the weather was surprisingly balmy, and Snape had managed to finagle the job of patrolling the grounds. He considered this a prize position since his student contact was minimal, he could stay out of the way of Moody and Karkaroff, and he didn't have to listen to the music of the Weird Sisters.

Instead, he stopped off at the kitchens to pick up a plate of food and, passing Professor Vector, who was on duty in the entrance hall, took it out onto the stairs to eat. The stars glittered overhead, and the world seemed at perfect peace. Snape felt Lily's presence, but that evening he had no need to talk to her. They had often sat by the lake as children, not talking but content just to be together and watch the sky.

From inside the castle, Snape could hear the music start and the beginning of the dancing. That meant that his own job was about to start, too. Not all of the students were interested in dancing, and it was Snape's duty to show them the error of their ways.

After the second dance, the first couple appeared on the steps, a seventh year boy and a sixth year girl. Both started when they saw Snape, then said, "Good evening, Professor." They were, they said, just going to stroll for a while to get away from the noise and the heat of the hall. Snape let them go, but noted the direction they'd gone.

A few minutes later, Karkaroff came out.

"Here you are, Severus. I need to talk to you someplace private. Come." He took Snape's arm and steered him across the lawn away from the light shining out from the castle. "I want to know what you're planning to do."

"Planning to do about what?"

"About what? About this!" And Karkaroff quickly touched his left arm.

_I'm not talking to Karkaroff. I'm talking to the Dark Lord. Nothing I say to Karkaroff can be hidden. He'll want to see it all._ Snape look out across the lawn so that Karkaroff wouldn't be able to see his eyes. "Not everyone is panicked by this, Igor. A lot of people are waiting for it. You don't have to panic either."

Karkaroff stared at him. "You know what I did to get out of Azkaban. You know how many of our colleagues want me dead. I can't go back. And you! Go back? You betrayed them all before the Dark Lord fell. You were selling them out to Dumbledore while you were still training them in London. What they'll do to me is nothing compared to what they'll do to you. I heard Dumbledore say so in front of the tribunal. You sold them out before the Dark Lord's downfall, and you were Dumbledore's spy among us."

"I was where the Dark Lord told me to be, doing what the Dark Lord told me to do. Fooling Dumbledore was part of that. I have nothing to fear."

"No? Well maybe you have something to fear from Dumbledore, then. Or from Moody. Shall I tell them of this conversation? I spent time in Azkaban – maybe now it's your turn."

"Go ahead. Tell them. Dumbledore won't believe you, and Moody can't do anything." Snape turned back to Karkaroff. "I have a job to do out here. If you want to talk, you have to come with me." He headed for the garden area with Karkaroff in tow. "You aren't the only one he'll be angry with. He isn't going to kill everyone who tried to save his own skin. Besides, you might be reading the signs wrong. Do we know for certain he's coming back now?"

They reached the gardens and Snape listened carefully. Teenagers in the throes of a hormonal rush were seldom discreet. He pointed his wand at a tree and whispered, "Petrificus Totalis," then lit a Lumos spell. A second later he said, "Liberacorpus," and the two embarrassed students clambered to their feet. "I know, Hancock," Snape drawled sarcastically, "she fainted and you were giving her mouth-to-mouth-resuscitation. Ten points each from Slytherin. Get back into the Hall where you belong."

Karkaroff was still there. "I don't see how you can make light of this."

Snape continued through the garden. "I think you're overreacting. I really don't see what there is to fuss about, Igor."

"Severus, you cannot pretend this isn't happening! It's been getting clearer and clearer for months. I am becoming seriously concerned. I can't deny it…"

"Then flee. Flee…" Snape waved towards the castle. "I will make your excuses. I, however, am remaining at Hogwarts." He spotted another couple and sent a blast into the rosebush they were hiding behind, deducting ten points each from Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff as the students scurried to shelter. _No real harm. The roses have to be pruned in January anyway._

Potter and Weasley were in the garden, too, interestingly enough without their dates. Snape impatiently shooed them along. After a few more minutes of fruitless conversation, Igor returned to the castle and Snape to his job of frustrating adolescent love.

In the week between the Yule Ball and the beginning of the next term, Dumbledore asked Snape to come to his office again.

"Any news? Any change?"

Snape sighed. "Only what we expected would change. The mark is changing. It's becoming darker and clearer. Karkaroff's too. He's getting very worried about it, and I don't really blame him. I can find ways to justify the last thirteen years. He can't. He didn't just claim to be under an Imperius curse or to be coerced into the Death Eaters. He named names and sold people out. If we ever do get a summons, I'm afraid he's going to run."

"Ah, but where to? There are not a large number of safe places to go."

"I really think that's his main reason for keeping the location of Durmstrang a secret. I think he wants to be able to go there first. If no one knows where the school is, it'll give him time to get somewhere safer."

"No lion's den for Karkaroff, then." Dumbledore fingered his beard for a moment. "I did want to talk to you about something else. Have you been working on your Patronus?"

The question surprised Snape. "Not really. With the dementors gone, I didn't see the need."

"I hope you recall that I asked you to learn the Patronus charm before we had any dementors at Hogwarts. I hope you do not think I anticipated that little invasion."

"That's right. It was the year before, wasn't it? Why do you think I need it now? I'm not summoning a Patronus against the Dark Lord. I'm not that foolhardy."

"You can do other things with a Patronus that are very useful, such as send virtually undetectable messages."

"I didn't know you could project a Patronus to any distance."

"Oh, quite long distances. I have done it from here to London on many occasions. The Patronus does not allow itself to be intercepted, and cannot be overheard or detected like floo powder can."

"What situations are you envisioning here?"

"Well, I hate to bring it up, but the time might come when you need to get into Hogwarts very quickly. Let us say a situation involving hot pursuit. If you send the Patronus ahead, we can be at the gates to admit you and close them in the face of pursuers."

"Hot pursuit!" Snape rose from his chair and sloshed tea out of his cup before he managed to set it down. "Hunted down like a criminal! Like an animal! What kind of scenarios are you preparing for me?"

"Easy, Severus, easy. It is a worst-case scenario, but better to plan for any eventuality. Better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it."

In the end, Snape agreed that Dumbledore had a point and began working on the Patronus. He was out of practice, and was therefore pleasantly surprised to find that the misty little fox with the sharp nose and black eyes was easy to conjure. Getting it to move from place to place on command was more difficult, but Snape persevered, working mostly in the evenings, and soon was able to send the Patronus to a specific spot along the lake bank at will.

A major obstacle was Moody, who continued to be fascinated by Snape's every movement. Most often Snape pretended to be working in his office, and slipped past Moody that way. Occasionally Dumbledore distracted Moody to enable Snape to escape undetected from the castle. One of the most intriguing things about the situation was the degree to which Dumbledore seemed to sympathize with Snape's desire to keep Moody entirely out of the picture.

Other things were happening to disrupt the routine at Hogwarts, however. One of the biggest came from outside in the form of an article in the Daily Prophet. It seemed a particularly obnoxious reporter by the name of Rita Skeeter had discovered a long concealed secret about Hogwarts. About Hogwarts, and about Hagrid.

It was shortly after the beginning of the term that several things seemed to happen at once. Returning to his office after practicing with the Patronus, Snape had a sudden sense that things were not quite right. Maybe it was the feel of the door as it opened, or an almost unnoticeable change in the air, but Snape knew that someone had been there. Since Snape's office was always locked with fairly strong spells, it had to be one of the teachers, or an unusually powerful student. Snape rather fancied he knew which.

Snape began a slow, methodical search of the office, checking his inventory lists against the vials and jars on the shelves. What was missing was powdered bicorn horn and shredded boomslang skin. _Someone is making Polyjuice potion. The last time this happened was two years ago when Granger was in hospital, having semi-transformed herself into a cat._

The problem was that Snape was reasonably sure this wasn't a student. He remembered all too well the incident of the firecracker in the cauldron that was the cover for the one who sneaked into the office for the potion ingredients. He really didn't believe that even Granger was capable of opening his office doors when they were locked.

_Which left a short list of suspects. Why would Moody need Polyjuice potion? Who is he planning to transform himself into?_

The next day before breakfast, Snape was in Dumbledore's office.

"Polyjuice potion. The two ingredients are used together only for Polyjuice potion. Which means that whoever took them is planning to transform himself into someone else for an hour. How am I even supposed to know at this moment that you are you?"

Dumbledore did not seem concerned. "Because Polyjuice potion does not transfer memories, and anyone transforming himself – or herself – into me would still not know how to get into the office without the password. And I know that you are you because I can look into your eyes and see the Severus I have known these past two and a half decades. So we are reasonably sure of each other. Why do you suspect Moody?"

"Who else could it be? The only students are a couple of sixth and seventh years that I know quite well, and who wouldn't do it, and Granger for the pre-OWL crowd, but I don't think even she is that good. This happened between supper and ten o'clock, so that rather precludes outsiders, and who among the 'regular' staff would you suspect? The only ringer is Moody. By the way, what's my patronus, and what major medical problem did I have as a child?"

"A fox, and you are assuming Hagrid told me, but it was rickets. You might want to know that I prefer raspberry jam."

They looked at each other for a moment. "Have you ever heard of James Bond?" Snape asked.

At breakfast, Snape could see from some distance that McGonagall was reading _The Daily Prophet_ and fuming. Not everyone had yet come down, so Snape slipped into the seat on her left.

"What's happening in the wide world?" he asked.

"Murder, if I can get my hands on her," replied McGonagall. She handed him the newspaper. There, under the byline 'Rita Skeeter' was a story exposing the fact that Hagrid was half giant and speculating on the potential danger he posed for the students at Hogwarts and the wizarding world at large.

"The ugly old bat!" exclaimed Snape. Then he saw McGonagall's expression and backpedaled furiously. "You, on the other hand, are neither ugly nor a bat. And I can't help my age. Who does this 'Skeeter' person think she is, anyway?"

"For your heart being in the right place, you're forgiven. Someone's got to talk to Hagrid."

The problem was that Hagrid wouldn't talk to anyone else. He'd already informed Dumbledore that he was sick and called in a substitute, a rather competent instructor named Grubbly-Plank. She was, in fact, far better at the professor business than Hagrid, and had only sentiment against her. Hagrid locked himself in his hut.

This presented a quandary for Snape. He had an enormous quantity of images of Hagrid that had to be sealed, double sealed, and triple blocked from the Dark Lord. At the same time, he wanted to let Hagrid know of his support. Dumbledore solved the problem by assuring Snape that he would pass along any messages to Hagrid.

It wasn't as if Hagrid didn't understand Snape's problem. After all, it was to Hagrid that Snape had gone for his defection. In terms of understanding the stakes, Hagrid came third. Right after Dumbledore and Snape himself.

The next Hogsmeade excursion was Saturday, January 14. This time Snape was excused any supervisory duty. Moody, on the other hand was assigned to keep an eye on the students and had to spend the entire day off the grounds. The reason for this arrangement became apparent after the older students left.

"Come with me, Severus. We are going out to the forest to practice something new. This should, quite frankly, be much easier for you than for most people, or I shall be very surprised."

They went only a little way in, more to be out of sight than anything. Then, with a flick of his wand, Dumbledore called _"Expecto Patronum!"_ Before Snape's astounded eyes there appeared a snow-white phoenix, a spectral bird of mist and ice. It was beautiful.

"Now this is the tricky part," Dumbledore was saying. "You are going to learn to send a message by Patronus. First get it to pause, like this, and be sure you know what you want to say. Then say, 'Mitto nuntium' and tell it the message. I suppose you could project it nonverbally, but not everyone can do that. Then you tell it 'Nuntius estis ad…' and the name of the person you are sending the message to. Like owls, Patronuses always know where the person is."

"How do you receive the message?"

"Why do you not go across the clearing, and I shall send one to you. You try to send one in response."

Snape did as he was told, repeating over and over to himself Mitto nuntium and Nuntius estis ad…, and wondering, not for the first time, why Latin wasn't taught as a subject at Hogwarts. When he was in position, he faced Dumbledore and waited.

Dumbledore spoke to his Patronus, then dispatched it towards Snape. It crossed the clearing in a microsecond, hovered before Snape, and suddenly his mind was receiving the words_, 'Is this not easier than floo powder?'_ Immediately thereafter, the Patronus vanished.

_Why can't it all be nonverbal?_ On a sudden whim, Snape raised his own wand and summoned little Renard soundlessly. He was pleased to see that the fox was looking more and more cunning with each appearance. Silently Snape projected the words _Mitto nuntium, Is there a limit to length?_, and _Nuntius estis ad Dumbledore_.

The fox went instantly to Dumbledore, who conjured his phoenix and replied_, 'I do not know. I have never tried to send War and Peace.'_

Dumbledore returned to his office, and Snape practiced sending messages to him there for about an hour. It was clear from the first, however, that this was something Snape could do well. Very little practice was needed.

Later that afternoon, Dumbledore went to see Hagrid. Snape wasn't privy to that conversation, though he knew that Dumbledore carried with him a stack of letters from parents who had been students at Hogwarts and from the staff. All of them expressed confidence in Hagrid, and requested that Dumbledore keep Hagrid on. The meeting must have been successful, since Hagrid appeared at Monday morning breakfast and took up his classes again.

Things remained calm until the following Thursday night. To be more precise, it was one o'clock in the morning of Friday the twentieth.

That evening, Snape had stayed up reading until eleven, when he'd undressed for bed (it was cold, and a gray flannel nightshirt was in order) and, after some tossing and turning, fallen asleep. At about one in the morning, he was awakened by the most horrible shrieking and caterwauling he'd ever heard coming from the entrance hall.

Snape was awake immediately, and the first thing he noticed was a faint glow under the door to his office. Wand at the ready, he approached and opened the door. No one was there, though a torch had clearly been lit on the opposite wall to give light to whomever had been sneaking around.

_Is this one mystery, or two? Did the shrieking that woke me have something to do with the person who broke into my office, or did it interrupt him in the middle of his search?_

Quickly throwing a dressing gown over his nightshirt, Snape made his way to the entrance hall. The disturbance, however, was farther up, and Snape climbed the stairs to the second floor where he could hear Filch raving:

"Hiding are you? I'm coming to get you, Peeves… You've gone and stolen a Triwizard clue, Peeves… Dumbledore'll have you out of here for this, you filthy, pilfering poltergeist…"

Stepping out onto the second floor, Snape said, "Filch? What's going on?"

"It's Peeves, Professor. He threw this egg down the stairs." For some reason, Filch thought it necessary to whisper, even though they were nowhere near any dormitories or private rooms. Except Moody's.

Snape went further up to be able to talk to Filch without making any more noise. He looked at the egg curiously. It was from the first Triwizard task, and was supposed to contain clues to the second task. "Peeves? But Peeves couldn't get into my office."

Filch didn't understand what the egg had to do with Snape's office, but confirmed that the wailing and banging that awakened Snape had come from the egg. Snape alerted Filch to the fact that someone had been in his office.

"But Peeves couldn't…"

"I know he couldn't. I seal my office with a spell none but a wizard could break!" Snape thought again of Moody and looked up the stairs and around the corridor, wondering why Moody hadn't come out to investigate the noise. _It isn't as if he has a reputation for sleeping through odd occurrences, quite the contrary._ "I want you to come and help me search for the intruder, Filch."

Filch had other plans. He wanted to go to Dumbledore about the incident and get Peeves thrown from the castle once and for all.

"Filch," replied Snape, now exasperated, "I don't give a damn about that wretched poltergeist; it's my office that's…" Then he heard the unmistakable sound of Moody's wooden leg and stopped. _If there's anything I don't want, it's for Moody to hear this._

But it was impossible to stop Filch. He immediately began telling Moody about the egg. "…and then Professor Snape discovered that someone had broken into his off…"

"Shut up!" Snape hissed, but the damage was done.

Moody moved closer and scanned Snape with his enchanted eye, then paused, mouth open in mock surprise at what he 'found.' "Did I hear that correctly, Snape? Someone broke into your office?"

"It is unimportant." _And since it was probably you, your little act is fooling no one._

"On the contrary, it is very important. Who'd want to break into your office?" Moody was gazing into Snape's face with the enchanted eye.

He's trying to read me. Let's see you read a brick wall, you bastard. And Snape closed off every part of his mind to the probe, something he'd only done before in dueling situations. "A student, I dare say. It has happened before. Potion ingredients… students attempting illicit mixtures, no doubt…"

"Not hiding anything else in your office, are you?"

Only the presence of Filch was now keeping the exchange from turning into a fight. Snape wanted nothing more than to wipe the ugly grin off Moody's face. "You know I'm hiding nothing, as you've searched my office pretty thoroughly yourself."

"Auror's privilege, Snape. Dumbledore told me to keep an eye…"

The baldness of the man's lie was breathtaking. "Dumbledore happens to trust me. I refuse to believe that he gave you orders to search my office!" _Give me an excuse. Go for your wand and give me a reason…_

A strange glint had come into Moody's real eye, as if he'd found something he'd been seeking for a long time. "'Course Dumbledore trusts you. He's a trusting man, isn't he? Believes in second chances. But me – I say there are spots that don't come off, Snape. Spots that never come off, d' you know what I mean?"

The stab of fire through the mark on Snape's left forearm was blinding. Snape gripped the arm in sudden, uncontrollable pain that was as instantly gone. Shocked to the core of his being, Snape stared at Moody. _How did he do that? How could he do that? Aurors can't control the Dark Mark. Only the Dark Lord and his lieutenants… Did he learn that from prisoners in Azkaban? Or…_

Moody seemed quite pleased with the results of his action. He grinned. "Get back to bed, Snape," he said, like a parent commanding an errant child.

"You don't have the authority to send me anywhere! I have as much right to prowl this school after dark as you do!" That didn't come out quite the way Snape had intended, but he was so angry now that he was talking without thinking. Moody would get the gist of it.

Moody, in fact, seemed quite amused. "Prowl away. I look forward to meeting you in a dark corridor some time…" The threat was implicit, and Snape was about to reply when Moody pointed past him. "You've dropped something, by the way…"

Snape turned to look at the step Moody pointed to. He recognized the thing immediately. It was James and Sirius's map. The map he'd last seen in the possession of Lupin. The map that somehow still remained at Hogwarts… And it was functioning, with the names of people moving over it! Snape reached for it only to have it fly past his fingers as Moody cried…

"_Accio Parchment!"_ Then Moody grinned like a satyr. "My mistake. It's mine – must've dropped it earlier."

But now everything was clear. Moody had been working all the previous term to get Potter's confidence, starting with that little episode with the ferret. That was what Moody 'd meant about 'getting what he wanted.' What he wanted was Potter helping him. "Potter," Snape muttered aloud.

Moody's attention was drawn to the sound. "What's that?"

"Potter! That egg is Potter's egg. That piece of parchment belongs to Potter. I have seen it before, I recognize it! Potter is here! Potter, in his Invisibility Cloak!" _On the stairs. He must be on the stairs, and Moody can see him with that damned eye._ Snape stretched out his hands and began moving upwards.

Clearly that was not what Moody wanted, for he snapped, "There's nothing there, Snape! But I'll be happy to tell the headmaster how quickly your mind jumped to Harry Potter!"

"Meaning what?" Snape's head turned to look down the stairs at Moody.

"Meaning that Dumbledore's very interested to know who's got it in for that boy! And so am I, Snape… very interested…" Moody moved closer as he spoke, demanding eye contact.

The image that entered Snape's mind was of the Dark Lord as he'd been fourteen years earlier, and himself kneeling to his lord in a circle of Death Eaters. A memory, perhaps, wrenched from the mind of a Death Eater in Azkaban and now brought forward to intimidate Snape. Placed in a pensieve for the perusal of Cornelius Fudge, it was damning. Snape began to retreat.

"I merely thought that if Potter was wandering around after hours again… it's an unfortunate habit of his… he should be stopped. For… for his own safety."

"Ah, I see. Got Potter's best interests at heart, have you?"

"I think I will go back to bed," It was the order Moody had given him only minutes before. It was defeat. It was surrender. _At least for now, until I have a chance to talk to Dumbledore and figure out what this all means._

"Best idea you've had all night." As Snape passed him going down the stairs, Moody stopped him with a hand on his arm and whispered, too low for Filch to hear, "You and I may be having our little chat earlier than expected, and not in Azkaban."

Snape swept past Moody, along the corridor and down the stairs to the entrance hall without looking back. Once in his own office, however, he realized that he was near collapse. The disturbingly accurate image, the threats, the knowledge that the Marauder's map was now in Moody's possession and that he would never be alone – all of this was having a profound effect on the already distraught Snape's nerves.

_I have to see Dumbledore tomorrow. He has to rein Moody in. I can't live like this._

The next morning Snape was waiting for Dumbledore outside the latter's griffin statue staircase well before breakfast. "You have to talk to him! You have to do something about him! You have to make him leave me alone!"

"Let me see, Severus. 'He' could be so many people. Are we discussing Professor Flitwick?"

Snape closed his eyes and took a deep breath. "Moody!" he spat out. "Keep him away from me!"

"Come, Severus. I am hungry. Could you entertain me at breakfast with what Alastor has done now?"

"You're not taking this seriously." Snape stopped in the corridor and waited until Dumbledore also stopped and turned to look at him.

"You must admit, Severus, that so far your charges against Professor Moody have been highly vague. Do you think you might calm down enough to explain in more detail what has upset you so?"

"He's been searching my office. I believe he's taken things. And he says he's doing it on your orders."

"My orders? Not my orders. No. Come, Severus, let us go to my office now. We can have breakfast there in private."

"He'll know."

"And how will he know?"

"He has the map. He can watch all of us from the comfort of his own rooms, and he'll know we're talking."

"And what map, pray tell, is this?"

"James's map. The one Filch took from Sirius. But Potter had it, and then Lupin took it from me. But I found it in Lupin's room, except when they knocked me out, I don't know what happened to it, but now Potter had it, and Moody's got it."

"I see. You really must come and have breakfast in my office, Severus. You will feel better. It is a blood sugar thing. What exactly does this map do besides show direction?"

"It shows where every person in Hogwarts is at any given moment."

"Do you mean it shows you and me talking together in this corridor?"

"It does. The first time I saw it was back in the old days. Sirius was using it to ambush me outside the library, but someone snitched and I caught him instead. I told Filch, who confiscated it. The next thing I know is it's about fifteen years later and Potter has the map. Except Lupin insisted on taking it – Dark Arts teacher and all. Last night Potter had it again, but Moody summoned it and now he's got it. He can monitor everything I do. Everything."

By this time Dumbledore had lured Snape up the spiral staircase, and they were in his office. Dumbledore contacted the kitchen, and breakfast was magically sent up for the both of them. Snape was, in fact, quite hungry, and began to eat automatically as he and Dumbledore discussed the situation.

"Now, the first complaint you have is that Alastor is in possession of an enchanted artifact that will allow him to monitor your movements every moment. What is your next complaint?"

"He's been searching my office. Someone broke into my office last night. When I accused him of it, instead of denying it he told me that you'd given him permission – no, orders – to keep an eye on me."

"You know that is not true."

"That's what I told him. I told him you trusted me, and you wouldn't allow it. Then he said you were a trusting person who believed in second chances, but he knew a leopard couldn't change its spots, and that's when he made the mark hurt."

"Tell me that again."

"The mark on my arm. He made it hurt. He made it burn almost as if I were being summoned. He enjoyed it, too. I could tell by the look on his face."

"Did he say anything else?"

"Well he's always talked about interrogating me in Azkaban, but last night he said we'd have our 'little chat' soon, and not in Azkaban. I took it as a threat. That's what it felt like."

"I think I need to talk to Alastor. Thank you for advising me of all of this."

The next few weeks leading up to the second task in the Triwizard Tournament were a foretaste of eternal damnation. Moody was everywhere, ostentatiously letting Snape know that his movements were a matter of public record. Moody managed to meet Snape at the entrance to the Great Hall for every meal, to greet him and walk with him to the teachers' table. Moody popped out into the corridor at odd moments to almost bump into Snape and then, smiling, ask Snape's pardon for nearly running into him.

Snape was even unable to continue working with his Patronus. He went down to the lake shore one evening, only to glance up and see Moody watching him from the top of the hill. _I can't do this with him as a spectator_. Snape reluctantly returned to his own rooms.

"Do something!" Snape screamed at Dumbledore midway through February. "That man is driving me crazy! Take that map away from him!"

"He denies that he has it. He denies any knowledge of it."

"He's lying. Read him – you'll see he's lying."

"You know I cannot read him without his permission. I do not read you without yours."

"Ask Potter. You don't have to read Potter. That boy's face is an open book."

"I would prefer not bothering Potter while he is immersed in preparing for the second task."

Snape examined his hands, his fingernails, then looked around at the walls, the ceiling, anywhere but at Dumbledore. He was trying to think of something to say that he hadn't already said.

It was Dumbledore who spoke first. "Maybe there is something I can do. The next time you wish to work with the Patronus, send it first to me. I shall come down."

That evening Snape summoned the Patronus in his own room and sent it with a message to Dumbledore. Going down the hill to the lake, he glanced behind him and saw Moody leave the castle. By the time Snape reached the lake shore, Moody was on the overlooking cliff, staring down at him. Snape waited.

A moment later Dumbledore appeared and greeted Moody on the cliff. They spoke for a few minutes, then Dumbledore took Moody's arm and steered him back toward the castle, talking in an animated fashion all the while.

Things got better after that, as Moody came to realize that Dumbledore was monitoring him with the same tenacity that he was monitoring Snape. Snape began to get some of his privacy back.

In the week before the second task, Snape was descending from the library using the stairway between the fourth and second floors, the same staircase where he'd encountered Moody before. Moody suddenly strode along the corridor, stopped at the foot of the stairs, and looked up.

"I'd like to see you in my office for a minute, Snape," he said curtly, then turned and walked away.

_Don't kill him. Don't kill him. At least not here. Somewhere where it'll be harder to find the body, maybe._

Following behind, Snape saw Moody enter his office. He arrived at the door a moment later and put his hand to the latch. It opened quietly. As Snape entered, he saw Moody step away from the wall. Moody was covering something that hung there, something that might be a mirror or a painting.

_Curious. Why would he do that?_

"Hello, Snape. What can I do for you?"

"You just asked me to come here."

"I did? Odd. I can't imagine why I'd do that. Are you sure?"

Furious, but not knowing what to do short of physical violence, Snape turned and left, slamming Moody's door behind him. _What was that all about? Why would he want me to come to his office just to dismiss me? And what was the thing on the wall that he was covering?_

By the time Snape got used to the fact that Moody was no longer hounding him, the second task of the Triwizard Tournament was on them. The morning of February 24, Snape stood on the hill looking down as the spectator stands were set up on the far side of the lake. He had absolutely no interest in the competition whatsoever.

What he did realize, had realized for several days, was that he hadn't done a thorough inventory of his office since before the last break-in. He didn't even know what Moody had taken. _That's what happens when you let yourself be intimidated and manipulated by someone like Moody. And if Dumbledore had asked, you wouldn't have had an answer for him._

Almost the whole school was now in the stands., the champions of the three schools were being briefed, and Snape left the cliff top to go back into the castle. At which point, he was nearly knocked down by a panicky Harry Potter, who shot out of the door of the castle and pelted downhill at full speed. The boy hadn't even noticed Snape.

_Why is he late? You'd think he didn't care._ Snape reentered the castle and went directly to his office in the dungeon.

_Boomslang skin and gillyweed? Who would possibly want both Boomslang skin and gillyweed? The Boomslang could be for more Polyjuice potion, and tie into the robbery at the beginning of the term. But gillyweed?_ Then Snape made the connection and could have slapped himself for being so obtuse. _The task today! It's underwater. One of the champions stole the gillyweed. Three guesses who!_

Snape settled himself to think it through. _Potter was out the night that someone was in my office. And he was also on the staircase. But why didn't he just continue up to Gryffindor Tower? Why stop there? Filch wouldn't have known. I wouldn't have known. He probably wanted the egg back. But why have the egg with him to begin with?_

Then a thought occurred that almost made Snape laugh. _What if high and mighty Potter got his foot stuck in the step that only catches first years? Made him drop his egg… Probably not, though it's a sweet thought. Still doesn't explain why he had the egg with him, though._

_Or why Moody didn't come out right away. He should've been there before me, maybe before Filch. Perhaps he knew Potter was going after the gillyweed and wanted to stay clear in case of trouble. Does that mean Potter stole the Boomslang skin for Moody? Or is Potter planning his own little transformation?_

_One thing's for certain. Moody 'd never seen the map before. Otherwise he wouldn't have drawn attention to it. But Moody kept it. Kept it to use against me. That must've upset Potter. What does Moody have over Potter to get Potter to give in like that? Of course, with a fourteen-year-old it doesn't take much._

Noise in the corridor informed Snape that the competition was long over. He went out to mingle and hear what had happened. Potter, it seemed, had won and was now tied overall with Diggory. Good news for Hogwarts. What was far more interesting was that Potter'd been able to swim underwater because he managed to grow gills.

_Did he now? That part's confirmed. Potter took the gillyweed. Next Potions class I'm going to have to find a way to talk to Potter and put the fear of God into him. How to do that?_

As Potions master, Snape was required to keep certain things on hand. Things like Veritaserum. Dumbledore had never used it, but since it took a month to make, it had to be ready for use at any time. Snape filled a tiny vial with the clear liquid and carried it with him for the next several days.

Snape got his opportunity during the next class with the fourth year Slytherins and Gryffindors. That horrid busybody Rita Skeeter had written a scathing indictment of Granger in the latest copy of Witch Weekly, and Granger had the misfortune to be reading it after the lesson started. To make matters worse – though for Snape at that moment it was better – the three musketeers were discussing the article as well. In audible voices. Snape crept up on them.

"Fascinating though your social life undoubtedly is, Miss Granger, I must ask you not to discuss it in my class." The sight of all three of them, Granger, Potter, and Weasley, jumping at the sound of his quiet voice was rather gratifying to Snape.

"Ah… reading magazines under the table as well?" As he spoke it occurred to Snape that Potter, knowing nothing of legilimency or occlumency, would project thoughts much better if he were angry. "Oh, but of course… Potter has to keep up with his press cuttings…"

Now there is something about reading an article, any article, with a clinical tone lightly tinged with disbelief that renders that article highly amusing to the listeners and embarrassing to the subject. Snape picked up the magazine and started, "Harry Potter's Secret Heartache…" and watched the faces of the trio grow more flushed and emotional as he continued to the end. "How very touching."

Then Snape separated the three, taking advantage of the opportunity to place Potter next to his own desk, where he could talk to the boy more privately.

Snape walked back to his desk, and Potter followed. As he watched Potter unload his cauldron and then sit, sullenly pounding his scarab beetles, Snape was able to focus on the fact that he absolutely loathed the boy.

_You arrogant, puffed up little popularity hound. You don't care how many people you could injure in your desperate quest for fame and attention. You wouldn't confide in McGonagall, so instead of facing four adult wizards trained in combat, the weakened Dark Lord had to deal only with an eleven-year-old and was able to escape, and your friend Weasley's life was put in danger. Then, when you should have gone to Dumbledore with a suspicious enchanted object, you chose to play with it instead, and nearly got Miss Weasley and yourself killed. You walked starry-eyed into the trap of a killer and a werewolf because you chose to trust the judgment of a man who couldn't remember what phase of the moon it was. And now the hubris that brought you to tricking your way into a competition beyond your skills has got your sticky little fingers pawing through my office and my belongings._

The rest of the class had quieted down and was concentrating on the assignment, and Snape leaned forward, whispering so that only Potter could hear. "All this press attention seems to have inflated your already overlarge head, Potter. You might be laboring under the delusion that the entire wizarding world is impressed with you, but I don't care how many times your picture appears in the papers. To me, Potter, you are nothing but a nasty little boy who considers rules to be beneath him."

Potter pretended not to hear, but the scarab beetles he was so obstinately pounding had long since turned to powder. Snape continued. "So I give you fair warning, Potter – pint-sized celebrity or not – if I catch you breaking into my office one more time…"

Potter lashed out then. "I haven't been anywhere near your office!"

Snape and Potter sat, face to face and eye to eye. _If I were a better legilimens, I'd try to read him._ "Don't lie to me. Boomslang skin. Gillyweed. Both come from my private stores, and I know who stole them." The flicker of guilt in Potter's eyes was unmistakable. _Even if you didn't take the ingredients, you know who did, you sneaking little thief._

Then Potter lied outright. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"You were out of bed on the night my office was broken into! I know it, Potter! Now, Mad-Eye Moody might have joined your fan club, but I will not tolerate your behavior! One more nighttime stroll into my office, Potter, and you will pay!"

Snape brought out the little vial he'd filled earlier. "Do you know what this is, Potter? It is Veritaserum – a Truth Potion so powerful that three drops would have you spilling your innermost secrets for this entire class to hear. Now, the use of this potion is controlled by very strict Ministry guidelines. But unless you watch your step, you might just find that my hand slips right over your evening pumpkin juice. And then, Potter… then we'll find out whether you've been in my office or not."

Potter didn't respond. He couldn't look at Snape, but turned back to his class assignment and worked cutting up the second ingredient, ginger roots. The boy clearly had a lot to hide.

There was a knock on the door, and Snape called "Enter" automatically. The one who entered, to Snape's great annoyance, was Karkaroff. The man was twitching like a dog with fleas and talking through clenched teeth. _Right, Igor. Let's hide from the whole school the fact that you're nervous as a cat on a hot griddle._

"We need to talk," Karkaroff said.

It would never occur to this idiot that half of these students are children of Death Eaters. "I'll talk to you after my lesson, Karkaroff."

"I want to talk now, while you can't slip off, Severus. You've been avoiding me."

_And you have just illustrated why. Do you see Potter sitting right next to this desk?_ "After the lesson!"

But Karkaroff wouldn't leave. He hovered like a bat behind Snape's chair, a subject of intense curiosity for every student in the room. Snape wanted to hit the man. At last the class was over and the students filed out.

Rising and turning to face Karkaroff, Snape demanded, "What's so urgent?"

"This." And Karkaroff rolled up his sleeve to show Snape the mark on his arm. "Well? Do you see? It's never been this clear, never since…"

Snape was horrified. Here, in an open, unsecured classroom, Karkaroff was talking about the Dark Lord and uncovering the mark. "Put it away!" he snapped, and looked around to see who might be watching. That was when Snape saw that Potter was still in the room, huddled on the floor listening.

"But you must have noticed…"

"We can talk later, Karkaroff! Potter! What are you doing?"

Then Potter was talking about armadillo bile, and Karkaroff was stomping out of the room, and a furious Snape was trying to cope with the knowledge that Potter – arrogant, indiscreet, self-centered, undisciplined Potter – might now have something he could threaten Snape with.

The following Saturday was a Hogsmeade excursion, and this time Snape was on supervisory duty. Concerned about what Potter might guess after overhearing his conversation with Karkaroff, Snape planned to keep an eye on the boy. Potter, Weasley, and Granger left the castle together after lunch on a surprisingly warm day for the time of year, and they were carrying Potter's book bag filled with – Snape didn't know what it was filled with, but it filled him with curiosity.

He managed to keep an eye on the trio as far as Gladrags Wizardwear, which the three entered, then Snape was suddenly distracted by Karkaroff.

"We have to talk!" Karkaroff hissed.

"Are you following me? You know, the more you keep tagging after and accosting me in odd places, the more people are going to get the idea that you have a problem." Both were speaking quietly.

"You can't ignore this. You can't pretend it isn't happening. Look at your own mark. I swear it must be…"

"If you think I'm rolling up my sleeve in the center of Hogsmeade, you're a bigger idiot than I imagined. What makes you think I'm ignoring it or pretending anything? You decide for yourself, Igor, and I decide for me. If you're going to run, I can't help you. And I'm certainly not joining you."

"Severus, you can't…"

"Well, look who's here!" Moody's booming voice called from across the street. He walked over to Snape and Karkaroff, who were now silent, and lowered his voice. "Class reunion for the graduates of Death Eater secondary school? Aren't you being a bit obvious? Might as well hang up a sign as stand together in the middle of Hogsmeade."

"Not meaning to be rude or anything," replied Snape, "but I was just leaving. I need to step inside for a breath of fresher air." He walked back in the direction of the Hogwarts gate. After a moment, looking back, he saw Karkaroff leave Moody as well, and Moody went into the Three Broomsticks.

Snape returned as quickly as he could to the spot outside Gladrags, but the three students were gone. He didn't see them again until after four o'clock as they returned to Hogwarts. The book bag was now clearly empty.

The next morning after breakfast Snape went out onto the lawn. Glancing up by chance, he happened to see two owls leave the owlery together. They were carrying something heavy between them and flying in the direction of Hogsmeade. _I wonder what that's about._

Work increased as the Easter break approached and the spring term neared its end. Then they were in the summer term, and the year was flying quickly by. _Funny how the beginning of the year seems to move so slowly and the end so fast._ Snape was busy with his own preparations.

Images were now in place, most openly accessible, others carefully placed behind hidden doors, others buried down so deep that Snape himself had trouble pulling them out. He was getting quite proficient with the Patronus as well. He now controlled it sufficiently so that he didn't need to summon it independently. Dumbledore showed him how to conjure it nonverbally as a messenger, complete with message, and the Patronus would shoot out of the end of his wand on its way, misty and distorted, but still recognizable to Snape as a fox. Finally, he'd figured out and practiced his story lines. He was fairly sure he had an answer for every question the Dark Lord might ask.

The only remaining problem was at Hogwarts, and the frustration of it was maddening. How had Moody caused the Dark Mark to burn? Why had he stolen ingredients for Polyjuice potion and who had he transformed himself into? Why had he summoned Snape into his office that day and then pretended he hadn't? Why was he now so vindictive when all those years before he'd seemed almost… friendly?"

It was nearing the end of May, and Snape still had no answers to these questions.


	46. Chapter 46 – Masks and Unmaskings

**If You Are Ready: Masks and Unmaskings**

_It was dark… dark… and the floor beneath his knees was cold. Hooded figures stood around him, hemming him in, menacing… Red eyes bored into his own, dead eyes, eyes that steal your soul._

"_Read him!" the red eyes cried, and Moody stepped forward, grinning lasciviously. The blue enchanted eye began to rotate like a drill. "You be sure to tell me if you ever decide to retire. The guest room's been ready for some time," the eye sneered at him as it drilled into his brain. Then the eye grinned and bared its teeth. He looked to the Dark Lord for help, but the Dark Lord was aging, growing a beard, becoming Dumbledore, who shrank and got younger and became Potter, and it was Potter drilling into his brain._

"_Tea?" Potter said, and handed him a cup, but Bella held the cup, and they were sitting in a comfortable room with soft chairs and a fire._

_An angry young man with blond hair and freckles sat opposite him. "Whoever is giving them information should be punished. Whoever tries to leave… punished. Whoever isn't punished… punished." The young man leered at him. "I thought I might interest you in that vacation I'm always on about. Right now it's a bargain."_

_He looked at his tea, which was a gray-colored sludge. "I can't drink this," he said._

"_Of course you can, dear," said Bella, "we got it from your office. You can be Potter."_

"_I don't want to be Potter. I want to be me."_

"_Don't be silly. Everyone knows you have to be Potter."_

_They gave him a huge water skin full of the gray sludge, and he had to drag it around with him, drinking from it all the time to stay Potter. Moody held the neck of the skin to his mouth, cackling "You never know. You never know. Look for me in the gloamin'"_

_Then he was looking – in a mirror. Potter's face looked back at him. "Mirror, Mirror on the wall, who does the Dark Lord fear most of all?" Potter's face began to narrow, and hair to grow, and he was looking at himself in the mirror. The Dark Lord watched him from behind, saying, "He will be killed, of course."_

xxxxxxxxxx

Snape's eyes opened wide in the darkness. Killed… of course. He listened for sounds of them coming for him, hearing nothing but silence. Slowly he remembered. _I'm in bed. In my own room. It was a dream._

It was about four o'clock. Unable to go back to sleep, Snape got up and fixed a cup of tea, then sat in his office by the fire. It wasn't a real fire, since it was getting too warm during the day to have one, but staring into flames, even magical ones, now helped Snape think. He was trying to recall the ephemeral, wispy strands of the dream that had wakened him.

_Potter was in it. I had to be Potter by drinking…_ Pieces began to click into place. _What if all my problems with Moody are caused by the fact that it isn't Moody? Maybe he doesn't need Polyjuice potion to turn into someone else. Maybe he needs it to stay Moody! Moody was attacked the night before he was supposed to come here. What if the attack was successful?_

Of course, that raised two more problems. Where was the real Moody, and who was impersonating him? _Who's been missing since before Christmas? Who went missing just before someone started stealing boomslang skin and bicorn horn from me? Bartemius Crouch._ Except that Crouch and Moody had both been at the ceremony welcoming Beauxbatons and Durmstrang, and choosing the champions. _Okay, so there are holes in the theory._

Still, it explained so much. Crouch had always been a fanatic hunter of Death Eaters. He'd sent many to Azkaban without trial including, now that Snape thought about it, Sirius Black. He'd gotten Karkaroff, but Karkaroff managed to be released shortly after. He'd tried to get Snape, but Dumbledore had stood in his way. He did get his own son, who died in Azkaban, and he'd been more than a little disturbed ever since.

_What if the Death Eater demonstration at the Quidditch World Cup pushed him too far? Didn't Percy Weasley say at the Yule Ball that he hadn't been right since then? What if he finally went off the deep end, knowing the Dark Lord is getting stronger, and Karkaroff and I would be in the same place at the same time? That would mean 'Moody's' threats aren't idle – he really is after us._

It still left the problem of Crouch and Moody being in the Great Hall together for the Goblet of Fire's decision, and later in November for the first task. Crouch and Moody had both been there for the first task. _But if Crouch can become Moody, so can someone else. Maybe someone else became 'Moody' at the beginning, and Crouch took over later. Which means instead of accounting for the actions of one crazy person, I have to explain two. More holes – can this theory really fly?_

_I need to talk to Dumbledore._

Dumbledore was not at breakfast, and the reason was soon apparent. Preparations were going forward for the third and final task of the Triwizard Tournament. Ludo Bagman was in and out between Hogwarts and the Ministry of Magic, and he seemed always to be closeted with Dumbledore during those times when Snape didn't have classes to teach. As the day wore on, Snape became more and more frustrated.

One of the problems was that he couldn't pin down his new theory. At times it seemed so clear and obvious that he couldn't imagine why he hadn't thought of it before. At other times he could see nothing but the holes and contradictions, and started to wonder if he should even mention it to Dumbledore. Snape was becoming so obsessed with the idea that Moody was Bartemius Crouch that he was having trouble concentrating on his classes.

Moody wasn't at breakfast, and Snape wondered if he was with Dumbledore and Bagman. He did show up just before lunch, and Snape on a sudden whim greeted him, "Top o' the morning to you, Moody me boy."

"You're cheerful today."

"It's a nice day."

"I've seen worse and will again. So will you."

"Pleasant thought. It just cheers a body up to talk to you."

Moody stared at Snape thoughtfully. "Insanity doesn't keep you out of Azkaban."

"Nor does innocence I understand. Have a nice lunch."

"You're not staying?"

"Not this time. But I'll be looking for you in the gloamin'."

Moody didn't reply. Shaking his head, he stumped off toward the high table.

_Now, does that mean that he just doesn't remember, or that he doesn't want to banter, or that he's not the same person I had that conversation with back in August? Would Moody forget calling me 'boyo?'_ There was no definitive answer to that question

After supper, Bagman disappeared with a work crew from the Ministry in the direction of the Quidditch field. They were preparing something there for the Tournament. At that point, Snape started trying to see Dumbledore in earnest. He had no success whatsoever, since he kept running into Moody.

Going from the Great Hall upstairs, Snape was hailed from behind. "Aren't you going in the wrong direction?" Moody was grinning on the steps below him.

"I depends on where I'm going," Snape replied, and on the first floor turned towards the hospital wing. Once Moody continued upstairs to his office, Snape took another staircase, only to be met at the landing.

"We do seem to be running into each other tonight," Moody chuckled.

"Interesting coincidence," Snape answered.

Snape returned downstairs to think for a while then, around nine o'clock, started back up to the headmaster's tower. Moody wasn't waiting for him. _Odd for him to give up so easily. Unless he was just trying to irritate me, or has something more important to do._

The interview with Dumbledore didn't go well.

"I understand your concern, Severus, but really the only evidence you have is a dream, and the fact that a retired auror doesn't remember snippets of a casual conversation you had ten months ago. It is hardly a case. And since both Moody and Crouch were here together twice, you need to account for that. If you cannot, I can hardly accuse anyone based on what you have so far."

"But Headmaster, what about the missing ingredients? What about his sudden change in behavior towards me?"

"All explainable in less… unusual ways."

"What about his ability to control the dark mark?"

"I will admit that is disturbing, but might be explained in some other fashion. Now if you will excuse me, I am busy with another matter."

Exasperated and deeply disappointed, Snape went to the door. As his hand touched the latch, he turned back to Dumbledore. Dumbledore stood in front of a black cabinet. Snape glimpsed the edge of what looked like a shallow stone basin, then left the office.

At the foot of the staircase, the hidden door slid open just in time to let Snape see Potter running hard in the other direction.

"Potter!" he shouted, and the boy skidded to a halt, then face him. "What are you doing here, Potter?"

Potter came running back. "I need to see Professor Dumbledore! It's Mr. Crouch… he's just turned up… he's in the forest… he's asking…"

_How does he know about Crouch? Can he…?_ "What's is this rubbish? What are you talking about?"

"Mr. Crouch! From the Ministry! He's ill or something – he's in the forest, he wants to see Dumbledore!"

The information, if true, shattered Snape's own theory. If Crouch were in the forest, ill, looking for Dumbledore, then he couldn't be Moody. Snape suddenly wanted the chance to check this before Dumbledore found out.

"The headmaster is busy, Potter."

Potter's voice rose to a scream, "I've got to tell Dumbledore!"

"Didn't you hear me, Potter?"

The boy was beside himself. "Look, Crouch isn't right… he's… he's out of his mind… he says he wants to warn…"

Behind Snape the door to the hidden staircase slid open , and Dumbledore stood watching the two. "Is there a problem?" he asked.

Potter immediately blurted out his story, and Dumbledore exchanged a quick, sharp glance with Snape. Snape looked down.

"Lead the way," Dumbledore told Potter, and the two were gone.

Snape was furious. Furious at Potter, furious at Dumbledore, furious at himself for being such a fool, and furious at fate for delivering Crouch to Hogwarts's doorstep at precisely this moment. Then, as he made his way down the staircases, Snape suddenly had another thought.

_Was that why Moody didn't follow me that last time? Maybe something went wrong with the Polyjuice potion and he turned back into Crouch. Maybe that's Moody and Crouch out there in the forest, half crazy._

Snape ran down the rest of the stairs and out onto the lawn. It was dark. There was no moon, and the stars were half obscured by clouds. Snape looked down from the top of the hill toward the forest. He had no idea where Potter and Dumbledore had gone. Then suddenly a streak of silver light left the trees and sped straight towards Hagrid's hut.

_They've found something. That was Dumbledore's patronus. Whatever it is, they need Hagrid's help._

Snape debated with himself a moment, then returned to the castle. It was too dark to see anything, and he couldn't go down. After their heated conversation earlier, he was sure Dumbledore would get the wrong impression if it appeared Snape was trying to interfere. _If he wants or needs me, he can send for me._

The next morning it was as if nothing had happened. Moody was at breakfast, Karkaroff and Madam Maxime were angry about something, and there was no sign of the mysterious Crouch. It was as if the previous night hadn't happened.

Snape was going toward his classroom after breakfast when Dumbledore came from behind and walked with him.

"I understand you had a conversation with Moody last night after I left with Potter."

Snape stopped to stare at Dumbledore, but Dumbledore took his elbow and steered him across the entrance hall toward the dungeon. "I take it that comes as a complete surprise to you."

"I didn't see Moody at all, and I certainly didn't speak to him."

"He met us down in the forest. Crouch had been there – both Potter and Krum saw him – but he has now vanished. Moody arrived very quickly after, and said you had told him about Crouch being in the forest. Now why would he say that if it was not true?"

"Headmaster, I have no idea."

"Thank you, Severus. All of the events of last night have given me quite a bit to think about."

Whether it was Dumbledore's doing, or mere coincidence, or nothing more than Snape's subjective perception, but the next few weeks went very smoothly and quietly. To begin with, of course, everyone was preparing for exams. Teachers were racing through the curriculum, students were studying frantically, and the whole school was like a string of racehorses in the stretch. _Interesting how frantic intensity can have a pacifying effect._

The second element contributing to calm was that Dumbledore seemed to have replaced Snape with Moody in the Triwizard Tournament. Snape was no longer called in on planning sessions, but Moody seemed to be spending large parts of his free time in Dumbledore's office.

Snape did not mind this in the least. Firstly, it gave him more time for his classes and the upcoming exams. Secondly, it was an indication that Dumbledore wanted to keep Moody on a close leash. The missing Crouch had not yet turned up, and Snape was pleased to see that Dumbledore was not going to let Moody prowl around on his own.

The third thing was quite unexpected. For reasons unknown to Snape, Potter decided to spend the last weeks virtually locked inside the castle and surrounded by friends who doubled as guards. The vast difference between this and his behavior the year before made Snape almost believe that the transition through puberty actually brought a minutely measurable increase in common sense. Almost.

All through June, the Quidditch field was changing. Hedges planted there at the end of May towered yards above the head by the time of the third challenge. Snape was at a loss to understand why the maze had to be so tall, unless it was meant to keep the spectators from seeing anything of the progress of the champions within.

_That's even more boring than a game of Quidditch with a good seeker. At least the suspense will last longer._

Hogwarts had been invaded by Ministry types over the Crouch business, and now, exams over and at the very end of the term, they were back for the third task of the Tournament. The families of the champions were invited to the school for the event. Snape was looking forward to meeting the Dursleys until he found out that the Weasleys had substituted for Potter's family instead. Though he did not know them well, he had considerable respect for any parents that had managed to survive Bill, Charlie, Fred, George, and Ron. Still, he wasn't sure they would have anything in common for the conducting of a conversation.

The dinner at the start of the third task was a gala banquet. Many of the teachers gave up their seats at the high table to accommodate dignitaries and families, and Snape was one of them. Sitting at Slytherin's table, it took Snape a half hour to realize that Moody was not in the hall.

Snape looked around, started eating, lost track, looked again a half hour later, and Moody was there at the Gryffindor table as if he'd been there all evening. _When did he come in? I should have brickbats dropped on my head for a month of Sundays for not noticing!_

xxxxxxxxxx

Potter and Diggory entered the maze. Then Krum, and then Delacour. The suspense was… boring. Not for everyone, of course. Family members who watched the seconds tick endlessly by on a clock, while they were reduced to staring at an overgrown hedge, might nonetheless feel the tension, but Snape sincerely wished he were elsewhere. He rather thought a large number of the spectators agreed. Minutes grew into a quarter of an hour with no change.

Then there were muffled shrieks, the Beauxbatons girl crying out, and sparks in the air. Wizards went into the maze to assist her. A little later, another voice that sounded like Diggory, but the wizards that followed the sparks brought out Krum instead. And then for a long while there was nothing.

Suddenly, with the terrible fury of a bolt of lightning, Snape was summoned! From ease to searing pain, from calm to mind-numbing panic, was but an instant of time. The mark on his arm flamed with the intensity of volcanic lava. _I must go! I must go! I must go to the Dark Lord… I must surrender myself to him… I must leave… now… NOW!_

The knowledge of his other duties stopped Snape and, pain notwithstanding, he hunkered down to wait. A glance at Karkaroff across the stands told him instantly that Igor had felt the beckoning, too. _Run, Igor! Run now! Safety comes only with a strong heart and a good story. You have neither. I hope to God I have at least one of the two. I wish you all the luck I can spare._

It was then, and only then, that the drama of the maze touched Snape. For it was then that he realized how the maze was the center of everything. It was then that he realized why Potter's name had been drawn from the Goblet of Fire. _The Dark Lord is summoning Potter – has summoned Potter – Potter is with the Dark Lord and we are all, all of us, in danger._

Snape staggered to his feet in the face of the blinding pain and tried to find Dumbledore.

Around Snape the eager spectators were still waiting for the outcome of the competition, and few even noticed him as he groped his way past them. Dumbledore knew, however, that something was wrong. He was already moving in Snape's direction.

"What has happened?" he whispered urgently as he helped support Snape toward the judging box.

"He has… summoned… us… I… have to… go…"

"Can you tell me where?"

"South… a ways, but… not too far… probably… Yorkshire…"

"Try to locate the spot. It is important. Lives are at stake."

Snape nodded and allowed Dumbledore to guide him to a seat. The pain and urgency of the mark was beginning to abate, and fear was taking its place. _I didn't answer the summons. Even if he didn't suspect me before, he will now._

Dumbledore left to consult with Ludo Bagman and Cornelius Fudge, the Minister of Magic. Snape was trying to focus his thoughts and pinpoint the location he might apparate to if he responded to the summons. Everything else was a surreal background of normalcy, as if two separate worlds were cohabiting the same space.

Then, after what seemed an eternity, people began to scream and shout. Potter had suddenly appeared at the edge of the maze, though the circumstances of his arrival were hidden from Snape. There was an electric pause, and then the tone of the screams changed from excitement to fear. Something was wrong. Something was terribly wrong.

Snape struggled to his feet again and moved toward the front of the stands. People pushed forward to surround Potter. Through the pandemonium it slowly began to dawn on Snape that Cedric Diggory was dead, that somehow both Potter and Diggory had been transported to the Dark Lord, and that Potter had returned alive, but Diggory was dead.

Trying to cope with the magnitude of the thought, that a Hogwarts student had died, Snape sat down on the bleachers. His arm was throbbing and his head spinning. A form hovered over him.

"Are you all right?" McGonagall asked.

"I've been better. What's happening?"

"Albus is with Cedric's parents."

"Where's Potter?"

"Don't worry. He's in good hands. Alastor's taken him up to the castle."

It was the shot of pure adrenaline he needed. Snape rose quickly, seizing McGonagall's arm. "Get Dumbledore. Tell him Moody has Potter. He'll understand. I'm starting up to the castle now."

"But Severus…"

"Move, woman!" An instant of shock on McGonagall's face, then she spun around to search for Dumbledore while Snape pushed his way through the crowd toward Hogwarts hill.

Fighting his way upward through gradually diminishing waves of dizziness, Snape reached the castle just as Dumbledore and McGonagall caught up to him. Dumbledore now in the lead, the three raced up the stairs to the second floor, to Moody's office. At Dumbledore's command, the door crashed open, and Dumbledore's cry of _"Stupefy!"_ sent Moody hurtling against the far wall to slump to the floor, unmoving. Snape took in the picture of Potter sitting in a chair and Moody lying on the floor, but his attention was immediately drawn to something else.

There on the wall was the mirror from his dream. Only it wasn't a mirror, it was a Foe-Glass. _He's known all along that I was his enemy. He called me to his office that day to confirm it. But I work for Dumbledore. Why would the Foe-Glass think me the enemy of either Alastor Moody or Bartemius Crouch?_

McGonagall was trying to get Potter to his feet to go to the hospital wing, but Dumbledore wouldn't allow it. "…he needs to understand… He needs to know who has put him through the ordeal he has suffered tonight, and why. This is not Alastor Moody…"

Turning to Snape and McGonagall, Dumbledore gave each a task. McGonagall was to fetch a dog from Hagrid's hut, Snape to bring Veritaserum and a house-elf. Neither questioned the orders. They were off at once down the stairs.

In his office, Snape quickly seized the small bottle of Veritaserum. Dumbledore would decide how much to use. Then he headed out of the dungeon and into the passage leading to the kitchens. The house-elves were bustling around, cleaning up the last of the dinner and beginning the preparations for breakfast.

Snape paused, then said to the crew in general, "The headmaster would like to speak to an elf named Winky."

The disgusted looks told him that Winky was not in good favor with the rest. After some consultation and with considerable effort, they pushed forward a slovenly, untidy elf who appeared to be… tipsy? Snape was shocked, but decided Dumbledore must know what he was doing. "Come with me," he said to the unsteady elf. "You're not in any trouble, but the headmaster needs you."

They went more slowly than Snape would have wished as she followed him up the stairs to the second floor. McGonagall was coming down from Dumbledore's office at the same time. Snape suddenly remembered McGonagall's assignment. _She went to get a dog, a 'black' dog? _Connections formed in his brain, but their import eluded him.

The dog was forgotten when he entered the office. On the floor where Moody should have been was a much younger man with blond hair and freckles. Also from the dream. And though fourteen years had passed since Snape last saw him, he recognized him immediately. "Crouch?" he gasped, stopping dead in the doorway. "Barty Crouch?"

"Good heavens," was all McGonagall could say, but the elf darted forward at once.

"Master Barty, Master Barty, what is you doing here! You is killed him! You is killed him! You is killed Master's son!"

"He is simply stunned, Winky. Step aside please. Severus, you have the potion?"

As Snape handed Dumbledore the bottle, their eyes met for an instant. _He has been reporting on me._ Dumbledore's voice in his head replied, _I fear it may be so._ Then Dumbledore gave Crouch the Veritaserum and said, _"Ennervate."_

And so the story came out. How Mr. and Mrs. Crouch had saved their son from Azkaban to condemn him to a prison of another kind. How Bertha Jorkins had learned the family secret and revealed it to the Dark Lord. How Barty had conjured the Dark Mark at the Quidditch World Cup, and how he'd been rescued by the Dark Lord and Wormtail. How he'd taken Moody's place to guide Potter through the Triwizard Tournament, and how he'd killed his own father when Bartemius Crouch escaped from the Dark Lord.

When the tale was told, Dumbledore sent Snape out to find Cornelius Fudge and bring him up to hear Barty Crouch's confession. McGonagall stood guard over Crouch while Dumbledore took Potter up to his office.

It took little time to find Fudge, but considerably more to attract his attention. Snape at first merely told the Minister that Professor Dumbledore wished to see him in the castle.

"A little busy now, Professor. We have to keep order down here first."

"With all due respect, Minister, the matter is rather urgent."

Fudge pulled Snape to one side. "Give me the gist of it. What's bothering Dumbledore?"

"He's discovered that You-Know-Who has had an agent at Hogwarts. The man is in custody now, and the headmaster would like you to interview him."

Fudge looked shocked, then worried. "An agent of You-Know-Who? Where is he?"

"The Defense against Dark Arts office."

"Are you sure it's safe to go up there?"

"Perfectly, sir. The man is more than adequately restrained."

"I shall be the judge of my own safety. Go wait for me on the hill. I'll get a guard and join you."

Snape did as he was told. Fudge took somewhat longer than he expected, but when the Minister approached, Snape understood why. The deadly, soul-freezing cold of a dementor preceded the Minister, and Snape shrank from it as one already familiar with a dementor's touch must.

"Minister, the headmaster does not wish dementors inside the castle. He doesn't want them on the grounds."

"My personal safety requires the presence of a guard. I'm sure Dumbledore will see that. If I remember, the Dark Arts office is on the second floor."

Snape tried to stop Fudge, but he was unable to face the dementor. Instead he followed the Minister and his guard, still insisting that the dementor should not be in the building. When they reached the office, Fudge didn't even knock. He raised the latch and walked in to confront a surprised McGonagall.

The dementor moved fastest. At the first sniff of Barty Crouch, the thing sped across the room and attached itself to him. An instant later it had sucked out his soul, leaving a living but useless shell of a man sitting on the office floor.

McGonagall exploded. "How dare you allow that… thing into Hogwarts!" she screamed. "You have no right to come in here with it! You've ruined everything! Have you any idea how much damage you've done!" She wheeled on Snape. "And you! You couldn't stop him from bringing it into the castle? You didn't have the nerve to stand up to him? What use are you, anyway!"

Snape couldn't respond, but Fudge tried to. "Now Minerva, you know I have no intention of getting in Dumbledore's way…"

"You do a fine job of it for someone with good intentions! Get that thing out of here!"

Fudge hurriedly left the office, went with the dementor downstairs, and returned shortly thereafter, having sent it out of the grounds. The furious McGonagall continued berating Snape. "Why Dumbledore thinks he can depend on you is beyond me. I thought you had more backbone than that."

"It was a dementor, Minerva. You don't understand."

McGonagall paused in her tirade. "I'd forgotten. One of them went for you last year didn't it? Well, Dumbledore is going to hear about Fudge. He must be in the hospital. We're going down there now."

On their way down to the first floor they met Fudge coming up from the entrance hall. "Out of my way, you poor excuse for a…"

"Please try to calm down, Minerva."

With McGonagall in the lead, and Snape bringing up the rear, they headed for the hospital wing. By the time they got there, though, Fudge had moved ahead.

"I agree it was regrettable, but all the same, Minerva…" he said.

"You should never have brought it inside the castle! When Dumbledore finds out…!"

Then they were in the hospital wing, facing an irate Molly Weasley with members of her family around Potter's bed. "Where's Dumbledore?" Fudge demanded.

As Mrs. Weasley was protesting, Dumbledore entered behind them. At his question, McGonagall tried to explain, but she was too upset to be fully coherent.

"When we told Mr. Fudge…" and Snape quietly described what had happened, punctuated by McGonagall's furious additions and Fudge's protests.

"By all accounts he is no loss!"

"But he cannot now give testimony, Cornelius"

And there began a scene that to Snape seemed like something out of a bad dream, for Dumbledore tried calmly to explain that the events of the evening had been arranged by a Dark Lord now fully returned to his body, while Fudge was determined not to believe that it was anything except the hysterical ravings of a delusional boy. Eventually Potter joined in and shouted at the Minister, "I saw the Death Eaters! I can give you their names! Lucius Malfoy…!"

Snape started. _Lucius was there? Who else do I have to face?_ He noticed Potter glanced at him strangely and turned back to Fudge. Potter kept blurting out names. "Macnair! Avery… Nott… Crabbe… Goyle…" It was useful information.

And still Fudge refused to accept, refused to consider making changes to adjust to the new, dangerous situation, refused to believe there was any danger at all. Clearly Dumbledore and Fudge were at a parting of their ways. Fudge had to be convinced, and Snape did something he'd been trying to avoid for fifteen years. He pulled back the sleeve of his robe, knowing that every person in the room would now share his secret, and held his arm, with its hideous skull and serpent tattoo, in front of Fudge's face.

"There. There. The Dark Mark. It's not as clear as it was an hour or so ago, when it burned black, but you can still see it. Every Death Eater had the sign burned into him by the Dark Lord. It was a means of distinguishing one another, and his means of summoning us to him… Why do you think Karkaroff fled tonight? We both felt the Mark burn. We both knew he had returned…"

It was too much for Fudge. "I don't know what you and your staff are playing at… I will be in touch tomorrow…" and he left Potter's winnings and strode from the room.

As Fudge disappeared from sight, Snape knew that others in the room were now staring at him. McGonagall and Pomfrey, Molly, Bill and Ron Weasley, Granger, Potter. All those years of living a relatively normal life were gone. Even if the Dark Lord were destroyed, nothing would ever be the same.

Dumbledore lost no time. Bill Weasley was sent at once to his father in the Ministry of Magic to try to organize opposition to the Dark Lord despite the attitude of Cornelius Fudge. McGonagall was sent to bring both Hagrid and Madame Maxime to Dumbledore's office. Madame Pomfrey was dispatched to the Dark Arts office to look after the house-elf Winky. When they had left, Dumbledore checked the door to be sure the remaining people were not disturbed. These were himself, Snape, Molly Weasley, Potter, Ron Weasley, and Granger.

"Now," said Dumbledore, "it is time for two of our number to recognize each other for what they are. Sirius… if you could resume your usual form."

Snape turned, horrified, in the direction Dumbledore was looking. A great black dog stood in the corner, a dog who suddenly was Sirius Black. Molly screamed and was silenced by her son. Snape could only stare at the man in disbelief.

_So now even Sirius Black has proof that I was a Death Eater. Why did Dumbledore bring him here? Why, with everything else there is to endure, do I have to endure this, too?_ "Him! What is he doing here?" The words nearly choked him. It was clear that Sirius felt no love either.

"He is here at my invitation, as are you, Severus. I trust you both. It is time for you to lay aside your old differences and trust each other."

_Trust him? Trust the man that was willing – eager – to throw me to a werewolf? Trust the man that lured me into a trap so he could beat me senseless? Trust the man that betrayed Lily?_ A little voice in the back of his head was whispering 'Wormtail, Wormtail' but for the moment he wasn't paying attention. Snape made no movement, but eyed Black as if he were expecting the treachery of a dagger at any moment. Black's face showed a similar expression.

Dumbledore broke up the mutual loathing society. "I will settle, in the short term, for a lack of open hostility. You will shake hands. You are on the same side now. Time is short, and unless the few of us who know the truth stand united, there is no hope for any of us."

It was an order. Warily, like two duelists who suspect a trap, Snape and Black approached each other . They never broke eye contact as they touched hands briefly – one could hardly call it a shake. Snape was shut down against legilimency as if it were, in fact, a duel. _Don't look at his hands, look at his eyes. You'll see his attack there before his hands can move._ It seemed Black was thinking the same.

Dumbledore was quick to step between them. "That will do to be going on with. Now I have work for each of you. Fudge's attitude, though not unexpected, changes everything. Sirius, I need you to set off at once. You are to alert Remus Lupin… – the old crowd. Lie low at Lupin's…"

"You'll see me very soon, Harry," Black said, and then he was a dog again, and gone.

Dumbledore turned to Snape, and now there was concern in his eyes. They had reached the point toward which they'd been planning for so long, but now Dumbledore could only wait and hope. For what came next, he was unable to help. Snape could feel his apprehension, the worry that looked out at him from the usually calm blue eyes.

"Severus, you know what I must ask you to do. If you are ready… if you are prepared…"

The intervening years were gone. Snape had gone once before into the secret war, where no one watched your back, and you were always alone. Then he'd thought of himself as a knight errant, serving his lady, pure and untouchable. The lady was gone, but her murderer lived again. Now it was revenge he sought, revenge for the lady he would have died to save, and suddenly Snape felt alive again, alive in the face of death in a way he could never be alive anywhere else.

"I am," he said.

"Then good luck," said Dumbledore, and Snape swept wordlessly from the room;


	47. Chapter 47 – Into the Fire

**If You Are Ready: Into the Fire**

Snape hurried down to his dungeon office to change from Hogwarts robes into black Victorian trousers and frock coat, exactly what he had worn during his duel with Lockhart. Then, leaving the school, he was startled by the glittering stars. The last time he'd noticed the sky had been a month ago, on a moonless night at the end of May. Now it was a moonless night at the end of June, and Snape took one last moment of peace before the storm.

Walking to the edge of the cliff, he looked down at the lake, as studded with stars as the sky it reflected. He remembered then the two children, huddled over the dials and tripod of a telescope, red hair and black hair mingled together like the red and black of his patronus fox.

_Where I am going, Lily, I dare not even think of you. So I will think of you now. Just for a moment. For the night will be a long one, and it is beyond my power to see if there will be a dawn. But whether this night is the end, or a new beginning, it is yours. I do this for you._

Then he turned, and with resolute steps walked down the hill to the Hogsmeade gate. It was open for him. Snape stepped through, closed down the last of the doors, focused on the summons, and disapparated.

xxxxxxxxxx

Snape apparated into a dark and overgrown graveyard, one clearly intended for the private use of a single family and their dependents. He was facing a yew tree, and could make out the spectral silhouette of a small church just beyond. He could see nothing else, and dared not conjure a light.

Turning slowly, Snape realized he was standing not far from a small hill whose darker bulk blocked the stars. On the hillside near the summit rose a house. Snape could see the faintest of glimmers through the drawn drapes. _If the Dark Lord is still anywhere near, it will be in that house._

Inching his way forward in the darkness, moving slowly and carefully lest he catch his foot on a hummock and fall, Snape approached the hill, then began to climb it. _Pity I can't see. There ought to be a drive leading up to the house. Maybe better I can't; gravel can be so noisy._

There were two main scenarios at this moment, assuming the Dark Lord was in the house. The first was that he be allowed to enter, then apprehended and brought before the Dark Lord. The second was that the Death Eaters be sent to intercept him outside the house, then bring him to the Dark Lord. Snape had no illusions about being able to sneak in.

The answer came in a series of explosive pops on either side of him well before he'd gotten to the mansion. Snape stopped immediately and raised his hands, palms outward, to shoulder height. He stood unmoving as a circle of Death Eaters, robed in white and masked in hoods, apparated in a circle around him. _Now it begins._

They crowded him, pushing ungently, and one reached into Snape's inner coat pocket to extract his wand. Snape didn't fight back, nor did he struggle when another stepped behind him and grasped his arms, twisting them down and behind him, where his wrists were bound with magical cords.

A new Death Eater stepped in and wrapped cords around his elbows, wrenching them together. Snape gasped at the pressure this put on his shoulder sockets, but he didn't have to endure this pain long, for a voice, a voice Snape recognized as Lucius Malfoy's spoke up.

"Leave it. You go beyond your commission."

A familiar but unrecognized voice replied, "Who cares? He's dead meat anyway. Why not have a little fun?"

"Never presume that you know what the Dark Lord wants. This one's not condemned yet."

"As good as… The Dark Lord won't object to our having some fun."

"Not if we punish where the Dark Lord intends to preserve. You have a lot to learn."

In the end they bound his wrists only, and dragged Snape, stumbling, the rest of the way up the hill.

He was forced into the house and up a staircase, then down a hall to a sitting room.

There the Dark Lord sat, in appearance almost as he had been when he'd vanished the first time. "Look who has joined us. Dumbledore's little lapdog. You would not come when we called, but you will come at your own will. Why do you do this – to show how you are superior, in control? We will show that you are not."

Snape was pushed into the center of a circle that focused on the Dark Lord, and forced to his knees. He was thinking very fast. "No, Lord. I come now because I could not come before, but I come always at your bidding, never at my own or another's"

"We shall see," whispered the Dark Lord, "We shall see how well you obey us."

And the world exploded into pain.

When reason returned, Snape was lying on the floor on his side, and knew he'd been twisting and kicking with the pain. Screaming perhaps, too, but that he couldn't tell for sure. His shoulders ached abominably. A pair of Death Eaters entered the circle and pulled him back onto his knees facing the Dark Lord. The great red eyes didn't try to engage his own, and Snape rested for a moment, his breath coming in short, sharp gasps.

The Dark Lord was speaking. "Our servant at Hogwarts has told us of you, of the long years of your servitude to Dumbledore, starting even before our departure, of your ambition and your treason. But most of all he has told us of your duplicity and cunning. Hear my Death Eaters! how this false traitor plots to deceive us. While the rest of you were lying low under the nearest rock you could find, this apostate, this defector, was studying how to dupe and mislead us. He intends to control us by controlling the information we receive, and he who was once open and trusting as a child with his father is now a false dissembler. For he has been practicing and perfecting the lying art of Occlumency."

A murmur ran through the circle of Death Eaters, and Snape felt cold grip his heart. Barty Crouch had made the occlumency itself the threat to the Dark Lord, and now Snape had to think fast. He couldn't deny that he was an occlumens – so bald-faced a lie would only earn the Dark Lord's wrath – but perhaps he could minimize its effectiveness or claim it was involuntary. _Don't talk. Don't say anything. Be patient. Wait for permission to speak._

The Dark Lord leaned nearer. "Is it true that you hide your thoughts from Dumbledore?"

"Yes," Snape whispered, and waited.

"Is it true that you hid your thoughts from our servant?"

"Yes." Pain was gathering in a knot around Snape's stomach.

"If you had known he was our servant, would you have hidden your thoughts from him?"

"I don't know." The pain receded.

"Why do you not know?"

"I can't control it. It just happens."

"When did this start?"

"When I took up my assignment at Hogwarts. There were things I feared Dumbledore would see. But when he read me, they were covered up. He didn't know they were there. I don't know how I did it."

"And when he is not reading you, do you uncover them?"

Snape saw the trap. "I can't uncover them. I don't know how."

"If you have something you do not want us to see, do you cover it?"

Snape paused as if to search his mind. The pain in his shoulders was becoming excruciating, and he had no feeling in his hands. "The only things that are covered, are covered against Dumbledore."

"Show them to me."

Another trap. "I can't. I don't know how."

"We ourself shall find them. Macnair."

The Death Eater stepped behind the kneeling Snape and took his head, forcing it back so that he couldn't avoid the Dark Lord's eyes. The red eyes that now bored into his brain. The probe was like a claw, ripping through the tapestry of Snape's thoughts, and he tried to close his own eyes. The Dark Lord leaned forward and gripped Snape's face, and with his thumbs pried the lids open.

"Clean, clean, open and innocent. Are we weak like Dumbledore that we cannot see these covered places?" Then there was a pause and a gleam of triumph. "Ah, here is one, so cleverly hidden even we might have missed it. Open it. Uncover it for us."

The trap yawned wide. "I can't. I don't know how."

With a curse like a howl, the Dark Lord threw Snape from him, rose in menace and, wand pointed at his helpless prisoner, cried, "Crucio!"

The sea of pain washed over and through Snape, and he knew he was screaming and crying at the same time. The Dark Lord's voice penetrated the pain and said, "Uncover the thoughts and show them to us!"

"I don't know how!" Snape sobbed.

The pain stopped. The Dark Lord was seated again, calm again. "Then what you cannot give, we will take."

This time three Death Eaters stepped forward, one on either side of Snape to grasp his arms and hold him upright and steady, with Macnair again behind. _This can't be too easy. If it's too easy, he'll suspect._ The blood-red gaze pierced Snape's mind and once more clawed its way down to the hidden, covered thoughts.

The Dark Lord spoke, and his words were soft, like a caress, "From a prisoner we rend what we want, but a servant should obey. Do you agree that we do this? Do you endure willingly what we must do?"

"I do," Snape replied. He felt the tendrils of the Dark Lords mind pry and probe at the locked door, testing it, analyzing it.

"It should not take much, not if properly applied. Macnair – start at the bottom of the backbone and move up quickly. On my word. Now!"

An agonizing spasm gripped the small of Snape's back and shot like a bolt of fire up his spine, to hurl itself against the base of his skull and burst inside his brain. At the same time, the Dark Lord's tendrils wrenched at the closed door so that with force before and pressure behind, it shattered, strewing forth a torrent of images: Granger with her enormous teeth, Longbottom cringing over a cauldron, Potter and Weasley screaming curses, and after them the images of fifteen years of students he'd shouted at and insulted, Fred and George Weasley prominent among them.

As the Dark Lord sifted through these thoughts, Snape's body jerked and twisted against the pain of Macnair's attack and the violation of his mind, but the two Death Eaters held him steady. After a while his struggles quieted.

The Dark Lord was almost chuckling. "We see why you did not wish Dumbledore to see this. Who is the boy with the cauldron?"

"Longbottom," Snape gasped.

"The auror's boy. Good. Let us see what else we can find."

Snape whimpered, but allowed the penetration of his brain without resistance. Another locked door was found, and another bolt of fire slammed into Snape's skull. Images of discord and dissension, of Dumbledore's angry face, of Igor Karkaroff and his mark poured forth through the breach.

The Dark Lord found a third door, and by this time Snape felt as if he would faint from the pain, yet still he managed to hold on, and release the thoughts at precisely the right moment. At the fourth door, he appeared to collapse, "Lord, no, please… I can't do this anymore. Please, help me…" but the Dark Lord was implacable, and pain shattered the last of his defenses, and he fainted.

It seemed hours later that Snape woke, but from the positions where the others were standing, it was more likely only a few minutes. He was still lying in the circle, but the bonds that tied his hands had been removed. Snape managed to pull himself to his hands and knees.

"Bring him to us," the Dark Lord ordered, and the two Death Eaters caught him by the arms and dragged him to face the Dark Lord again.

The search of Snape's brain was more thorough this time, an intrusion into every corner and crevice, a penetration of his very soul. When it was over, Snape was drained and exhausted, but the Dark Lord seemed pleased.

"Greet your newly-returned brother," he said to the others, "for he has proven himself our loyal servant, and kept nothing hidden but what would aid our enemies or demonstrate his loyalty to us. Comfort him and give him drink, and in a few minutes we will question him as to his service these last years of our exile."

The other Death Eaters surrounded Snape and brought him water. Most of them had removed their masks, and he recognized Malfoy, Crabbe, Goyle, Nott, Avery, Macnair, and someone who could only be an adult Peter Pettigrew. He didn't talk to them, though. He felt as if he'd been beaten over his whole body, his shoulders and back throbbed with mind-numbing pain, and his head ached and spun dizzily.

The respite lasted barely ten minutes, when Snape again knelt before the Dark Lord. This time he was not bound, and there was no mind probe, but the residual pain from his previous torment had not abated, and he struggled to concentrate on his answers.

"All our Death Eaters have been put through interrogation – you should not see this as singling you out. You have not hidden as they have, and so you have more to answer for. You will respond openly and guilelessly. There is still punishment for those who hide from us what we require."

Snape nodded in understanding.

"Why did you not answer the summons?"

"I was in the stands at the Triwizard Tournament, one of the administrators. To have left at once would have cast suspicion on me and jeopardized my ability to serve you at Hogwarts."

"Why would you think we wanted you to stay at Hogwarts?"

"It was the last place you assigned me. I had no other orders. If you wished me elsewhere you would send me, and that would be easy to accomplish, but if you wished me to stay at Hogwarts it was best I not endanger the position. I chose the course that would cause the least damage."

"Does Dumbledore suspect you have come to us?"

"Dumbledore sent me."

The response brought a twisting, cramping pain in Snape's stomach and abdomen, and he doubled up in agony. The Dark Lord spoke in a menacing tone, "So you come at Dumbledore's pleasure, not ours?"

"He chose the time of my coming, not the coming itself. Dumbledore thinks I spy for him. The Potter boy had come back, Diggory was dead, Karkaroff had run. It was already known you'd returned. He sent me, and I took advantage of his order. Now he still doesn't suspect me, but I am able to answer your call."

"How long have you known we would return?"

"Known? Since three years ago, when you controlled the body of Quirinus Quirrell, but I have suspected it and hoped for it for fourteen years."

"Really? Why?"

"When the Lestranges and Barty Crouch attacked the Longbottoms, it was in search of information regarding your whereabouts. It occurred to me at the time that they wouldn't have done this if they didn't have some solid reason for believing that a part of you at least was still alive. It was a small thing to go on, but it was all I had."

"What has happened to our servant?"

Snape sighed. "He blundered and was captured by Dumbledore. He was given Veritaserum and confessed everything. But when Cornelius Fudge was called into the room, the Minister chose to summon a dementor as a guard. Without warning, the dementor sprang on your servant and administered the kiss. He is lost to us."

"Useful things, dementors. Tell us, did you at any time shut down completely against our servant and prevent him from reading any part of your mind?"

Snape looked up at the Dark Lord with wide, open, trusting eyes. "No, Lord. I can't do that I don't know how."

"Why then would he say you did?"

"I don't know."

"Do you think he was disloyal? Letting his hatred of you interfere with his duty to us?"

"I'm sure he was as loyal to you as he was able to be."

"Well spoken. Now you will tell us of Hogwarts and of Dumbledore."

For the next two hours, the Dark Lord questioned Snape about every aspect of life at Hogwarts and about everything there was to know of Dumbledore. For the most part, Snape simply told the truth. It was information known to every child of every Death Eater in any case. From time to time he claimed ignorance, which was more often true than not. Only a couple of times did he find himself concocting an out-and-out lie. The spies' adage was true. Whenever possible, stick as close to the truth as possible. That way, you are less likely to be tripped up.

Then, finally, grueling as the experience was, it was over.

"You have done well, faithful servant. Return now to your post, keep your eyes and ears open, and await our instructions."

The Dark Lord was gone, and Snape was free to return to Hogwarts.

The other Death Eaters surrounded Snape, congratulating him on successfully passing through the Dark Lord's ordeal. It was then, listening to their voices, that Snape realized the one who'd wanted to have a little more 'fun' was Peter Pettigrew. He filed that information, but said nothing.

Lucius Malfoy returned Snape's wand. "I'm glad you made it. It was sticky there for a while. He really wanted you dead."

"I think it was Barty Crouch who wanted me dead. He hated you, too, you know."

"Whatever for?"

"You never suffered. You got away free. He wanted to punish all of us."

"How many others in Azkaban feel the same? It makes you stop and think."

"It does indeed. Good night, Lucius. "

"You take care."

Snape started down the hill, but as he walked through the overgrown grass he began to feel the full effects of the night. The adrenaline that had helped carry him through was now draining out of his body, and he was exhausted. His shoulders ached wretchedly. His back seemed to be on fire, and it made walking difficult. In fact, he was beginning to stumble and stagger. And above all, there was the pain in his head, so fierce that he saw little flashes of light in the predawn, and it made him nauseous.

A little way from the house, Snape drew out his wand, concentrated, and apparated to Hogsmeade.

The physical strain of apparating was almost too much. There, under the trees on the outskirts of the village, Snape's legs buckled under him, and he dropped to the ground and began to retch uncontrollably, though since he hadn't eaten anything for hours, it had little effect except to bring up bile and give him stomach cramps.

When the spasms abated, he picked up the wand that had fallen beside him and pointed it at Hogwarts castle. Immediately, a misty form spurted from the end of the wand and shot upwards towards Dumbledore's tower. Then Snape staggered to his feet and began to walk through Hogsmeade.

It was like wading through thick, viscous mud. Every step was an effort. He found he had to lean against the houses to stay upright. The sky was lightening toward dawn, but the Hogwarts gate still seemed an infinite distance away. Then…

"Severus?" It was Dumbledore's quiet voice, carrying easily through the silence of the sleeping town. "Severus, are you there?"

"Here, Headmaster," Snape answered, and suddenly Dumbledore and Hagrid were with him, supporting him, helping him stand.

"Shh… shh… It is all right. You are home. We are here to care for you."

Hagrid took off his coat and wrapped it around Snape. The warmth was soothing, and Snape was grateful for it. Then Hagrid bent down and lifted Snape in his arms, as if he were carrying a child. "I'll get him up to the hospital, Professor," he said.

"No, no. The fewer people who see him, the better. Take him up to my office. I shall fetch Madam Pomfrey. Go quickly, and try to make him comfortable. The password is 'licorice'. Hagrid lumbered quickly up the hill, Dumbledore right behind him, then up to the headmaster's tower. Snape was vaguely aware of going up the stairs, and of meeting no one. In just a few minutes, they were in Dumbledore's office.

Hagrid laid Snape, still wrapped in the coat, on a large sofa next to the fireplace and lit the fire. He found some pillows and slipped them under Snape's head. The movement caused Snape to moan slightly, but the warmth was comforting, and when Hagrid held a glass of mead to his mouth, Snape accepted it gratefully.

Dumbledore was there a few minutes later with Madam Pomfrey.

"Well," she said matter-of-factly. "It looks like you've had quite a night. Here, drink this first. It should help clear your head." The bitter, burning liquid did, in fact, help. Snape opened his eyes and was alert again. "Now, tell me where it hurts."

"Mostly my head and my back."

"What did they do?"

"Mind probe, and some nonverbal spell that sent fire from the base of my spine up into my skull."

"That sounds like Ignispina, but it shouldn't have such a powerful effect. How many times?"

"Four."

"Heavens! Hagrid, get his coat and shirt off. I need to examine the damage."

Snape balked at removing his shirt for Pomfrey, but she just laughed. "That thing on your arm, child! And the marks on your back! I've known about them for nearly fourteen years. Who do you think took care of you while you were sedated, that time you tried to walk off the top of the Astronomy tower? You have very few secrets that are hidden from me, Master Snape."

There was no point whatsoever in arguing against that, and Snape was soon lying on his side while Pomfrey examined him. She was far more interested in the point where the spinal column entered the skull than the rest of his back.

"That's where there could be serious damage, especially after four hits. You-Know-Who certainly fails as a personnel manager, treating valuable staff like this. I'm going to fit you with a neck brace, Severus, to help relieve some of the pressure there. The damage done by the Legilimency probe is something Albus will have to handle. The injury to the shoulders is purely physical. I have a draught that will reattach the cartilage and reduce the inflammation. And I think the best thing for the rest of the backbone is a little old-fashioned chanting."

Taking out the wand she seldom used, Pomfrey began to rotate it along Snape's spine, crooning a low song all the while, very much like Snape's grandmother had done in her healing practice. It was a form of treatment that Snape knew well and could do himself. After several minutes his back felt remarkably better.

They made him stay lying down while Pomfrey went for the draught and the brace, but after she returned and fitted the stiff white collar around his neck, Snape was able to sit up again. He was still in pain, but it was a much reduced and more manageable pain.

Dumbledore send to the kitchens for breakfast, which he, Snape, and Hagrid shared there in the headmaster's office.

"Now," Dumbledore said when they were finished, "let us see what happened. If you do not object, of course."

"I'm not really looking forward to this. Legilimency has become one of my least favorite experiences."

"If you feel strongly about it, I will not do it."

"It's all right. Go ahead."

Dumbledore sat opposite Snape, where he rested on the sofa, and they locked gazes. After the torment of the night before, Dumbledore's probe was gentle and diffident. From the look on Dumbledore's face when he was finished, it had been a far more disturbing experience for him than for Snape.

"I did not realize I was asking you to do so much."

"You see now why it was necessary to use the Cruciatus curse. I had to be ready."

"Yes, you were right about that. Where is the house?"

"Yorkshire. Outside a village called Little Hangleton. I could pinpoint it for you easily, though I doubt he will ever go back there."

"I agree. He probably will not. What are you to do now?"

"Wait. He'll summon me again to give me specifics. Probably spy on you. He may want me to go back to my old job."

"Ah, yes. Teaching defensive tactics." Dumbledore meditated for a moment. "Tell me about Pettigrew."

Snape hesitated. "He was there. He's alive. There's something wrong with his right hand, but he's alive." Then he said what Dumbledore wanted him to say. "Black didn't kill him. He went to Azkaban for something he didn't do." After a pause, he added, "He did other things he should have gone to Azkaban for, but that wasn't one of them."

Dumbledore sighed. "Can you not leave the past behind?"

Snape shook his head. "Tell me this. Who gave Lily to the Dark Lord?"

"Peter Pettigrew, if I understand correctly."

"And why was Pettigrew the Secret-Keeper?"

Dumbledore didn't answer the question.

"There. It has to do with Black. Until I know what happened back then, until I know why she died, I can't trust him. For all I know, he told Potter to make Pettigrew the Secret-Keeper. If that's true, he caused her death. Can you assure me that's not true?"

xxxxxxxxxx

There were only a couple of days left before the students returned to King's Cross Station. During that time, they continued to attend classes, even though they'd finished their exams. The two classes that were not held were Defense against the Dark Arts, since the real Alastor Moody had not been the teacher for the year and was in any case receiving medical treatment, and Potions – the whereabouts of the Potions Master was unexplained.

Snape was in Dumbledore's tower with the neck brace, that being the principal reason why Dumbledore didn't want the students to see him. Madam Pomfrey visited him several times each day and, on the afternoon of the Leaving Feast, told him that the brace could safely be removed to allow him to attend.

The Great Hall was somber that evening as Snape entered ahead of most of the students. It was draped in black, in memory of Cedric Diggory. Snape's place this evening was next to McGonagall, and as he made his way to the dais, he heard someone behind him gruffly clear his throat.

"You're looking reasonably well under the circumstances."

Snape turned to face Moody, and all his barriers went up immediately. Several months of trusting neither the face nor the eye could not be overcome in a moment.

Moody just laughed. "That's a formidable defense system you have there, boyo. I'd hate to have the job of interrogating you."

"Does that mean you're renting out my room to someone else?"

"I hear you took a different vacation package that makes Azkaban look like a kiddie amusement park."

"It had its moments."

Moody raised a hand and patted Snape on the shoulder. "You take care of yourself out there, laddie," he said, and went to take his own place at the high table.

Snape eased into the seat next to McGonagall. To his great surprise, she laid her hand on his for a moment with a positively maternal look in her eyes. "I'm glad you're all right," she whispered, and beyond her Snape saw Flitwick give him a 'thumbs up' sign. Everyone else seemed perfectly normal.

The students filed in, subdued by the gravity of the occasion. Snape found himself watching Potter, wondering about the connection between the boy and the Dark Lord, then realized Potter was watching him. He turned away, but was aware that the boy continued to observe him for some time.

At the end of an unusually quiet feast, Dumbledore rose to speak. "The end of another year. There is much that I would like to say to you all tonight, but I must first acknowledge the loss of a very fine person, who should be sitting here enjoying our feast with us. I would like you all, please, to stand, and raise your glasses, to Cedric Diggory."

They did, staff and students raising their goblets and saying together, "Cedric Diggory."

"Cedric Diggory was murdered by Lord Voldemort," continued Dumbledore as murmurs of panic swept through the Hall. "The Ministry of Magic does not wish me to tell you this…"

As Dumbledore went on, Snape looked around the hall. Grief and horror at the Hufflepuff table, shock at Ravenclaw, anger and defiance at Gryffindor. And Slytherin… what about Slytherin? Malfoy was whispering to Crabbe and Goyle. _Do you know your fathers helped the Dark Lord torture me?_ There were others – sons, daughters, nieces, and nephews of Death Eaters. They would not support Dumbledore. And when Dumbledore proposed a toast to Harry Potter, many of the Slytherin students stayed in their seats.

Snape did not remain seated. With the rest of the Hall, he rose to drink to Potter. Malfoy looked surprised and disgusted, but Snape wasn't worried. The Dark Lord would not be angry.

Dumbledore spoke for a brief while longer. "…Lord Voldemort's gift for spreading discord and enmity is very great. We can fight it only by showing an equally strong bond of friendship and trust… we are all facing dark and difficult times… if the time should come when you have to make a choice between what is right and what is easy, remember what happened… Remember Cedric Diggory."

The next morning the students left on the train for King's Cross Station. The teachers would stay at Hogwarts a few days longer, clearing the classrooms, ordering supplies, locking everything down.

Dumbledore visited Snape in the dungeon classroom. "Anything yet?"

"No, he hasn't called. He may be waiting until I'm home again, to avoid suspicion."

"As for that, I too shall be sending for you at your home. I suggest you have reasons prepared why you would have to make a few trips to London, just in case you are asked."

"London? What's in London?"

"There are a few people I want you to meet."

Three days later, Snape was home in Spinner's End. While he busied himself cleaning and straightening the house, and catching up on some reading, he waited for the summons from the Dark Lord and from Dumbledore.

He didn't have long to wait.

The summons was in the form of a misty silver phoenix that seeped in through the edge of the window and hovered near Snape, who was reading a murder mystery about change ringing and death in a church bell tower. Dumbledore's voice entered Snape's head.

'Could you make a trip down to London this morning? Meet me at King's Cross Station by the clock tower. Say, eleven o'clock? No need to reply if you are coming.'

_Wonderful. I'm supposed to apparate into a busy central London train station in the middle of the day, but not let anyone see me do it. Where does he come up with these things?_

Assuming that Dumbledore would look like the typical pureblood wizard trying to blend into a muggle world, Snape thought carefully about what he would wear. With the long hair, it should be casual – only George Harrison could get away with long hair and a three-piece suit with a bowler hat. He ended up with dark trousers, a blue shirt, and a denim jacket. At ten thirty, he apparated into the men's restroom next to the social hall of St. Pancras church, reasoning that on a Wednesday morning it was unlikely to be occupied.

He was wrong, of course, since St. Pancras ministered to the homeless of the area. Luckily the only person who saw Snape arrive was himself recovering from the effects of a half gallon of wine the night before and chose to regard Snape as part of the total experience. Murmuring 'Excuse me,' Snape slipped out of the restroom, out of the church, and onto Euston Road. From there it was a short walk to the underground, which he used to cross beneath Euston Road and approach King's Cross Station. All in all, it reminded him of his childhood.

Dumbledore looked fairly normal, except that he was wearing a poncho. Together the two walked in a roughly northerly direction for about twenty minutes until they reached a small square surrounded by dilapidated houses, some with broken windows and all with peeling paint.

"Now," said Dumbledore, "the decision is yours. Our destination is protected by a Fidelius charm, and I am the Secret Keeper. If you do not wish to be part of this, if it might endanger your position with Riddle, we go no further. If you wish to continue with me, you need to read this note. You have total control of the outcome."

Snape took the folded piece of paper that Dumbledore held out to him. He considered for a few minutes how he would explain to the Dark Lord that there was something he couldn't reveal. Satisfied that it was feasible, he opened the note and read:

_The headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix may be found at number twelve, Grimmauld Place, London._

Dumbledore immediately took the piece of paper and burned it. In front of them the row of houses was changing, and one that Snape hadn't noticed before suddenly appeared. It looked just as run-down as the others, with chipped paint and dirty, gaping, empty windows. It was to the battered door of this house that Dumbledore led Snape.

The door of the house opened, and Snape found himself staring into the eyes of Remus Lupin. "Good," Lupin said, "you're here." He stood aside to let them pass into an entry hall lined with portraits. It smelled of mildew and rot. Almost at once a voice began screaming, "Blood traitors and squibs! Mongrels and mudbloods! How dare you bring this trash into my house!" Dumbledore quickly seized Snape's arm and pushed him into a parlor to the right.

"We do not really need to listen to her right now," said Dumbledore apologetically.

Inside the parlor a group of people was gathered. They turned to stare as he and Dumbledore walked in, followed by Lupin. Snape had the feeling that this was not exactly the most friendly group he'd ever met.

"Well," said Dumbledore calmly. "Here he is. Severus, you already know Lupin, Black, Moody, and Hagrid, of course. This is Dedalus Diggle, Emmeline Vance, Sturgis Podmore, and Elphias Doge. My brother Aberforth was supposed to be here, too, but you can never get him to show up on time for anything. This is what remains of the original Order of the Phoenix. Lady and gentlemen, this is Severus Snape."

The welcome was less than warm. It seemed obvious that all present were aware of Snape's past as a Death Eater, but were less than convinced of his conversion to the anti-Voldemort side. Black was openly sneering. "What do we need him for? He's not going to help us."

Dumbledore didn't hide his impatience. "Severus has already done more for our cause this year than any other person in this room. If you cannot accept that, then we are doomed before we begin."

Hagrid chimed in. "I had personal charge of Professor Snape after he got back from You-Know-Who, and I can personally vouch that he's given up a lot for us. And he didn't even know us then."

Moody, too, stepped over to Dumbledore's side with a gruff, "I'm for him," while Lupin tried to persuade Black, "If you'd just take the time to hear what they have to say…" The other members of the Order preferred to wait for more information.

"Very well," Dumbledore sighed. "Severus, show them the mark."

Snape reluctantly removed his jacket and rolled up the left sleeve of his shirt. The dark mark curled there, powerful and ugly.

Emmeline Vance reached out to touch it – almost. "Is it a tattoo?" she asked.

"More of a brand," Snape answered. "It's burned in."

That sparked the interest of Diggle and Podmore, who both now moved in for a closer look. "What exactly," said Podmore, "is the function of the mark?"

"Identification. Two Death Eaters could recognize each other from the mark. One of its main purposes is that it allows the Dark Lord to summon us. He touches the mark of one, and all are summoned."

"What do you feel when you're summoned?" asked Vance.

"It burns. The mark becomes black, and it burns. You don't always know where you're going. You just concentrate on the mark and apparate. It's a security measure. Then, you can be punished through the mark."

"How does that work?" Podmore asked.

"It's quite drastic. It's a total breakdown of bodily functions and can be inflicted at a distance. The Dark Lord seldom uses it, and then only when other methods are considered insufficient."

Lupin looked at Snape in sudden comprehension. "You mean if he found out you were betraying him, he could kill even while you were here with us?"

In the silence, they all looked at him. "Yes," Snape replied simply, and left it at that.

There was a period when none of them spoke. Then Dumbledore made the next move.

"I should like Severus Snape to be admitted into the Order of the Phoenix. He has already fought the first skirmish of this war by going into Voldemort's inner circle and being accepted back as a loyal Death Eater. He is now in a position to provide us with valuable information, and is willing to do so."

Lupin turned to Snape. "Is that true? Are you willing to be a spy?"

"I haven't actually been asked, though I suppose it was implicit in everything we were doing this year."

Dumbledore snorted. "Very well, Severus. Will you spy for me again as you did fourteen years ago?"

Before Snape could answer, several voices interrupted.

"Fourteen years ago…?"

"What do you mean, again?"

"He's spied for us already?"

Dumbledore held up a hand, and the room became still. "I am sorry," he said. "I thought that was understood. Fourteen, almost fifteen years ago, Severus deserted Lord Voldemort and came over to our side. His reasons were personal, and I was convinced they were sincere. At great personal risk, the greatest that any of us could ever face, he returned to his former master to spy out information for me. It was Severus who told us that Lord Voldemort was seeking James and Lily Potter, and it was Severus who suggested they be hidden by the Fidelius charm."

The effect of this information was to soften the attitude of every member of the Order. Even Sirius Black slipped into a corner and was suddenly silent. In that silence, Dumbledore again said, "I should like Severus Snape to be admitted into the Order of the Phoenix."

This time there was general assent. Most of the other members came forward to shake Snape's hand and wish him well. After a few minutes, Dumbledore spoke again.

"And now we must settle on our priorities for the coming weeks."

A heated debate ensued, in which Snape took no part. It was decided that the ranks of the Order needed to be replenished, and candidates were suggested, starting with McGonagall, Flitwick, and the Weasleys, all of whom were already acquainted with the Order's work. Members were assigned to recruit newcomers to the ranks, and an initial system of intelligence gathering from muggle sources was outlined, with Lupin and Moody in charge.

"And of course," added Dumbledore, "Severus will be providing us with inside information."

All eyes again on him, Snape demurred. "That depends on the Dark Lord," he said. "If he calls me, I can get information. If he doesn't, I can't."

It was Elphias Doge who asked the question. "Why do you still call him 'Dark Lord' when you're with us?"

Snape regarded him calmly. "It's another function of the mark," he said. "Hearing the Dark Lord's name brings pain. Every time you say his name, the mark burns. Why else do you think we started to convince everyone to say 'He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named,' or 'You-Know-Who'? Pure self protection."

Business now apparently concluded, Black stepped forward again. "I'd be honored if you'd all stay for lunch. It'll be served immediately in the dining room." He glanced around the room as he said this, but managed to avoid looking directly at Snape.

As the group began to file into the dining room, Snape turned quizzically to Dumbledore. "Why is he…?"

"I must have forgotten to mention, Severus. This is Black's home. That rather noisy portrait in the entry is his mother. It has been closed and boarded up for some time, but he is trying to restore it to its former condition."

Snape gazed out the window for a moment. "I really need to be off," he said finally. "I have a lot to do, and I ate before I came. I'll just make my excuses to the host…"

Dumbledore moved in front of Snape, angry and speaking in a low, almost harsh voice. "You will go into that dining room now, and you will be polite, and you will eat his food. Before our absence becomes noticeable."

"Yes, Headmaster," said Snape, yet Dumbledore nonetheless waited for Snape to go first, practically herding him into the room where the others were seating themselves. Snape took a seat in the middle of the table, equidistant from Black and Dumbledore, between Vance and Diggle, and opposite Lupin.

When they were all seated, platters of food appeared on the table, indicating the presence of a house-elf, and the group helped themselves just as if they were back in the Great Hall at Hogwarts. Snape tried to convince Vance that he really wasn't hungry, but she insisted on serving him at the same time that she filled her own plate.

In the general and highly animated conversation that ensued, Snape found that he was able to push the food around on his plate while apparently listening raptly to what Diggle had to say, or pause with a bite halfway to his mouth, then put the fork down as he made a comment in return, and generally appear to be eating without actually eating. The others refilled their plates a few times, and he reached for the platters as well, so that only someone paying careful attention would realize that he'd taken no bite of food nor any sip of drink.

Dumbledore was paying attention. So, it seemed, were Black and Lupin. Dumbledore was clearly seething under his mild demeanor, while Black was having a harder time concealing his anger, and Lupin merely looked disappointed. It was Black who decided to press the issue.

Rising from his chair, he rang a small bell, and goblets of wine appeared in front of the guests. "Lady and gentlemen," Black said as he picked up his goblet, "I'd like to propose…"

Snape suddenly gasped, clutched his left arm, and pushed away from the table. As he stood, he doubled over in pain. The others jumped to their feet in shock as Snape began to stammer, "I have to go… I have to go now… He's calling…"

A furious Dumbledore pushed his way to Snape's side and grabbed his arm, unbuttoning the shirt cuff and pushing the sleeve up to the elbow. The dark mark, which had earlier had the appearance of a greenish tattoo, was now black, and the skin around it had developed small blisters. The snake protruding from the skull's mouth seemed to undulate slightly, and there was the faint smell of burned flesh.

"I have to go…" Snape gasped as Dumbledore's expression changed from anger to concern. "Last time I had an excuse for being late. I don't have an excuse now. If I don't go… go now…"

"You have an excuse," said Dumbledore. "You were with us. Is that not part of your job?"

Snape nodded in understanding. "I can't go from here, though. I think he can trace it. I have to make another stop." He was getting the pain under control. Around him the members of the Order looked worried, even frightened. None of them had ever before seen the mark function.

"Hagrid," said Dumbledore, "take him out into the yard. You can apparate from there, Severus. I leave it up to you how you handle the destination."

The rest parted as Hagrid steered Snape toward the rear of the house and the door that led into the yard in the back. Letting Hagrid's bulk shield him from possible spectators in the other houses, Snape took out his wand, concentrated on Pendle Hill, and apparated.

For just a moment Snape stood on the side of Pendle Hill, looking around at the open heath and the scattered villages below, a breeze drying the perspiration on his brow. Then he took a deep breath, concentrated on the mark itself, and apparated again.

This time he was outside an old warehouse in Southwark, across the Thames from the Tower of London. The building was surrounded by a high wooden fence and appeared from the outside to be derelict or about to undergo restoration, as had already happened with many of the old factories and warehouses in the area.

Other Death Eaters were also there, and more were arriving. The little group nodded to each other and entered the building. Its interior had not been magically reformed, so clearly this was a place for one meeting only, thereafter to be abandoned. As the group gathered in the center of the large, open floor, the Dark Lord appeared among them.

Snape took his place in the circle, all in all a remarkably egalitarian group. Most of the highest echelon of the Death Eaters was currently in Azkaban prison, and had been there for over thirteen years. Of those that gathered, only Lucius Malfoy and Walden Macnair were really top level.

When the Dark Lord began to speak, Snape had a most remarkable sense of déjà vu, for he talked of recruiting more members and gathering intelligence. _I just came from this meeting._ One by one, the group gathered there approached, knelt to the Dark Lord, and gave a report. One thing that struck Snape was the sense that they were trying not to attract attention, a most unDeath-Eaterlike attitude.

_It's a little like flying below the radar. The Ministry doesn't want to notice us, so if we're discreet, the Ministry won't notice us. That way we build our strength in the shadows until we're strong enough to fight. How will Fudge react, I wonder, when he finds out how much comfort he's given to the enemy?_

Then the Dark Lord said, "Now we shall hear from our brother Severus."

Startled out of his reverie, Snape advanced into the center of the circle, knelt before his Lord, and established eye contact. This would be, however, no brutal invasion of his mind, but a gentle surface reading. He calmly awaited the questions.

"You came in today from Pendle."

"Yes, Lord."

"But that was not where you received our summons."

"No, Lord."

"Where did you receive our summons?"

"In London, north of King's Cross Station."

"Be more specific."

"Lord, I cannot."

There was an intake of breath all around, and the Dark Lord rose from his seat. "Why can you not tell us? Explain." he said, and there was death in his tone.

"Lord, I was invited this morning by Dumbledore to a meeting of the Order of the Phoenix. They are your great enemies, and will move Heaven and Earth to destroy you. I was told on arrival that the place was under a Fidelius Charm, and I was given the choice to become part of the secret or to be banished from it forever. Having no other instructions, I chose the way that would bring you more information."

"Who is the Secret Keeper?"

"Albus Dumbledore."

"Then you attended this meeting."

"Yes, Lord."

"Tell us."

"There are only a few of the order left. They are Albus Dumbledore, Alastor Moody, Dumbledore's brother Aberforth, Sirius Black, Remus Lupin, Dedalus Diggle, Elphias Doge, Rubeus Hagrid, Sturgis Podmore and Emmeline Vance." Out of the corner of his eye, Snape saw Pettigrew confirming the tally on his fingers. "They are bound to your destruction."

"What did they discuss at their meeting?"

"The same thing that we are discussing here. They wish to recruit more members, and they wish to gather more intelligence. They are angry that the Ministry doesn't publicly acknowledge your return, Lord, since they believe that public outcry against you would help their cause."

"Did they name potential new members?"

"No, Lord."

"Why did you come from Pendle?"

"I feared they would track my destination, so I put a stop in between. That way they couldn't discover the place of our meeting."

"You have answered well. Join your fellows and listen further."

Snape apparated back to Pendle Hill near evening, and paused for a moment. London or Scotland? Maybe it didn't matter as long as he was thinking of the right person. Pointing his wand north, he concentrated on Dumbledore and the message 'No contact of any kind for seventy-two hours. Watch Potter.' Immediately the misty little fox streamed out of the end of the wand, circled, and headed south to London. _It knows where he is. That's good information to have._

A moment later Snape was inside his own kitchen at Spinner's End making a cup of tea and thinking of what to fix for supper. He was very hungry, having had nothing to eat all day. Not five minutes after his arrival, there was a distinctive 'pop' outside the house. Snape ignored it. _If they want to come in, they can knock._

In fact, nobody knocked. Not the least surprised, Snape busied himself with a dish of lamb curry. One of the advantages of being both muggle-raised and a Potions Master was that cooking was relatively easy. Snape knew, as a matter of professional expertise, the qualities of every herb and spice there was, and enjoyed combining them in different types of food. He never used magic, as he never used it when mixing potions. He rather despised wizards who were helpless without a wand in their hands.

Snape ate in the kitchen, then went into the front room for a glass of wine and a book. He didn't close the curtains, as he had not in the kitchen either, since this evening he wanted to be seen relaxing at home. Anyone outside would know that no magic had been performed in or near the house for hours, and he wanted it to stay that way.

The surveillance went on for more than two days. Neither Pettigrew nor the Carrows were expert at this kind of thing, apparating and disapparating too near the house to remain undetected. Others were more subtle. Snape had a little fun leading them out onto the heath while he gathered herbs – watching a wizard trying to hide behind gorse can be highly amusing – but by the third day he was tired of their company.

Luckily, by the third day it seemed they were tired of him.

After going all morning without any trace of someone following him, Snape finally decided that the testing period, at least this one, was over. Late that afternoon he apparated to the rear of St. Nicholas church in Liverpool, not wanting to make Pendle Hill a too regular stop, and from there to an alley he'd noticed while he was with Dumbledore in London, about a five-minute walk from Grimmauld Place. He hadn't sent a patronus ahead for fear that someone might still be watching.

Arriving in Grimmauld Place, Snape cautiously approached number twelve, which appeared on the outside to be just as deserted as it had three days earlier. Climbing the steps, he paused, then knocked quietly at the door.

It was opened by Sirius Black.

Snape backed away a step, but Black opened the door wider. "Get in off the street," he said quickly. "Dumbledore's inside. Be quiet and don't wake Mother."

As Snape slipped into the house, he said, "Any word from our friends at Azkaban?" At Black's low growl, he realized his mistake. "No, really. Has anything happened at Azkaban?"

Black stared at him for a moment, then seized Snape's arm and pulled him into the parlor. The little group gathered there looked up in surprise. "He says something's supposed to happen at Azkaban," Black told them.

Snape was ushered to an empty chair at once. "We were a bit worried when we got your message," said Dumbledore as the group pulled their chairs into a tighter circle. "We were afraid he was getting suspicious."

"He's always suspicious. There was a round-the-clock watch on me for nearly sixty hours. They seem to have decided I'm not going to bolt and run."

"What news?"

"That's what I wanted to ask you. He wants the Potter boy. He's furious that Potter escaped last month, and he's been worried that the Ministry would start hunting him again before the organization was complete. The fact that the Ministry's been doing nothing is a godsend for him. But he still wants Potter. He'd prefer to kidnap the boy, but barring that he'll be content to kill him. That's why I told you to watch him."

"Any idea how they intend to do it?"

"Not really. I'm not in the inner circle. I do know that he's trying to breach security at Azkaban and draw out some of the dementors. That's why I asked about news from there." That sentence was addressed to Black. "If Azkaban is normal, then he hasn't succeeded yet."

"Assuming the Ministry would make the news public," said Dumbledore grimly. "Well, as long as we have you, I presume there's more to report…"

Tea appeared, and as the others helped themselves to sandwiches and sweets, Dumbledore placed a cup on a small table next to Snape. "Sandwiches?" he asked.

"No, thank you," replied Snape. "I already had something. The tea smells good, though."

"Now," continued Dumbledore, "tell us what's happening with Vol-… with the other side."

"The organization seems to be in disarray. I wasn't the only one who answered the first summons late. He had panicky Death Eaters showing up for days after his reappearance, especially in the lower ranks. The ones in real trouble are the ones who simply ran. I'm afraid Karkaroff has definitely been counted as one of them."

A knock at the front door interrupted him, and Snape waited while several more people, among them Molly Weasley and her son Charlie, entered the room. Snape was introduced to Mundungus Fletcher, Arabella Figg, and Nymphadora Tonks, whom he remembered as one of his students. After they were seated, he resumed.

"He was concerned at the beginning, when Potter escaped, that the Ministry would start a sweep of the country trying to round up everyone who was ever connected with the Death Eaters. That the Ministry has done nothing is a source of great pleasure to the Dark Lord and the upper circle. I'm not sure what Fudge thinks is happening, but he wouldn't be at all happy to hear how he was talked about at that last meeting.

"There are several things that have priority. The first is to lie low while we… they organize. He's planning to restart the branches in Norwich, Lincoln, Cardiff, York, and Glasgow. Lieutenants haven't been assigned yet. One of the biggest obstacles is that so many of his top people are in Azkaban.

"So another priority is getting our… his people out of Azkaban. For those who just arrived, there was some talk about siphoning off a few of the dementors to use as bodyguards or agents, which is why I asked if there was any news from Azkaban. But assuming Fudge knew he'd lost a couple, would he make it public?"

"Good points," commented Dumbledore. "It seems we have to keep an eye open for activity all over Britain, and it will probably be low-key, hard to pinpoint. And we have to keep our ears open at the Ministry. Molly, Arthur will be very useful there."

Molly Weasley nodded, and Charlie looked very determined and proud.

"There's something that bothers me, though," said Doge. "Why do keep saying 'we' when you talk about them? You're supposed to be…"

"Stow it, Elphias," growled Moody. "Leave him be. Better to automatically say 'we' and 'us.' Here it's a small slip that can be corrected. He slips with them and we lose a source of information."

Snape nodded his thanks to Moody and continued. "As I said before, another thing, more personal and therefore more immediate, is that he wants Potter. He was furious when Potter escaped, and he's determined to get him back. I believe he'll try several attempts to lay his hands on the boy before he gives the order that it's permissible to kill him, but I have no idea how much time that will take.

"Several of you need to know that I gave the Dark Lord your names, those of you I met here three days ago. One of the people prominent around the Dark Lord, though he seems to have no real hierarchical standing, is Peter Pettigrew. While I was giving my report, he was keeping track, and I felt I had no choice. As I named you, he kept count. I was afraid that if I omitted anyone, I would be placed in danger. I understood that he had once been a member of the Order, and would know your names in any case. Those were the only names I mentioned."

"It was wisely done," Lupin said. "Peter was in on everything we did from the beginning. He'd know all of us and probably gave our names to… him long ago."

"May I ask what your job is?" It was the first time Black had spoken since they entered the parlor.

"The same as it was before, fifteen years ago. I have three major duties. First, I'm in charge of the potions. We don't have a permanent headquarters yet, but when we do I'll have a laboratory that needs to be stocked with supplies. I've started collecting things, and I'm drawing up a list of materials. The organization is short of funds, but Lucius Malfoy isn't, and I'll be able to call on him to buy the things I can't gather myself.

"My second job is curses. If the Organization needs a curse for a special job, and the curse doesn't exist, I have to try to invent it. The first two I did were a way to sneak past dogs, and a way to walk silently on leaves."

"That was you!" cried Vance. "I always wondered how they got past those dogs."

"That was while I still actually worked for him. My third job is combat training. Self-defensive techniques."

Lupin laughed heartily. "I can vouch from long experience that you were always good at that."

The report now finished, the members of the Order began to chat, and to look forward to supper. Snape rose from his chair.

"If you will excuse me, I should be leaving. I need to visit Diagon Alley, which will be my justification in case the Dark Lord asks why I came to London, and I have a tremendous amount of work to do to prepare the potions laboratory."

They wished him well, though no one seemed particularly sorry that he was going, and Snape quietly left the house.

The tea on the table next to his chair remained untouched.

xxxxxxxxxx

When next Snape was summoned to the Dark Lord, it was to an older area of Croydon, south of London, where he was met by Macnair, who handed him a folded piece of paper.

"Don't tell me. Let me guess. A Fidelius Charm?"

Macnair chortled. "You put a bee in his bonnet, I'm thinking. Read it, then walk down that street. It'll be on the left.

'It' was an old brick building still grimed with streaks of London soot from decades of air pollution. Snape's parents had remembered the famous 'pea soup' fogs of London from their rare visits to the capital in their youth, but by the time Snape was born, strict controls had cleaned both air and water, though traces still remained on the walls of buildings. Snape took a deep breath and went to the door.

The meeting was short. Each Death Eater was assigned a part of the new headquarters to prepare for the long battle ahead. Snape soon found himself in the long rectangular room that was to be his new laboratory. One wall was a row of large, dirty windows with a view of train tracks. _Not bad. Lots of light, even if a little noisy._ Sections of the windows could be opened, providing good ventilation.

The first thing Snape checked out was the electric wiring. Nothing electronic could function at Hogwarts because of the heavy magical protection surrounding the Castle and grounds, but no such powerful charms were in place here. To his great delight, Snape found that the room had a large number of outlets, and a quick check of the boxes showed that it was wired for high wattage and amps.

The second thing was a gas line, but there he was disappointed. _An easy problem to resolve, though. I'll just fuel the Bunsen burners with propane tanks._

The third thing was water, and there he was not disappointed, for several areas of the room had plumbing and the taps were already installed. _I wonder what this room used to be used for?_

Snape immediately requested that magic be banned from the laboratory. When questioned, he got technical. "There's going to be a lot of delicate equipment in there. Not to mention tanks of combustible gases and liquids that could explode if their containers are compromised. Besides, have you ever seen what a simple Lumos charm can do to the cathodes and anodes when you're performing electrolysis? It isn't pretty."

Since the Dark Lord had no idea what cathodes, anodes, or electrolysis were, he agreed to Snape's request.

Safe now in his own domain, protected from magical interference by order of the Dark Lord himself, Snape began to set things up, his first order to Malfoy being rows of counters fitted with long drawers and sinks, cabinets for equipment, stools, a half dozen Bunsen burners, three fire extinguishers (which made several of the Death Eaters decidedly nervous), and cases of test tubes, beakers, pipettes, glass rods, jars, vials, flasks, and even some cauldrons. There were, after all, a few potions that could only be made in an iron cauldron. _And I am going to go out and get lab coats!_

xxxxxxxxxx

Dumbledore was forbidden to send patronuses to Snape. "All I need is for a silver phoenix to be hovering around Croydon. For the next couple of weeks I need to spend most of my time setting up the lab. My first assignment is to stock a medical area for those injured in the line of duty. After that, I'll have more free time."

Dumbledore peered over the top of his glasses. They were sitting in a pub at the bottom of Ludgate Hill, far more private than the house at Grimmauld Place. "Should I be concerned that you seem to be enjoying this far too much?"

"What do you mean?"

"You've been going on in exquisite detail about every facet of this laboratory of yours. I seem to remember that it is an old, and at one time deeply cherished dream. Might not this siren be seducing you away from us?"

"Don't worry, Professor. Even in his presence, it's impossible to forget who and what he is and what he's done. Using his own resources to destroy him is just part of the poetry of the whole situation."

"I do hope that is true."

At the Croydon headquarters, Snape ran into Pettigrew from time to time. They even began to chat.

"I hear you did great service for the Dark Lord in the past, giving him information. Is it true you were Secret Keeper for the Potters?"

Pettigrew grinned. "The crowning point of my career so far. The Dark Lord was very pleased with that tidbit."

"How did you get to be Secret Keeper?"

"Pure luck, actually. It was going to be Sirius, but at the last moment he convinced James that it should be me. He was afraid that he was too obvious a choice and worried that he could be forced to talk."

"So in a way, Black decided that you should be Secret Keeper. Interesting." Snape stored the information, to be retrieved and used later.

It took the last two weeks of July to set up the laboratory, primarily because Snape wouldn't allow magic. First there was the job of cleaning and painting. It was hard work, but a ladder, a bucket, a mop and a variety of sponges soon had the windows gleaming and the floor and walls spotless. It was then that Snape discovered that somewhere in the intervening twenty years paint had been developed that took far less time to dry. He was enthralled by muggle ingenuity.

Some of the stronger, lower level Death Eaters were called in to position the counters and cabinets, which took two days. Snape had even purchased do-it-yourself books on electrical wiring and plumbing. Fortunately for the borough of Croydon, the wiring was in good shape, and hooking the sinks up to the existing plumbing was fairly simple, as was figuring out how to use a propane tank.

One thing that created quite a stir was testing one of the fire extinguishers in the basement. Nothing could have convinced the other Death Eaters of the strictness of the magic prohibition like Snape's determination to learn how to put out a fire with foam shot from a red cylinder. The laboratory was beginning to develop an almost legendary mystique before it even went into operation.

At last Snape was able to don his new immaculate white lab coat and begin unpacking and arranging his books and equipment. Many of the books were from his youth when he'd believed becoming a scientist was more than a pipe dream. Others were recently purchased, including pharmaceutical texts from the University of London bookstore.

The Dark Lord himself visited the newly set up laboratory, and while it was clear he didn't quite place potions making above magic, he was pleased to have an establishment in the forefront of development in the wizarding world.

Snape did not return home to Spinner's End in all this time. Instead, one corner of the lab was set up with privacy curtains like a hospital, and had a cot, a night stand, a lamp, and a small bookcase with some light reading.

At the end of July, while up late at night tending the first batch of a bone-setting potion, Snape found himself making a list. It was a list of names:

Tom Riddle

Peter Pettigrew

Severus Snape

Sirius Black

James Potter, deceased

Albus Dumbledore

Sibyll Trelawney

Harry Potter (?)

After studying the list for a while, still occasionally stirring the potion, he folded it carefully, wrote 'People responsible for the death of Lily Evans' on the outside, and slipped it behind the books he kept in his sleeping area.

From that moment Snape began to feel the presence of Lily strongly in the laboratory. He did not, however, talk to her. This was partly because he didn't want to reveal his secret to anyone who might happen to come in, and partly because he thought she would probably not approve of his list.

The next day was July 31. Snape requested a meeting with the Dark Lord.

"Tell us your wish, Potions Master."

"It's customary for the teachers at Hogwarts to arrive at the school on the first of August each year to review the coming year and to prepare their work areas. It would look odd if I weren't there. Normally, too, I live at the school from that point. I would be able to return here for a few hours each day, but in order to maintain my cover, I should be at Hogwarts most of the time."

"Will your work here suffer?"

"It will go slowly. Since we are keeping a low profile for the time being, however, I don't think it will affect day-to-day operations in any way."

"Very well. You have our permission to go to Hogwarts."

The next morning Snape packed his usual Gladstone bag. Leaving the Croydon offices, he went to the railway station and entered the men's room. It was empty, so Snape had no trouble concentrating on the outskirts of Hogsmeade and apparating.


	48. Chapter 48 – Shadows Rising

**Yes. That Is My Job: Shadows Rising**

_Tuesday, August 1, 1995 (three days before the first quarter)_

Professor Severus Snape apparated into the outskirts of Hogsmeade, as he did at the beginning of every August, carrying his Gladstone bag and ready to start a new school year. The fact that this year he was coming in from Croydon, south of London, rather than from Lancashire was irrelevant. There was a curious quality about Snape's mind that allowed it to disconnect from one thing and connect to another so flawlessly that the two areas of his life were completely compartmentalized, separated totally from each other unless he willed otherwise.

"Nine o'clock," said a gruff voice nearby. "I don't think you've ever missed a day."

"Good morning, Moody. Has my status changed, or is this for purely sentimental reasons?"

"Hard to break an old habit is all." Both men were silent for a moment.

"Odd how if you don't have Azkaban to talk about, you have nothing to say," commented Snape when the silence had become too noticeable.

Moody laughed. "Then I'll just wish you a good year teaching. It isn't like we won't have more chances to talk as the year wears on. About less pleasant things."

"True. I suppose I'll be seeing you in London soon. And thank you for the good wishes."

"My pleasure, boyo. Try to stay out of trouble." And with a resounding 'pop!' Moody was gone.

"Severus!"

Snape turned and waited as McGonagall caught up to him by the Hogwarts gate. "Morning, Filch," they both said to the caretaker who opened it for them, then walked up the hill side by side.

"Before anything else," McGonagall stated flatly, "I have something I've been wanting to say for a month, and I'm going to say it now. So don't try to stop me."

This sounded foreboding, but Snape just nodded.

"I treated you abominably in June, about Fudge and that dementor. I said unfair, hurtful things, and now when I think what you were about to go off and do that very evening… Well, all I can say is – I'm sorry. Will you forgive me?"

"Forgiven and forgotten long ago. Not to be mentioned again. When did you find out?"

"Last week. I'm in the Order now, too."

"I rather wish you hadn't told me that. Something else to conceal."

"You'd have found out about it soon enough."

Things at Hogwarts seemed perfectly normal. Snape and Flitwick played cribbage after lunch. The inventory of supplies went smoothly. Even the fact that no Defense against the Dark Arts professor had yet been appointed seemed routine. It was as if the events of the past six weeks had never happened.

Until after supper, that is. Then Snape nodded to Dumbledore, Dumbledore nodded back, and Snape quietly made his way down the hill. By the time he reached the gate, it was already open for him, and he slipped through and apparated to Croydon. There, in his new laboratory, in his new lab coat, surrounded by things bubbling and brewing, he continued to make medicines and potions for the Dark Lord's infirmary. _There is a certain surreal quality to this that will take some getting used to._

It was, however, a routine that was easy to follow. Snape would spend the nights at Hogwarts, the days doing his work as a professor preparing for the school year, and his evenings in Croydon. The routine lasted less than two days.

Snape apparated back to Hogsmeade at eleven o'clock on August 2 and sent a patronus to Dumbledore to open the gate. Once inside, he was met by an answering patronus. 'Come to my office at once. Something has happened.'

Surprised and apprehensive, Snape rushed up the hill and climbed the stairs to the headmaster's tower as quickly as he could. Dumbledore was waiting, and McGonagall and Moody were also there. "What happened?" Snape gasped as he tried to catch his breath.

Dumbledore looked grave. "We were rather hoping you could tell us. Harry Potter was attacked by at least two dementors this evening, about two hours ago. In Little Whinging, Surrey. Do you know anything about it?"

It was an uncomfortable moment. The first major crisis since his return to the Dark Lord, and Snape had been outside the circle that planned it. It was not an auspicious introduction to the Order of the Phoenix, and he had a feeling that Moody, and probably the others, would wonder if he'd simply not passed the information along.

"All I knew, and reported, was that they were trying to pull a couple of dementors away from Azkaban. My impression was that they were to be guards. Apparently I was mistaken. I believe I also warned you to watch Potter."

"True on both counts," said Dumbledore with a rueful smile. "And, in fact, Potter was being watched. Or should have been watched. We shall have to take up the matter with Mundungus. I regret that I put you in a position where you felt you had to defend your actions. I fear you have spoiled me, and I was beginning to think you could work miracles."

"No, sir. No miracles."

"So far, Severus, it has been an exciting evening. Mundungus Fletcher abandoned his post watching Potter to take care of some private business. Be sure you entrust nothing vital to him, by the way. It is good we know that now instead of finding it out later. Potter wandered away from home for some time, encountered his cousin Dudley, and the two boys were attacked by dementors not far from their house. Luckily Potter was able to conjure a patronus, and Arabella Figg got a message to me."

"Something else to consider," Moody pointed out. "That Fletcher's back-up at the time was a Squib. Not a good combination."

"True, Alastor. So far tonight I have been to the Ministry to persuade them not to expel Potter or destroy his wand, and I have had to threaten his aunt and force the Dursleys to keep the boy when his uncle wished to throw them out."

"Why do they have to keep him?"

"Ah, Severus, there is magic older than most wizards suspect, and the presence of his family has been protecting Potter for nigh on fourteen years. As long as his home is with them, he is reasonably safe. On a day to day basis, of course."

"Of course."

"When do you next return to London?"

"Tomorrow evening."

"Could you go earlier? We could use the information."

"Not without arousing suspicions. It's better if he believes that I told you I have no access to upper level information. That way, if I talk to people about the things they know, it won't look so much like I'm gathering information for you."

"I see. Well, handle it as you think best."

The next evening Snape returned to Croydon as part of his new routine. He was almost immediately summoned before the Dark Lord. Malfoy and Macnair were there as well.

Red eyes skimmed across the surface of Snape's brain as he knelt before his master. Satisfied, the Dark Lord sat back and began his questioning.

"You have heard of the botched attempt to take the Potter boy."

"Yes, Lord. Dumbledore informed me of it two hours after it happened."

"They were not expecting it?"

"No, Lord."

"Do they not watch him?"

"They have been watching him, but his guard left his post."

"What is the name of this careless enemy who unwittingly aids us?"

"I don't know."

"Why is Potter still at the home of his aunt? Do they not care to protect him better?"

"There is some ancient magic invoked by Dumbledore fourteen years ago that ensures Potter's safety as long as his home is with his family. There is some power attached to the protection of kin…"

"Enough. We are aware of this." The red eyes turned on Malfoy. "Bring Wormtail to us."

They knelt side by side, Snape and Pettigrew, and from Pettigrew's fidgeting it was clear that neither of them knew which was in more trouble, or even why the Dark Lord wished to question them together.

"Look at us," the Dark Lord commanded, and both held their heads up, still and obedient, to permit the eye contact. "Now, Potions Master, tell Wormtail what you have just told us."

Without looking at Pettigrew, Snape repeated his information. "There is an ancient magic, invoked by Dumbledore to keep the Potter boy safe. It involves a kin relationship and seems to be effective whether the protection is given from love or from a sense of duty. If the relative actively chooses to safeguard the boy, he is immune from many kinds of harm. His aunt Petunia agreed to give him a home, from a sense of duty, and as long as he calls that place his home and lives there part of the time, he is guarded."

"Did you know this, Wormtail? Were you aware of this magic, this powerful ancient magic, when you came to us with the location of the child we were seeking? Did you serve Dumbledore then, and lead us into a trap, where the loving protection of the mother would destroy the one who tried to destroy her son?"

As a desperate Pettigrew stammered and groveled, and protested both his innocence and loyalty, Snape felt his whole body growing cold. He watched Pettigrew and the Dark Lord as if from a distance, amazed at his own sudden detachment from the scene. _Could the Dark Lord be right?_

_How ruthless is Dumbledore when the stakes are high enough? When evil is parading in triumph, and your own soldiers are falling into darkness, do you sacrifice one innocent to save thousands of others? Did you step back from being Secret Keeper for this? Did you support Black in his argument about making Pettigrew the Secret Keeper for this? Is the Dark Lord right, and the whole thing planned so that the love of a dying mother would channel through her son to destroy your greatest enemy?_

Snape realized that he was staring at Pettigrew with loathing and disgust. The Dark Lord felt it and grimaced in what was meant for a smile.

"Yes, faithful servant, he is loathsome, is he not? But we believe he was sincere in his loyalty. Perhaps he was duped by Dumbledore, but that is an error of judgment, not a breach of faith. You are both dismissed."

Back in his laboratory, Snape found himself feeling dizzy and disoriented. Still in shock, his hands shaking, Snape went to his bookcase and found the little piece of paper he'd put there three days earlier. _Fool! To leave something like this in so obvious a place!_ Lighting a Bunsen burner, he rolled the paper into a spill and burned it into nothing.

_Fair is foul, and foul is fair. How does a muggle, a seventeenth century muggle, understand so much about the world of witches and wizards?_ There was no doubt in Snape's mind that the Dark Lord was foul, but could he honestly say the same about Dumbledore's being fair? The firm ground of certainty was changing into quicksand, and Snape felt himself sinking.

_What do I know for certain? Surprisingly little. I went to Dumbledore all those years ago because I couldn't stay with the Dark Lord. I assumed that because they were enemies, they were also different. No, that's not fair to Dumbledore. He was good to me. Usually. Did he deceive me? Did he manipulate me into doing something that he knew I would hate to further his own purposes?_

_Do I know that the Dark Lord has deceived us to manipulate us into doing his will? Yes, I know that for a fact. I know because it was done to me. Does Dumbledore deceive and manipulate us into doing his will? It's harder to pinpoint, but I don't think I could say 'no' to that question. Does it matter? Don't all people manipulate each other to some extent? Don't I do it, too? At what point does it cease being normal and become evil?_

_Let's say for a moment that Dumbledore wanted the Potter baby to destroy the Dark Lord. He could have fed me that prophecy. He could have ensured Pettigrew became Secret Keeper. He probably knew already that Pettigrew was working for the Dark Lord. The only thing wrong with the plan from Dumbledore's point of view is that it didn't work. It failed, and the Dark Lord is still here._

_Does my speculating on this and finding it logical mean that it's true? Clearly not. Just because you have a hypothesis that fits the facts doesn't make the hypothesis right. How can I prove or disprove this hypothesis? What do I look for, what do I need, to show me Dumbledore's true actions?_

There, suddenly – blessedly – the problem became scientific. He had facts, he had a hypothesis that might explain those facts, and now he needed to work out the steps, empirical steps, that would either prove or disprove his ideas.

Noting the time, how late in the evening it was, Snape left his laboratory for the streets of Croydon, and apparated back to Hogwarts.

The next couple of days were odd ones. Snape spent most of his time at Hogwarts and most of his energy on the Croydon headquarters. Finding excuses for being out of his laboratory was not easy, though it helped if he affected an air of being oblivious to the people around him while he moved from one place to another. His ears were open, his eyes were open, and he only worried that the others would suspect he was gathering information because of his too frequent forays into the corridors.

A meeting of the Order of the Phoenix was called for the night of the sixth of August, and Snape apparated there as soon as his duties in Croydon were completed, which was a little before eleven o'clock. The door was opened to him by Molly Weasley, who actually seemed disappointed to see him, and then he was ushered into the parlor, where he found a rather small group. Dumbledore, Hagrid, and Black were among the wizards there, but Moody and Lupin were not, along with several others who were absent. _It's all right. It isn't as if I have a lot to tell them._

Then suddenly, just as he'd started to give a report, the room began to fill up. Moody, Lupin, Diggle, Vance, Podmore, Doge, and Tonks entered, along with a wizard and a witch introduced as Kingsley Shacklebolt and Hestia Jones. Snape waited patiently while they greeted the others and were seated. The last to enter and seat herself was Molly Weasley.

"We seem to all be here at last," said Dumbledore. "Please proceed, Severus. We have kept you waiting long enough."

Snape started with a description of the organization of headquarters, then went on to more current events.

"Well… we're a bit shorthanded here in… London because Nott's been sent up to Glasgow, Yaxley to Cardiff, and Avery to Lincoln. New cells have been formed there, and they're attracting a decent number of people."

Shacklebolt raised his hand. "Is there a minimum number for a cell?"

"Half a dozen. If you can't get six, it isn't worth the trouble to send someone out. I got the impression that the Cardiff cell was quite small, but that Glasgow could be nearly a dozen, and Lincoln twice that, though some of them will go to York and Norwich when those cells open. The London headquarters is near fifty now, but mostly low rankers, about the level of common workers. The Dark Lord is having trouble getting in people with the status and background for the upper and middle ranks."

"Any idea why that's true?" Moody asked.

"So many of the old upper echelon either died or was shut up in Azkaban. New people, especially educated people, are leery of the Dark Lord until he proves he can be successful. Lots of people are waiting – 'on the sidelines,' as the Americans would say."

"Excuse me, Severus," said Dumbledore, "but why so many in the lower levels?"

"There's a lot of discontent. The major complaint I hear is that the Ministry doesn't care about the welfare of the wizard on the street, so to speak. Then, the better educated wizards can find work with the Ministry or with Gringotts , or go into business for themselves, but the poorer ones have trouble even finding muggle jobs. They think the Dark Lord will give them work and a sense of purpose."

"Fudge has a lot to answer for," commented Podmore, and the others agreed.

"Now, tell us about the attack on Potter," Dumbledore continued.

Snape thought for a moment. "That mystifies me. I can't find anyone who was or knows of anyone who was involved in that. That doesn't necessarily mean anything. I'm not in contact with the whole organization by any means, but it's odd that no one knows anything."

Lupin spoke up. "Do you mean it's too secret, that no one has any information?"

"On the contrary, everyone's talking about it. They just don't know who did it."

"And your Dark Lord…" prompted Dumbledore.

"Has said nothing specific. And the two top people just add to the mystery. Malfoy never says anything. He wouldn't divulge his feelings on his own mother's death. But Macnair got defensive when the subject of dementors and Potter came up. He wasn't in on it, and it bothers him,"

More fine points were discussed, and then the meeting was over. Black offered refreshments, but Snape pleaded fatigue, and this time Dumbledore didn't try to stop him. As the parlor emptied into the hall and the dining room, Snape became aware that the place was crawling with Weasleys. Molly, Charlie, Bill, George, Fred – Ron and Ginny had to be there somewhere. Snape was more pleased than ever that he was leaving early.

_All I need is to have to deal with Gred and Forge Weasley. My idea of heaven…not._ With great relief Snape left the house and apparated to Hogwarts, where McGonagall was waiting to let him in.

Over the next few days it gradually became more and more apparent that the daily commute between Hogwarts and Croydon was not going to be practicable. Snape found himself sleeping later and later into the morning and arriving in the Great Hall with barely enough time to grab a bite before breakfast was over. Flitwick was teasing him about getting lazy in his old age, and Sprout began suggesting a list of maladies that started out resembling fatigue and ended either with a funeral or with premature baldness. McGonagall, too, was concerned, but she didn't tease him about it.

"You really should go up and see Madam Pomfrey. You're looking much more peaked than usual. I'm telling you this from self-interest, mind you. It makes me positively tired just looking at you."

Madam Pomfrey was precise in her diagnosis and recommendation. "You've reached a physical and mental limit. It isn't just the ten days since we returned to school, its June and July and then August piled on top of it. Right now you're stretching yourself – you're not getting quite enough sleep, and your eating habits are affected – always a bad sign for you. You're an easy victim for any stray virus that decides it wants you. You could keep on like this indefinitely if all else remains the same. However, school is going to start in three weeks and your workload is going to increase spectacularly. Something's got to change."

Dumbledore agreed, and Snape considered how he was going to handle this when he returned to London.

Snape arrived in Croydon that afternoon rather than waiting until after dinner. He immediately put in a request to speak to Lucius Malfoy. He was told that he could meet with Malfoy at five o'clock.

At a quarter to five, Snape was waiting. Malfoy and Macnair were with the Dark Lord, and Snape was prepared to wait for some time. Luckily he didn't have to, for the two of them walked in together at ten past the hour.

"…more than willing to listen to my point of view. That's what comes of oiling the wheels all these years. A gift here, a donation there, and I have a voice in affairs even if it is unofficial." Malfoy entered first and nodded absently at Snape without interrupting his conversation.

"You buy us more time, Malfoy, and you've done a great service. Nothing like discrediting a witness to make people turn their backs on his story. Think it'll work?"

Malfoy smiled, more of a smirk than a smile. "Old Parliamentary trick. If you have a quorum, you can vote. If certain members arrive late, well…"

"You devious old dog! Best of luck to you!" Macnair, too, nodded to Snape, then left.

"What can I do for you, Severus?" Malfoy lounged comfortably in a chair near the window.

"I'd like to request a change of schedule once school starts. Right now it's no problem taking care of both my work at Hogwarts and my duties here, but come September with classes full time, plus grading papers, plus supervisory duties, I don't think I could handle it. Not and be in any condition to be useful."

"Ah, yes. The daily grind of the secondary school teacher. You do have my sympathy, you know. Working for a living – most tedious. How are your potions coming?"

"Everything will be well stocked by the end of August. The infirmary's half finished now, and operations hasn't requested much. Some of the smaller requisitions I could do in my office at Hogwarts during the autumn term."

"Excellent. I'll inform the Dark Lord. He's most content with your work so far, and the request is a reasonable one. I see no difficulty."

"Thank you, Mr. Malfoy."

"I'm always pleased to help an old acquaintance. You may go now."

"Yes, sir."

Snape arrived late that night at Hogwarts, and asked to see Dumbledore early the next morning.

Dumbledore was intrigued. "If certain members arrive late… Discrediting a witness… They did not mention what the meeting was about, I suppose?"

"No, sir. It just sounded like Malfoy was going to suggest a tactic that would allow a vote to be taken somewhere before everyone concerned arrived. To force a certain outcome pleasing to the Dark Lord."

"I shall be going down to London tomorrow morning for a little meeting. I may make a small alteration to my plans. Thank you, Severus."

Dumbledore left early for London the following morning, but Snape had no time to speculate on the headmaster's actions since he was almost immediately inundated with orders of eyes. Newt eyes, bat eyes, octopus eyes, and many-faceted bluebottle eyes. Eyes of every size, shape, and color. Fragile things in delicate brine solutions – twenty-four gross of them packed into dry ice in six large cases – each jar had to be examined for damage before storing them in a special locker built out under the lake to keep them cool. It was a major reason why the Potions classroom was in the dungeon.

Snape worked feverishly all day, not even stopping for lunch. He had to work quickly enough that the eyes didn't rise in temperature, and methodically enough that he was sure he'd looked at every one. It was a simple, yet taxing job.

By supper time, Snape was finished. He went to the Great Hall feeling content with the day's work, for the eye shipment was the biggest single job he had getting ready for classes. Dumbledore was back from London, sitting at the Ravenclaw table playing checkers with Flitwick and looking pleased with his day's work, too.

After supper, Snape caught Dumbledore's eye as he was leaving the Hall. Dumbledore rose and followed, though Snape didn't wait for him. As Snape descended the hill, Dumbledore watched, opening and closing the gate into Hogsmeade to allow Snape to apparate to Croydon.

Snape was met at the door to the Croydon headquarters by Macnair himself. "The Dark Lord wants you. Now!"

Macnair seized Snape's arm and pulled him down the stairs and along the underground corridor to the interview room. The room was dark, with a beam of light creating a circle in the middle. There Snape was pushed to his knees, where he waited, frightened now. Malfoy came in and stood behind him, next to Macnair.

Then the Dark Lord appeared.

"You will explain to us now why Dumbledore chose to arrive early for Potter's hearing, and why you chose not to pass this information on."

_What hearing?_ The thought flitted uncontrolled across the surface of Snape's brain, and he instantly tried to suppress it. That was an error, for pain – cruel and unyielding – cascaded through him, and he gasped and writhed with the agony of it.

"You will not attempt to hide your thoughts from us."

"Lord, forgive me. I will not again, but I was surprised." The pain receded.

"Bartemius was mistaken in you, we see. You do not have so much control over your thoughts as he believed. Now, you will answer."

"Lord, I know nothing of a hearing. I had no information to pass on." Now the pain started again, small and menacing, a tickle, a promise of what would come if the wrong answer was given.

"You knew he was coming to London."

"Yes, but not why."

"You knew Potter had a hearing at the Ministry this morning to answer charges on the use of magic."

"No, Lord, I did not." The pain began to enlarge and twist inside him like a malevolent worm.

"What use are you to us if you do not know the information we require?"

"Lord, I will try… No!" Snape dropped forward onto his hands, perspiration beading his forehead as the pain notched upward. "Lord, I will… I will get you what you need, only…"

"Only…?" repeated the Dark Lord, unrelenting in his torment.

"Only I'm no legilimens. I can't read what you need or what they hide. I stumble in the dark. If you could tell me what I must look for…"

"Enough. Lucius, this one is innocent of betrayal. He did not know, and therefore could not warn. His crime is ignorance. Severus, you will return to your work. When you have completed your tasks, you will go back to Hogwarts, but each night before you do, you will check with Lucius to see if there is anything specific that you must watch for."

"Yes, Lord. Thank you, Lord." And the Dark Lord was gone.

Malfoy helped Snape to his feet. "Hard luck that. He was furious when he heard Dumbledore'd outfoxed Fudge and his plans. I suggest you tell us everything, just to be safe. Tell us if Dumbledore blows his nose."

xxxxxxxxxx

"I slipped. I can't believe I slipped like that. I could've died. He said Potter had a hearing, and I let my reaction show like any sieve-brained idiot. Then to compound it – I tried to hide it. I'm just thankful that what I released showed him I wasn't hiding something worse."

Dumbledore poured a glass of mead. It was near midnight, and Snape was grateful that the headmaster was willing to sit up and listen. He himself was too hyper to go to bed or even relax.

"It was all for the best, then. Your slip proved your innocence, and he is more convinced than ever that you cannot hide things from him. I would say it worked out quite well."

"Dumb luck! What if the thing I let slip proved my guilt? I wouldn't be here talking to you right now. You can't trust me with anything, sir. I could just as easily give him your secrets…"

"Calm down, Severus. I believe you are making too much of this. Do you remember your first interview with Riddle? You were what? Eighteen? Nineteen?"

"I remember. How do you…?"

"You told me. We spent quite a few hours together in Hagrid's hut that day, and you told me many things – I recall you were somewhat distraught – but your account of that interview is one thing I shall never forget."

Snape had drained the glass, too nervous to be aware of what he was doing. Dumbledore refilled it.

"You were young and surrounded by friends who were welcoming you into a fraternity, a fellowship. You burned with devotion, and you opened your mind to him freely and trustingly. And what happened? Without your even being aware, your own mind closed down to him with a completeness that I certainly cannot break through, and I doubt he could either. And it was done without any volition on your part. Involuntary self-protection. Now an occlumens who operates with such unerring instinct is not going to slip and spill fatal information casually. I think something in your brain knew that open honesty at that moment was beneficial. I have complete faith in your ability to shield my little secrets."

The combination of Dumbledore's reassurance, his own fatigue, and the mead had a relaxing effect on Snape. He went down to his own rooms, fell asleep easily, and slept dreamlessly for the rest of the night.

There was another meeting at Grimmauld Place a week later. Snape apparated from Croydon to Kensington Gardens to the nearby alley at about ten-thirty. Black opened the door to his knock and stood aside to let him in. "Snape," he said in greeting.

"Black," was Snape's response. He looked around. Mrs. Black's portrait was blessedly quiet, and there was change in the air. Much of the smell of mildew and rot was gone. "I see you're getting along with the cleaning."

"It occupies the time."

"I envy you that time. I could use more."

"It isn't by choice."

"Of course not."

Lupin and Molly Weasley came out of the parlor at that moment, and the somewhat barbed conversation ended. They went into the parlor where late refreshments were being served.

"Tea?" said Black. "Maybe a sandwich."

"No, thank you. I had something before I came."

"Just a bite. It's really quite tasty."

"No, really. Please don't put yourself out on my account."

Dumbledore intervened before daggers were drawn. "Gentlemen, I suggest you sit down. We are about to begin, and I am sure we all would like to get business over with as soon as possible. There is a lot to cover, and it is late."

Snape took a seat next to Tonks, while Black leaned against the doorjamb. Each studiously avoided looking at the other during the first part of the meeting.

"Now," said Dumbledore, "there is the matter of the circumstances surrounding the hearing at the Ministry on the question of Harry's using magic illegally."

The assembled wizards and witches nodded in anticipation. All had heard something, and none everything, of the matter.

"First, of course, the very fact that Harry would be arraigned before a tribunal for defending himself from dementors is of concern. The Ministry does not wish to concede the existence of the dementors. They wish to accuse Harry of inventing the threat in order to indulge in a gratuitous display of magic ability in a spot where there were no witnesses except his cousin Dudley. Now Dudley Dursley is well aware that Harry is a wizard, and therefore displays of magic before him do not constitute the serious breach of the law that they would before muggles unaware of our world, and yet the Ministry chose to go to extreme lengths of review of the offense and potential punishment."

There was a general murmur against the Ministry at this, but it was quickly followed by silence.

"Next came the rather blatant attempts on the part of the Ministry to circumvent the process of the law by trying to make Harry miss his hearing on the twelfth and lose by default, and by trying to ensure that he had no legal support nor any witnesses to back him up. An owl was sent to Arthur Weasley advising him of a change in time of the hearing, but it seems to have been intended to miss him, to arrive after he had departed his residence to go to work that morning. The Ministry claim to have sent an owl to me, but it seems never to have arrived. I should now like Severus to give his information."

Having finally realized the fullness of his own role in the previous week's events, Snape spoke up with some confidence. "On the evening of the tenth I had reason to ask to speak with Lucius Malfoy at our… London headquarters. I overheard him say to someone else that they were planning an old Parliamentary trick to force a vote when certain members were sure to arrive late. I informed Professor Dumbledore of this. It seemed to be connected to a strong desire of the Dark Lord to have his return as little publicized as possible while we… they build up strength."

Dumbledore continued. "Lucius Malfoy was present at the Ministry the morning of the twelfth. I would not be surprised to learn that he was there specifically to learn the outcome of Harry's hearing. Severus."

"The evening of the twelfth, when I arrived in… London for routine duties, I was immediately brought before the Dark Lord for interrogation. Specifically, he wished to know why Professor Dumbledore had arrived early for the hearing, and why I hadn't reported his intended early arrival to headquarters."

Tonks turned to Snape, concern in her eyes. "Interrogation?" she whispered. He affected not to hear.

"So now," Dumbledore concluded, "we know the extent of our problem and our danger. It is not just that the Ministry does not wish Potter's story of the return of – excuse me Severus – Voldemort made public. It is that Voldemort is aware of the internal workings of the Ministry, and that he has ways of persuading the Ministry to act according to his wishes."

"Do we have any indication that anyone in the Ministry is actively working for You-Know-Who, or is it just that they're being manipulated?" asked Shacklebolt. Dumbledore nodded to Snape.

"I've heard nothing of one of our… his people being 'in' the Ministry. The impression I have is more that we… they have influence, not an actual presence."

"Snape, me boyo," rumbled Moody from a seat near the unlit fireplace, "I suggest you stop fretting about the 'usses' and the 'thems.' Just say 'we', 'us', and 'our.' You got enough to worry about without tippy-toeing around this lot."

Snape smiled wryly and nodded his thanks. A general conversation ensued about how to deal with members of the Ministry, and it was concluded that the Ministry employees among them – specifically Arthur Weasley and Tonks, would try to pinpoint leaks.

As the meeting was breaking up, Snape found himself once again next to Black.

"You know," said Black, "you aren't the only one in this group who's at risk for the work they do."

"I'll remember that," replied Snape, "the next time I'm kneeling in front of the Dark Lord waiting to be punished. Note to self: Black's at risk, too."

"You know I'm not talking about me!"

"Odd, then, that you're the only one to say anything."

"You don't need to rub people's face in it."

"Sorry! Didn't realize that was what I was doing. Should I have said I was brought before the Dark Lord for tea and crumpets? Would that soothe your sensibilities more?"

Dumbledore was suddenly there. "Time to go back to Hogwarts, Severus. Shall we make our apologies and head for home and bed?"

Snape and Black nodded to each other in exaggerated politeness, and Snape followed Dumbledore out of the house.

xxxxxxxxxx

It was less than a week before the train from King's Cross would arrive, and Snape was in his laboratory setting up a simple distillation apparatus he'd just acquired. During the time that he concentrated on the tubes and clamps, a random thought had surfaced – that he was doing something he loved for someone he despised, and something he hated for someone he respected. _Wouldn't it be easier if the Dark Lord was the headmaster and Dumbledore the rebel? Then I could chuck the teaching job once and for all, and life would be good._ Such thoughts were dangerous luxuries here, though, and he hid it away.

A lower level messenger knocked, then stuck his head around the open door. "The Dark Lord wants you," he said simply, then left without ever having stepped into the room.

Puzzled at the unexpected summons, Snape nonetheless glanced quickly around before leaving to be sure everything there could be left unattended. Then he hurried to the interview chamber.

Malfoy joined him soon after, and together they waited. Neither spoke, since speculation on the Dark Lord's wishes was frowned upon, but Snape took comfort from the fact that Malfoy seemed quite relaxed and untroubled. _So this is probably a new task rather than displeasure over something that's happened._

The room was large, bare, and dimly lit. Walls, ceiling, and floor were painted black so that there was a sense that it had no dimensions at all. The only furniture was a large throne-like chair where the Dark Lord would appear. Snape hadn't seen the whole room before, since he'd only been there for interrogation when the contained circle of light where he knelt blocked any view of the rest. Today there was no circle of light.

The Dark Lord came. Suddenly he was there, seated in the chair before them. Snape made a movement forward, his first reaction being to kneel, but Malfoy took his arm and indicated he should stand. There was a pause as the Dark Lord surveyed them.

"Lucius tells us you are weak." The statement was like a long hiss, but neutral in its tone.

Unsure what this portended or how to react, Snape said simply, "Yes, Lord."

The red eyes narrowed and the slitted nostrils flared as the Dark Lord chuckled. It was not a pleasant sound. "You were right, Lucius. No protest, no defensiveness, just an honest statement of limitations. Such do not rise in our service, Potions Master, but they are useful tools, and a wise artist takes care of his tools."

No answer was expected to this, and Snape was silent.

"You have asked to be relieved of some of the pressure of your duties. You are too weak to sustain the level of tasks that I have assigned. It is a matter of physical limitation. You are a half-breed?"

"Yes, Lord."

"Honesty is commendable, but weakness must not be coddled. It must be punished to discourage the merely sluggardly. What should your punishment be, Potions Master?"

Confused, Snape replied, "Whatever my Lord thinks is best."

"Even death?"

"Yes, Lord."

"Good. Know this – we do not grant your request to be excused from service because of your weakness."

Struggling to control his disappointment and bewilderment, Snape said only, "Thank you, Lord."

In the pause that followed, the red eyes caught and held his own. Snape felt the scan that flickered over his brain and poked at his thoughts.

"Circumstances have arisen, however," continued the Dark Lord, "that we wish to address by changing your assignment. The Ministry of Magic is displeased with the lack of discipline at Hogwarts. They are sending a functionary to take an active position there, to evaluate the possibility of a total reorganization of the school. This person is not one of our people, but Lucius informs us that her views and beliefs are such that they can play into our hands. You have a delicate job, Severus. You must not let her know that you answer to us, or even that you know we are here. You must support her without appearing to support her too much, so as not to arouse suspicion. And you must report to us everything that happens at Hogwarts. You will cease from this moment your daily attendance here, and you will report once a week, on Saturday evenings."

"Yes, Lord," answered Snape, immensely relieved.

"Lucius, you will brief Severus on details." And then the Dark Lord was gone.

xxxxxxxxxx

On arrival back at Hogsmeade, Snape sent his patronus with, in addition to asking to be admitted, a request to speak to Dumbledore at once. The gargoyle staircase was open, waiting for him, and Dumbledore had a small plate of sandwiches and tea.

"And maybe a glass of sherry? I hope this is about Dolores Umbridge."

Snape stopped, his hand not quite touching the sherry glass. "You know already? The Dark Lord's information isn't in advance of events as much as he thinks."

"I learned this afternoon, but not from the Ministry. I have people there, too, remember. So both of us are in advance of the official announcement. Is your information first- or secondhand."

"Some of it from the Dark Lord himself. I was called to him, and I have an assignment. Dolores Umbridge, in fact, is my assignment."

"Tell me about the whole interview."

"It was strange. I'd asked Malfoy for permission to go to… London less frequently once the term started, and the Dark Lord called this weakness. He said weakness could not be 'coddled,' and I thought he was going to punish me. Instead he denied the request, then gave me the Umbridge assignment and said I wouldn't have to go to… London as frequently. So in effect he granted my request after all."

Dumbledore smiled. "It is good to know he is still vulnerable. Poor Riddle… so insecure in his position that he has to beat it into you that you have no influence on his decisions. 'I am not doing this because you asked, Severus, but because I have my own reasons.' Oh, and I have deduced that his headquarters are in the Greater London Metropolitan Area, but not what we traditionally think of as London. One of the outer boroughs, maybe?"

"How…?"

"You keep trying to say the name, and all that comes out is London." Dumbledore was gazing placidly into Snape's eyes. "So I would guess it was Barnet… or Harrow… or Hounslow… or Bromley… or Croydon… or – ah! Croydon. See how nicely you shut down – without even trying. Now, tell me more about Umbridge… I am sorry, I have upset you."

"I just never realized before how easy I was to manipulate."

"No, Severus, do not think that. The only reason I was able to see it was because you wanted to tell me. Now, Umbridge."

"They're looking for anything they can find to discredit you or Potter. The two of you are the source of all the rumors about the return of the Dark Lord, and to admit that's happened is political suicide for Fudge and his upper level of administrators. So her job is to get Potter. And you if possible. The Dark Lord wants me to be marginally helpful to her, but not under any circumstances to let her know of his presence. That would stop her from playing into his hands. I doubt she'll trust me, though. Lucius says she's rabid about blood purity. Hates mongrels of any kind. She's particularly looking forward to sacking Hagrid. And I'd keep Flitwick away from her, too."

"I shall keep that in mind. Hagrid is not here at any rate, so that is one less source of friction at the beginning of the term."

"They want her in the Dark Arts job. They're afraid any other instructor might warn the students about the Dark Lord, or at least not stop the students from gossiping and spreading rumors. Part of her job is to prevent them from focusing on him at all. This is one of the things that suits the Dark Lord at this point. Until the organization is set up, anything that keeps the general wizarding world from paying attention to us is an asset."

"Do you have any idea who Riddle's source of information in the Ministry is?"

"None. Except Malfoy, of course. He's spent the last fourteen years building up a network of contacts, and now he's benefiting from all the hard work. He can just about go anywhere in the Ministry and talk to anyone, and no one stops him or is even suspicious of his motives. I'd advise our own people to be very cautious around him. They assume Arthur Weasley is working for you, and Moody, of course, but they don't have any solid information about any of the others. Not in the Ministry."

"Thank you, Severus. This is all most useful. It is past midnight now. We should both of us be getting to bed."

The week's respite that Snape had hoped to have was not to be. On Tuesday the mark on his arm began to throb, and he went at once to Dumbledore.

"I'm being summoned."

"You should leave at once."

"It isn't an urgent summons. More a 'come as soon as you can, but don't be obvious' summons. I have no idea why. It could mean I'm in trouble."

"Think of it as a chance to collect more information."

"Very comforting."

The interview was not long, and once again Snape was permitted to stand rather than kneel. He took that as a good sign.

"You brought us a prophecy sixteen years ago."

"Yes, Lord"

"Repeat the prophecy."

"I'm no longer certain I remember the exact phrasing." Pain had already begun, soft and persistent in the center of Snape's being. As he spoke, it prodded him toward the right words. "I think it was, 'The one with the strength… power to defeat… vanquish the Dark Lord approaches… Born to them… those who have thrice… defied him, born as the seventh month… dies…'"

"This is not the complete prophecy."

"No. I was interrupted and prevented from hearing the rest."

"Who does know the entire prophecy?"

"Only Dumbledore."

"The seer does not remember her prophecies."

"No, Lord. She is entranced when she speaks, and therefore oblivious to them."

"Has she prophesied since?"

"Once to my knowledge. To predict the return of Petti… of Wormtail to you."

"Does she remember that prophecy?"

"No, Lord."

"Return now to Hogwarts."

"Thank you, Lord."

xxxxxxxxxx

"So, he was interested in the prophecy."

"Yes. He wanted to know the entire thing, only I don't know it. And he knows that I don't know it. I can't help wondering why he even asked."

"Nonetheless, that he is interested is very valuable information. There are other places he can investigate. It is best you not know of them, but I shall try to have them guarded. Advise me again if you learn of anything."

"Certainly, Headmaster."

xxxxxxxxxx

_Friday, September 1, 1995 (the day before the first quarter)_

Early in the morning on September first the summons came again. _He knows the Umbridge woman is arriving today. He knows the students are arriving today. Why does he send for me today?_

Snape went at once to Dumbledore. "Something's happened. It still isn't an urgent summons, but I can't ignore it. I have to go."

Dumbledore looked calm. "The last time it was only for a couple of hours. I dare say you'll be back by lunchtime. Professor Umbridge is not due until just before the feast, so you will miss nothing. Good luck."

The moment Snape entered the Croydon headquarters, he was seized by three Death Eaters he didn't know and his wand taken from him. They then hustled him along the main corridor, down a flight of stairs at the rear of the building, and into a small basement room with a chair, a table, and a dim light in the ceiling. There he waited for three hours, growing more nervous by the minute.

When the door opened, it was only to admit Macnair, followed by the Carrows. Alecto smiled sweetly at Snape and drew an index finger across her throat.

Snape had risen at their entrance, and Macnair took the chair, conjuring two more for Alecto and Amycus. He motioned for Snape to stand at the foot of the table, opposite him, then leaned back with a speculative smirk on his face.

"Slipped up this time, didn't you, Potions Master. He's not happy with you. Not at all, my dear, not at all. You've been talking to people. Telling them things you shouldn't. I wouldn't be surprised if you've seen the sun for the last time."

"I've done nothing wrong."

"No? Mr. High and Mighty up there in your little kingdom where the rest of us can't go – you think you're better than us. We have your measure now. You've sold us out. You've been selling us out for some time, but now your game is over because now we have proof."

Snape was trying to glimpse behind Macnair's eyes, trying to see some sign of bluffing. His own heart had speeded up, and he breathed as if tight bands circled his chest. Something had happened. Something very bad had happened. "The Dark Lord knows I'm faithful."

"The Dark Lord knows you've cheated him of something he wants very much. His anger is great. Your punishment could deflect that anger away from the rest of us. You're not wriggling out of this one, Snake. Ha! If you could, I'd send my own people up to you for wriggling lessons. No, Dumbledore's sold you out, Snake. He used you, and he dumped you, and now you get to pay."

Macnair rose and came to stand beside Snape, his face close, his breath hot on Snape's neck. "And after he finds you guilty, he's giving you to me. I don't like Cruciatus curses, Snakey. They don't linger with you long enough. I break bones. Kneecaps." He ran a finger down Snape's spine. "Remember last time? I bet you were feeling that for a while. Anything I want – I just can't kill you. That pleasure belongs to the Dark Lord. Not that I would want to kill you. Spoils the fun, killing."

On either side of Snape, Alecto and Amycus were grinning. Snape didn't answer. There was nothing to say. _It's about the prophecy. Dumbledore did something with that information, and the Dark Lord knows it could only come from me. He could have warned me. Dumbledore could have warned me…_

A knock at the door, and a Death Eater looked in. "Bring him now," was all he said.

They shoved Snape out the door and pushed him along the narrow corridor to the interview room. _I can't run. I can't fight. Both are signs of guilt. Keep to the story. Nothing wrong. I did nothing wrong._

There were others there, but Snape couldn't see them beyond the circle of light where he knelt. The Dark Lord appeared and the pain was like the time before – a hint, a promise, a reminder… Red eyes filled his vision.

"We have a mystery for you to unravel, Potions Master. You like mysteries."

Snape let the images cascade into his consciousness: Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, Peter Wimsey, Brother Cadfael – what could the Dark Lord care about these? The eyes bored deeper, raking through the places where doors had been found before.

"Tell us of the Ministry of Magic."

"They make and enforce the laws…" Snape doubled over suddenly, clutching his stomach.

"No schoolboy lessons. Tell us of the Ministry. What is inside?"

"I've never been anywhere inside except Law Enforcement. Years ago."

"Who works there?"

Snape thought of Fudge and Umbridge, but knew that answer would raise the Dark Lord's anger. "The Weasleys," he blurted out, "Arthur and Percy, Sturgis Podmore…"

"You know of Podmore."

"I told you of him before. I've met him three times."

"Then you will be sorry to hear he is arrested."

Twelve hours later Snape apparated back to Hogsmeade. For a moment he stood next to a tree on the outskirts of town, then his legs buckled and he slid to the ground, leaning his head against its trunk. _I've been here before. Déjà vu all over again._ With some effort he forced himself to study the stars in the night sky.

_Only about nine o'clock. They're in the middle of the feast. I can't send him a message, not there in front of everyone. When? Midnight? Three hours. I have to wait three hours._

Time ticked by, and Snape drifted in and out of a dreamlike state, a nightmare state, until he heard a woman's voice, "Professor? Professor? Is that you?" She was whispering as if afraid to be overheard.

"Here," Snape said quietly, and she came and knelt beside him. It was Madame Rosmerta from the Three Broomsticks.

"Dumbledore said you might be coming in, and you might need help. Do you think you can stand?"

Snape nodded, and she got him to his feet and through the village to her inn. There she put him onto a cot in the back storeroom. "You just rest a while. I'm going to leave a message for Dumbledore."

A few minutes later she was back with blankets, pillows, tea, hot soup, and bread. Snape accepted them gratefully, managed to eat some of the soup, and then quite suddenly fell asleep on the cot. It had, after all, been a long day.

He woke up before dawn in Dumbledore's office.

xxxxxxxxxx

"He was going to kill me! Not right away of course, but they had the knives sharpened! Do you have any idea what I just went through? Dragged in front of him, locked in a cell, dragged out again, punished, my head throbbing from the mind probes! Macnair going on in loving detail about what he was going to be allowed to do to me!"

"But you made it. You are with us again. Have a glass of…"

Snape stepped forward and struck the mead from Dumbledore's hand. "Don't treat me like this! I just spent the worst day of my entire life, and you're not going to just kiss it and make it better! You did that to me! When I left here yesterday morning you knew what I was walking into! Good luck, he says! See you at the feast, he says! Were you already planning my funeral?"

"I am sorry. You are right. It was unforgivable."

His eyes narrowing, Snape drew himself to his full height and stared up into Dumbledore's eyes. "Don't you dare try to take my anger away from me, too," he said icily. "I have a right to be angry with you. You can't deny me that."

"You are right, of course. Be angry for as long as it takes you to work this through. And yet you are with us now, so some other decision was reached in your case besides transforming you into Macnair's private playground."

"I'm on probation."

"And what does probation entail?"

"Good, solid, usable information. Something they can use to plan operations that don't turn sour at the last minute. I have to give them someone in the Order. Or something so valuable it's worth the same thing. He's tired of wasting time with me."

"I thought your potions work was valuable on its own. Or your spell work. Or the defense lessons."

"They would be if I was in London all the time. But he's letting me stay here at Hogwarts. He feels it should be worth something."

"What exactly will happen if you do not deliver what he wants?"

"I suppose it depends on the circumstances. This time I was lucky. More than one person had the information that he was interested in the prophecy. It couldn't definitely be narrowed down to any one of us, and he had to weigh future value against the satisfaction of present vengeance. If he hadn't thought I'd be useful, he'd've killed me anyway. If any other leak comes back to me, I'm dead. If I can't get him the information he wants, I'll be called back to London permanently, chained in my laboratory, and worked like a slave. Neither prospect is inviting."

"We shall have to come up with information to give him, then. Do you think information about Professor Umbridge would satisfy him?"

"If it included inside tidbits about the Ministry of Magic, it would be better."

"Good. Let us commence Operation Umbridge. You will like her, Severus. Just the type you love to deflate. Oh, and Severus…"

"Yes, Headmaster?"

"Would you like that glass of mead now?"


	49. Chapter 49 – Operation Umbridge

**Yes. That Is My Job: Operation Umbridge**

_[Note: In Order of the Phoenix, the students attend their first classes the day after they arrive, but in fact September 1, 1995 was a Friday. I have elected to utilize the weekend.]_

Snape went down to his dungeon office where he spent the two hours before breakfast trying to reorder his thoughts and calm his nerves. Breakfast, however, brought a whole new range of speculation as he checked out the familiar and the new faces at the Slytherin table.

_Dear Draco. I didn't see your father all day yesterday. Do you… does he know I was hauled before the Dark Lord? Or was he kept out of the loop because he sponsors me and was in danger of being tarred with the same brush? You're certainly reporting back to him, so I'll have to watch my step. Especially now that I'm on probation, and Lucius is probably wanting to distance himself from me._

McGonagall came and sat with him. "I was worried when you weren't back for the feast."

"I'm glad someone was."

"That bad a day?"

"I've had better." There was silence, and Snape glanced up at McGonagall. "Sorry. Shouldn't be flip about it. It was probably the worst it's ever been. I really thought for a while that he was going to…"

"I take it you're Professor Snape."

Snape looked around, but didn't have to look up. Dolores Umbridge was at eye level from where he sat, even though she was standing. "I'm Snape," he replied. "Do I have the honor of addressing Professor Umbridge?"

"You do. And what was it that you really thought he was going to do?"

"Survive the night," said Snape without batting an eye. "Which is what made his passing right before dawn such a terrible shock. As I was just telling Professor McGonagall, my great-uncle Tiberius practically raised me from a boy. Hard to think he's no longer with us."

"That was why you weren't with us last evening. I wondered. I'd had such glowing reports of your dedication to the school and to sound teaching that it was something of a surprise to find you truant."

Snape looked away to hide the sudden emotion he felt at the too recent death of Great-uncle Tiberius. "Ah yes, the children," he said, with just a trace of noble melancholy. "They are, after all, the reason we go on."

McGonagall was pursing her mouth as if she'd just bitten into a very sour pickle, but she always looked like that when she was trying not to laugh.

Umbridge glanced from one to the other, opened her mouth, thought better of it, and cleared her throat with a little cough. "Hem, I'd like you to drop by my office this morning, say around ten o'clock. There are some things we need to discuss." She nodded to both of them and waddled off with a self-important air.

The two professors watched her go in shocked disbelief. "Who does she think she is – headmistress?" said McGonagall. "Ordering you around like that."

"Maybe she thinks she's the Special Assistant to the Minister of Magic."

"You mean you're going? Dancing to her tune?"

"I'm not sure what her tune is."

"She made a speech last night. She interrupted Dumbledore in the middle of a sentence and insisted on making a speech. A very boring speech."

"Oh, do tell. She must be planning to show us the error of our ways."

"She believes in preserving the time-honored traditions of our people, but throwing out what has not proven to pass the test of time, and yet she disapproves of progress for progress' sake."

"In other words, she gets to decide what stays and what goes."

"As bald-faced a threat as I have ever seen in my life. You're not going, are you."

"I have to. I can't afford to have more than one Dark Lord angry with me at the same time."

At precisely ten o'clock, as requested, Snape knocked on the door of the Dark Arts office on the second floor. Dolores Umbridge's voice responded, "Come in."

The room was flooded with light, for it seemed Umbridge had opened every curtain and drape in the room. _I wonder if she's aware that the potions on the lower shelves need to be kept out of direct sunlight or they lose their potency? She'll find out, but not from me._

"Ah, Professor. Hem, I've been looking forward to meeting you. Pity you couldn't be there at the feast."

"If it had been anything less serious, I wouldn't have allowed it to interfere with my duties at Hogwarts. I'm thankful I have the weekend to order things properly in Slytherin house." Umbridge was sitting at her desk, but had not invited Snape to sit, so he stood in front of her like an errant student. _The analogy with the Dark Lord was more à propos than I'd thought. Like the interview chamber, only light instead of dark._

"I've had excellent reports of you. You're one of the teachers who sticks to time-honored ways of doing things. No newfangled innovations."

"It's something of the nature of potions. If you must stir seven times anti-clockwise, changing it to six will not help you."

"Exactly! Change doesn't help."

Snape forbore to comment. After a moment of silence, Umbridge began to tap on the desk with her quill. Ï hope," she said at last, "that there are other teachers here who share your dedication to our hallowed traditions."

"All of them, insofar as I am aware."

"What about Professor McGonagall?"

"A lady of incredible fortitude. I wouldn't take her job for all the tea in China."

"Is Transfiguration so hard?"

"No, but Head of Gryffindor house is. They're not chosen for intelligence, logic, diplomacy, or any other disciplined trait, but for bravery. They therefore tend en masse to opt for confrontation in any situation. If there's a fight, Gryffindor drew wands first. She keeps them under control. I'm not sure how she manages it."

"What about Professor Sprout?"

"An excellent herbologist. I depend upon her for much of my yearly supplies. Plants are something else that you can't overly innovate with."

"And Flitwick? I understand he's part… goblin?"

Snape was bristling now. Flitwick had been his Charms teacher and his cribbage partner for many years now, and he was beginning to really resent Dolores Umbridge. "I believe that is correct. Goblins have a spectacular ability with charms that's lost on most other races. If we didn't have Flitwick, we'd have to settle for a mediocre wizard."

"I hear that you, too, are a half-breed…"

"Half-blood. I am sure you're aware of the difference."

"Still, any pollution of the pure bloodlines…"

"Strengthens the species. You have studied biology, have you not? Too pure a bloodline exaggerates undesirable traits…"

"I'm sure I don't know what you mean."

"I'm sure you don't."

"I was hoping… Lucius Malfoy led me to believe… that you would be more cooperative."

"Not if it means the watering down and destruction of the traditional curriculum at Hogwarts. Professors McGonagall, Flitwick, and Sprout are key to this school. They teach nothing that you would object to, and replacing them in the short term is beyond the scope of imagination. There are no replacements available."

The quill resumed its tapping. _Idiot, you have an assignment with this woman. You're supposed to support her. Remember yesterday._

"What about Dumbledore?"

"What about Dumbledore?"

"Is he as dedicated to the traditions of Hogwarts as his teachers?"

"I would have thought so. Until…"

"Ah! Until when?"

"The Headmaster seems somewhat preoccupied lately."

"Professor Snape, did you know you had a file at the Ministry? A rather thick file at that."

"No, I didn't."

"It seems that many years ago you were named as a Death Eater during the roundups and trials, but Dumbledore spoke up for you, and you were exonerated. You owe him quite a lot, don't you?"

_The woman really does look like a toad. A squat, ugly toad with a long sticky tongue…_ "I suppose I do."

"Your perspective on this would be valuable to me. Since you were, hem, one of You-Know-Who's workers, you would certainly be in a position to give authoritative information about his return. Do you believe this story of Dumbledore's that You-Know-Who has come back?"

"The headmaster is deeply concerned about the safety of our world."

"Your loyalty is commendable, but you didn't answer the question."

Snape looked Umbridge in the eyes. _Funny how so many people assume eye contact equates with honesty._ "I know of no evidence that would substantiate the headmaster's claim."

"Then you don't believe he's come back."

"No. I don't."

Umbridge leaned back in the chair, a smug look on her face. "That's what I was hoping to hear. This story is a concoction of Dumbledore's, using that poor deluded boy as a pawn, in order to take power in the wizarding world. He wants to control the Ministry, you know."

"That's not something I would expect from him."

"Oh, you don't know Dumbledore. He's crafty. Did you know he's already collecting a group of fanatic followers around him, dedicated to convincing the general populace of the truth of his sham threat?"

"No… that's scarcely credible. People are surely not that gullible." Snape had trouble repressing the ghost of a grin at the thought of Molly Weasley being described as fanatic. Moody, yes, but Molly…

"If Dumbledore manages to raise a force, an army, around him, he could become a bigger threat to the order and safety of our world than You-Know-Who ever was. He needs to be discredited and exposed for the ambitious, power-hungry manipulator he is. That boy Potter needs to be discredited as well. He's in it for the glory, and he's easily duped."

"I certainly agree with you about Potter, but I'd prefer to stay out of the conflict. My classes take up quite enough of my time."

"I know you don't like me, Professor Snape. You have to understand, however, that this is a matter of overriding importance. I'll expect your support in my work, even if it interferes with your daily tasks."

"Yes, ma'am."

"You may go."

Snape closed the office door before he let out a long breath. A line from an old movie came to him. 'That girl, she's one. – A witch? You just never learned to spell.' It suited Dolores Umbridge – only a witch because of a slight spelling error.

_Step one accomplished. She thinks she can manipulate me into helping her. She also knows about the Order, so maybe I can use her or the Ministry to accomplish another of the Dark Lord's tasks without anyone really getting hurt._

The rest of the day was spent interviewing the first years, meeting with the Quidditch team, briefing the prefects, of whom Malfoy was now one (a ploy to placate Lucius), and addressing the entire house in the hour before dinner. It was then, his school duties completed, that Snape had to consider the next, bigger problem.

_He said to come once a week on Saturday evenings. I was there Tuesday, and I was there Friday, but the probability is that he still expects me there tonight. Better to be overly zealous than lax, especially now._

Going in to dinner, Snape decided to try something. Catching Dumbledore's eye, he projected a thought – _Can we talk before I leave, not in your office?_ Dumbledore dipped his head once in a nod and continued his conversation with McGonagall.

After eating, Snape rose and left the Great Hall. Dumbledore waited a few minutes, then followed, meeting Snape at the top of the path down the hill.

"So you're going again tonight?"

"He expects it."

"Have you decided on something to sell him?"

"Yes. You."

Dumbledore's eyes widened. "Are you sure that is wise?"

"Umbridge wants power. I'm going to advise him to get it for her."

"Ah. So I must play along."

"Or not. As you choose. But expect trouble from the Ministry if he heeds me."

"It is good of you to warn me."

"It's more than you deserve."

xxxxxxxxxx

Snape stood alone in the presence of the Dark Lord. The fact that neither Malfoy nor Macnair was there seemed auspicious.

"You have made contact with Umbridge."

"Yes, Lord. She had Malfoy's recommendation and expected to speak with me. That happened this morning."

"She wishes to protect the Ministry by denying our return."

"Yes, Lord. She asked my opinion directly, and I told her that Dumbledore was mistaken and that you had not come back. She expects my help."

"And you agreed."

"I disputed her assessment of the instructors, insulted her intelligence, and then allowed her to blackmail me with the threat of using my past against me. She knows I was your servant fourteen years ago. At that point I agreed."

"Good. Good. And so the Ministry will continue to shield us. Good."

"Lord, there is more."

"Tell us."

"Lord, Umbridge believes that Dumbledore is using word of your return to acquire power. She knows he has loyal supporters helping him gather information, and she refers to them as a private army. She believes his target is the Ministry of Magic itself, and she believes that his ultimate goal is to rule the wizarding world. She would welcome any move on the part of the Ministry that would give her increased authority at Hogwarts, and correspondingly decrease Dumbledore's authority. She will not rest content until Dumbledore is removed from Hogwarts and entirely discredited."

"She supports a direct attack on Dumbledore himself. She will work to oust him."

"Lord, she does, and she will."

"This is useful information indeed. We will instruct our people to advise the Ministry to curtail Dumbledore's authority. Since Umbridge will support this from the other side, we are certain of success. You have done well."

"Thank you, Lord."

Sunday was quiet. There were a few more interviews left over from the day before, but basically it was the calm before the storm. Snape made the most of it, playing cribbage with Flitwick in the staff room despite Umbridge's scowl, and catching up on reading in his own rooms. No summons came from Croydon, and given the Dark Lord's attitude the day before, Snape accepted by dinner time that none would come. He went to bed early and slept reasonable well for the first time in weeks.

The second class Monday morning was double potions with the Slytherin and Gryffindor fifth years – for Snape the most trying group in the entire school. Worse, it was the one group where he was certain that his students were reporting back to the Dark Lord about him, because it contained Draco Malfoy, Vincent Crabbe, and Gregory Goyle. Not to mention Harry Potter.

Snape opened the dungeon classroom door after the morning break and quieted the class down. Fifth year was when he made his OWL speech, and this morning was no different.

"Before we begin today's lesson, I think it appropriate to remind you that next June you will be sitting an important examination, during which you will prove how much you have learned about the composition and use of magical potions. Moronic though some of this class undoubtedly are, I expect you to scrape an 'acceptable' in your OWL, or suffer my displeasure. After this year, of course, many of you will cease studying with me. I take only the very best into my NEWT Potions class, which means that some of us will certainly be saying good-bye."

_Good-bye to Potter, Weasley, Longbottom, Crabbe, Goyle, probably Malfoy. Granger might even be sufferable in a class where she has to compete with the best, many of them seventh years. I can hardly wait._

"But we have another year to go before that happy moment of farewell, so whether you are intending to attempt NEWT level or not, I advise all of you to concentrate your efforts upon maintaining the high pass level I have come to expect from my OWL students."

The class started on their first potion of the year, the Draught of Peace, an extremely complex brew that required great care. For the first time, he hadn't set the ingredients out for them, but rather required them to get everything from the store cupboard. This forced the students to study the potion in its entirety before starting, since leaving it in the middle to get another ingredient would ruin the potion. Snape did, however, keep an extra-watchful eye on Longbottom, who'd been known to come up with strange ingredients even under the most controlled of situations.

Everything went surprisingly smoothly for almost the entire class period, so much so that Snape was beginning to get worried. Surely the gods only allowed such happiness right before they inflicted severe punishment. Ten minutes before the class ended, he called out, "A light silver vapor should now be rising from your potion."

That was when Potter, blessedly predictable Potter, gave the Death Eater children a show. _There are times when it hurts me that Lily's son inherited none of her talent, and others when I am deeply grateful._ Walking over to where dark gray steam issued from Potter's cauldron, Snape said, "Potter, what is this supposed to be?"

"The Draught of Peace."

"Tell me, Potter, can you read?"

"Yes, I can." The boy faced him defiantly, ready for a fight.

"Read the third line of the instructions for me, Potter."

Potter had forgotten to add hellebore to his potion, and the deflated look on his face was more than enough to satisfy Snape. "This mess is utterly worthless," Snape said calmly. _"Evanesco!"_ And the contents of the cauldron disappeared, to the great delight of the Slytherins.

Class ended with no other hitch except that Goyle's potion set his robes on fire, a small emergency that made Snape think of his fire extinguishers in the lab at Croydon. As he finished assigning homework and collecting the flasks that the other students were presenting for a grade on their potions, he noticed the Three Musketeers in conference in the back of the room.

_Probably upset that Potter got a zero on the class work, when everyone else received at least a little credit, even Goyle._ Then Snape was hit by another thought. _Crawling with Weasleys. Grimmauld Place was crawling with Weasleys that day. Ron was undoubtedly there, too. Maybe Potter as well. Was that why so many of them arrived late at the same time? Escorting Potter? Do the three of them know I was making a report that evening to the Order of the Phoenix?_

It was a disturbing thought. Malfoy, et al. knew he was a Death Eater. Now Potter, et al. likely knew he was in the Order. Dumbledore and the Dark Lord knew both. _But some day Malfoy and Potter may call on me to take sides, and that could cause trouble. Depending on the circumstances, it isn't always safe to show the world where one's true loyalties lie._

The rest of the week passed smoothly. Snape was not surprised to hear from his Slytherin students that Professor Umbridge would not allow them to use magic in their Defense against the Dark Arts class. It struck him as entirely consistent with her attitude that Dumbledore might be trying to form a private army. He was also not surprised to learn that Umbridge had given Potter four nights of detention in his very first class with her. _She's definitely not the one to be cheeky to. It would probably never occur to her to subtract points from a house. She'd go straight for the offender every time._

Friday evening brought a little good news. The Gryffindor team, under its new captain Johnson, held tryouts for Keeper to replace Wood. Those competing for the spot were generally a sorry lot, the mediocre players having the best attitudes, and the good players suffering from an excess of whining or hubris. _Slytherin may have a chance to win this year._

Saturday was colored by anticipation of a meeting with the Dark Lord, and what had once been a relatively relaxed day was now tense and unpleasant. It was not helped by McGonagall showing him an article in _The Daily Prophet._

"Sturgis Podmore's been sent to Azkaban," she summarized as he read the short item. "Six months."

_This was the incident that angered the Dark Lord so much. He told me of Podmore's arrest. What was Podmore doing outside a top-security door? Did the door have something to do with the prophecy? This is all so mysterious. And why did the Dark Lord say he knew I was interested in mysteries?_

Snape looked at McGonagall. "I thought he worked for the Ministry."

"He did. Though what he would be doing there at one in the morning trying to break down a door escapes me."

They stopped talking as Umbridge passed by. Then, as he turned the pages to keep Umbridge from seeing what they'd been looking at, another article caught Snape's eye. "Whoa! It says here that Sirius Black is hiding in London!"

"Let me see that." McGonagall snatched the paper from Snape and skimmed over the article herself. "Do you think someone saw him? It says a tip-off from a reliable source." She squinted suspiciously at Snape. "This wouldn't have something to do with you, would it?"

"Whatever do you mean?"

"Well you've got to give him something, don't you. Names, dates. Maybe one of your colleagues on the 'other side' is the reliable source."

Snape was speechless. McGonagall regarded him pityingly. "I thought I told you."

"If you did, it didn't register completely."

"But you were telling me last week how difficult it'd been at your meeting on the first."

"I still don't think of it extending into Hogwarts."

"Get used to it. It's going to be extending into a lot of places we used to think immune."

That evening after dinner, Snape apparated to Croydon. He was called into the interview room to face the Dark Lord.

"Your idea of the last session was successful, Potions Master," said the Dark Lord. "The Ministry reached a decision yesterday evening. The Umbridge woman will be given power to interfere at Hogwarts. Have you any more to report?"

"No, Lord. Though I expect to have more after the news becomes public."

"That will be on Monday. _The Daily Prophet_ will announce it."

Snape spent the rest of the evening in the laboratory. He had more than a week's work to catch up on, and was glad to have some quiet time.

Malfoy looked in around nine o'clock. He seemed quite satisfied with events. "That was a good idea of yours. The Dark Lord is pleased with both of us. I owe you one."

"Consider it payback for last June, when you spoke up for me."

Malfoy smiled. "I like the way your mind works," he said.

Sunday was peaceful. Snape allowed himself the luxury of sleeping an hour later than usual, then lingered over breakfast. The calm before the storm. Things might not be so relaxed after Monday. Most of the rest of the day was spent correcting the previous week's homework. This was not normally something that Snape enjoyed, but now it was so far from the tensions of Croydon and Umbridge that he actually took pleasure in its mundane normalcy.

Monday hit with the force of a nuclear explosion.

"Look at this!" shrieked McGonagall, thrusting _The Daily Prophet_ under Snape's nose. "Look what those dunderheads at the Ministry have done! 'Hogwarts High Inquisitor' my posterior! If I ever get my hands on the administrative nincompoop who orchestrated this, he'll be singing soprano for the rest of his life."

Snape nearly choked on his sausages. "You never know," he coughed into a table napkin, "it might have been a woman. After all, Umbridge herself is a woman."

"You don't have to be insulting."

"It's the archetype of ruthless ambition. Lady Macbeth. You can't expect us poor males to be able to compete with anyone as single-mindedly motivated as this, can you? For truly savage focus you have to have a woman."

McGonagall was mollified. "And just you remember it, too, laddie. A real woman will stomp you senseless into the ground as soon as look at you."

_Dumbledore is missing something here. Let's chuck the Blacks, Lupins, Moodys, and Shacklebolts. Put together an army of Mollys, Minervas, Nymphadoras – that's where we win the wizard war. Who has the Dark Lord got? Just Bella, and she's in Azkaban._ There was Alecto, too, but Snape didn't include her. He figured if your IQ was smaller than your age, you didn't count.

Umbridge summoned, and Snape danced attendance.

"I now have the power to observe and evaluate all of you. It's Monday morning, Potions Master. Shall I evaluate you first?"

"Only if you want to give comfort to the friends of Dumbledore. It's well known that the two of us don't get along. If you were to delay my evaluation, it might make a point. Or not. It's entirely up to you. Shall I expect you later this morning?"

Umbridge paused and looked speculatively at Snape. "I wonder what's really going through your mind," she said.

"Nobody knows. Sometimes I don't know myself. Shall I expect you this morning? As it is, I'm about to be late for my first class, and the students will wonder why."

"No. I'll check the others first. Lucius Malfoy has spoken highly of you again, and I wouldn't want to upset Lucius by appearing not to take his advice seriously."

_And you are a tactical idiot for telling me that piece of information._ "I am grateful for Mr. Malfoy's good opinion. And when you do deem it the proper moment to inspect my classes, I shall receive you with all the respect commensurate with your position."

"I knew I could count on you."

Potions classes went extraordinarily well that day. Snape was able to put the fear of God into his students by grading their homework as if it were their OWL examinations. Most of them got D for Dreadful, which was not a passing grade. It inspired them for the class to come. Not even Potter – for heaven's sake, not even Longbottom – botched the class work. _Why isn't my life always like this?_

Not everyone was as pleased as Snape. At supper that evening, Trelawney looked positively exhausted. Umbridge had been to evaluate her, and the encounter had evidently not been a pleasant one for Trelawney. Snape could hardly wait until Umbridge got to McGonagall.

The truly strange part of the day was that Dumbledore did not come down to dinner. In fact, it was to be some time before Snape saw Dumbledore again.

On Wednesday during the lunch break, McGonagall brushed past Snape in the Great Hall. "London this evening," she hissed. "Be ready."

Snape didn't react at all, which was wise since he noticed a moment later that Umbridge was watching him. The rest of the day he spent acting perfectly normal, and after supper retired to his rooms to work, something he was doing most evenings in any case. It was there that the misty little cat found him around nine-thirty and whispered, 'now' into his brain.

_Life would be so much easier if I had an invisibility cloak or were an animagus._ Snape stood just out of sight where the dungeon corridor flowed into the entrance hall, trying to determine if anyone anywhere was watching. Deciding it was safe, he darted out the main doors and scurried down the hill to the Hogsmeade gate, where McGonagall was waiting.

"What about Dumbledore?"

"Lying low for the time being. Something strategic, I understand. Trying to give that woman enough rope, just to see what she'll do with it."

"Maybe he doesn't want to give the Ministry an excuse to tighten the rules any further."

"Maybe." At a word from McGonagall the gate was unlocked and they slipped through. A quick agreement on location, and McGonagall said, "Now." An instant later they were in London, around the corner from Grimmauld Place.

Black opened the door and admitted them wordlessly into the house. The portrait of his mother seemed to be asleep, and Snape joined the general consensus to keep her that way. Silently they made their way to the parlor, where the others already waited. Greetings were quickly exchanged, and they sat down.

"All here now?" grunted Moody, who seemed to be in charge. "What's going on at Hogwarts?"

"The Ministry is trying to take over," replied McGonagall, and she explained Educational Decree Twenty-three and its immediate impact on the school. "It's blatant intimidation. Poor Trelawney was beside herself. At the moment it's just authority to inspect, but they could change it to authority to replace, and pack the school with their own people. Albus is staying out of it so as not to give them more reason to step further in. If he plays along, we may be able to defuse the situation. Especially since she told Severus they suspect him of planning an attack on the Ministry."

Snape wished McGonagall hadn't said that, as all eyes turned to him.

Black had an evil, speculative look on his face. "That's hardly the information that'd come up in casual conversation," he said. "Why would Umbridge confide in you? Or are you playing a three-way game now?"

There was a subtle shift in mood, and Snape was beginning to feel as if he were on trial. "She checked Ministry records on me. She knows I was a Death Eater. She thinks she can blackmail me into helping her. She has some information about the Order, which she regards as Dumbledore's private army."

"Have you been increasing the amount of information she has?"

"That's enough, Sirius," interjected Moody. "It'll be helpful to get inside news."

"Bet Umbridge likes inside news, too. And Voldemort. How long before you figure out how to sell everybody to everybody?"

"Enough!" Moody and McGonagall shouted at the same time, while the other members of the Order looked uncomfortable.

Snape, who'd winced at the Dark Lord's name, was now angry. "I noted that _The Daily Prophet_ has placed you in London," he said to the room in general. "That puts all of us in danger."

"We're protected by a Fidelius Charm."

"No, you're protected by a Fidelius Charm. We have to go out onto the street. How many people visited here socially while your parents were alive, and may pass by, knowing you're in London, and wonder why the house can't be seen anymore? And may want to watch and see who comes wandering through the square and then just disappears? While you sit inside, nice and safe."

Black was on his feet, lunging toward Snape as Lupin, Weasley, and Shacklebolt tried to restrain him. "It's hardly worth their effort, now is it? Since you've given them all our names anyway!" he yelled.

All the members of the Order were now on their feet except for Snape, who remained seated just out of Black's reach. It took Moody, McGonagall, and Molly Weasley several minutes to restore calm, and even then it was abundantly obvious that an explosion was brewing just under the surface.

"Is what he said true?" McGonagall asked Snape after the room had quieted.

"Of course it is," snarled Black. "Look at him. He'd sell…"

"I didn't ask you!" McGonagall snapped. "I asked Severus."

"I gave the Dark Lord the names of all those who'd been members of the Order before, when Pettigrew was still part of it. He knows all those names anyway, and would already have given them to the Dark Lord. I told the others this at an earlier meeting."

"Well, that's logical at least. Now, the two of you have to stop bickering. It's bad enough we have to fight You-Know-Who without fighting each other as well."

Moody coughed, and the others turned to him, apparently thankful for the diversion. Snape and Black studiously avoided looking at each other.

"We also need to evaluate the incident involving Sturgis and the Department of Mysteries," Moody began.

Snape was alert at once. _Department of Mysteries? Is this about the prophecy? Is this why the Dark Lord mentioned the word?_

"My understanding is that Sturgis was under an Imperious Curse," Moody continued. That's why he was trying to break in. I also know that he was on guard there, protecting something because of information Dumbledore received." He turned to Snape. "Do you know anything about it?"

"Three weeks ago, I'd have said no. I didn't even know there was a Department of Mysteries until this moment. But if it contains things like prophecies, then Podmore was there because the Dark Lord is interested in a prophecy. One that talks about Potter."

"How do you know?"

"He mentioned it in a meeting." Snape had no desire to tell the Order the whole story of the prophecy or why the Dark Lord would be questioning him about it. "He was also furious when Podmore failed to get it and was arrested."

"And how did you learn that?"

"I was one of the people he suspected of passing the information to Dumbledore…"

"Now we get to hear how dangerous your work is compared to everyone else." Black let his voice drip with sarcasm.

The memory of that day was too powerful, and Snape didn't trust himself to reply. Instead he closed his mouth and sat back in his chair, his arms folded across his chest. In the sudden silence, Moody snapped his fingers, and Snape glanced up automatically into Moody's eyes. Into the enchanted blue eye…

"Who's guarding the place now?" asked Moody as he looked away.

"Several of us," Arthur Weasley said. "We have shifts and take turns. There's me, and…"

"Better not give too many names," said Black. "The walls have ears."

Discussion continued for nearly twenty minutes more, but Snape took no part in it. Then Black went into the kitchen to see about refreshments, the others got up and began to mingle, and Moody crossed the room to sit by Snape.

"Was that it? Was that the day he was furious?"

Snape looked at his hands. "It isn't important," he said.

"I say it is important, boyo. Answer the question. Was that the day?"

"Yes. But I'd prefer not talking about it."

"Up to you, but if that's what you go through when he's ticked off, you've got a harder job than I thought."

"The Dark Lord is renowned for his temper. I wasn't the only one. I'm not supposed to mention it, though. Makes other people feel inadequate."

"Again, it's up to you. You ever want me to speak up for you, let me know."

Snape nodded, then rose and approached McGonagall. "Can we leave now?" he asked.

"We ought to socialize a little."

"Right. Me – socialize here. I'd go back alone, but you're the one who opens the gate. Can't we point out that we have classes tomorrow morning?"

"All right. I'll tell him we're leaving."

A few minutes later, Snape and McGonagall left 12 Grimmauld Place and apparated back to Hogwarts.

xxxxxxxxxx

Things settled into a welcome routine. Weekdays were devoted to classes, grading papers, and other school duties. Snape gave up reading on the weekday evenings in order to finish all his duties during the week and save one day for complete relaxation. Saturday mornings were spent clearing up the last of the week's work and a thorough inspection of the classroom and stores. Saturday afternoons Snape tried to set aside to review the week and prepare for his trip to Croydon. The interview after the passing of Educational Decree Twenty-three was typical.

"Things are going according to plan at Hogwarts."

"Yes, Lord. Classes are being disrupted and teachers intimidated. Umbridge is acting as if she was already headmistress."

"And Dumbledore?"

"Has retreated. He hasn't appeared at meals or, so far as I can tell, spoken with any of the teachers."

"He is weaker than we realized. What further news do you anticipate?"

"More of the same for the next few weeks, unless Umbridge is suddenly given more authority."

"We shall work on that goal from this end. You need only report how successful our efforts have been on your side."

"Yes, Lord."

Both information gathering and potion making having faded into the background, Snape found himself assigned to teach classes in defensive techniques. Malfoy met with him on that same Saturday to work out a schedule. Basically Snape had two one-hour classes back to back each weekend. Malfoy had been thick enough to schedule the first one for that very evening.

"You know it's been over fourteen years since I taught this."

"Isn't it like riding a broomstick? You never forget?"

That class was held in a large basement room. The first five students were flippant and disrespectful, especially when he insisted they learn to fall before he would teach them anything else. They made it obvious that a potions brewer was not their idea of a qualified defense instructor.

"All right," said Snape, taking off his jacket and laying his wand aside. You and you. Yes, you with the big mouth. You're wizards with wands and I'm a muggle with no magic. Go for me. Together."

He used defensive moves his mother had taught him years before he was old enough to go to Hogwarts. Even though he was rusty, Snape ducked, dodged, dropped, and rolled, and not only evaded every spell they threw at him, but was also able to knock one off his feet with a well-placed kick, and pin the other's arm behind his back to extract his wand.

Snape had no further problem with any of his defense classes.

Sundays were Snape's days of rest. One day a week he lay back and forgot potions, homework, or fighting. On Sundays he read, or played cribbage, or let McGonagall try to teach him chess. Life was, in fact, beginning to resolve itself into something pleasant. Pleasure is like pride, however. It never goes unpunished.

The first Saturday in October was a Hogsmeade excursion, the first of the year. Snape was assigned supervisory duties, and was almost looking forward to it. Usually the students were reasonably well behaved in Hogsmeade, knowing that any infraction of the rules would result in their losing the privilege. In addition, Snape had prepared a small gift – a selection of rare mulling spices – for Madam Rosmerta, to thank her for taking care of him the night of September first.

It was after presenting the spices, and then staying to savor a tankard of ale, that Snape noticed the unusual number of students turning down the lane that led to the Hog's Head Inn. _Students don't frequent the Hog's Head. It isn't out of bounds, but it isn't savory either. Gryffindors, Ravenclaws, and Hufflepuffs, all going in the same direction. What could possibly lure Macmillan, Finch-Fletchley, and Goldstein into the Hog's Head?_

Snape didn't hurry, not wanting to startle any of the students, but after the rush seemed to have thinned out, he left the Three Broomsticks and approached the windows of the Hog's Head. The students were there, an uncommonly large number of them gathered in one place. At the center of attention were Potter, Granger, and Weasley.

Instinct told him he didn't want to know, and Snape beat a sudden and hasty retreat back towards the Three Broomsticks. On the way, by unhappy accident, he ran into Dolores Umbridge.

"Any problems down that way?" she asked, but he told her there were none, then invited her into the Three Broomsticks for a butterbeer.

Spending the rest of Saturday in the company of Umbridge ruined Hogsmeade for Snape. To crown his frustration, she didn't even have any good information to pass on to the Dark Lord. Just questions.

'Is McGonagall always so confrontational?'

'Has Flitwick ever talked about his goblin ancestors or tried to contact goblin relatives?'

'Why would Dumbledore hire as obvious a fraud as Trelawney?'

'Does Sinistra always keep her students up after midnight?'

'Why hasn't Grubbly-Plank been given a permanent position?'

'Has Sprout ever poisoned or caused permanent injury to a student?'

'When did Binns die?'

and

'Where is Hagrid?'

To which Snape replied:

'Yes,'

'No.'

'You'll have to ask him.'

'Usually.'

'We don't have one available.'

'Not that I know of.'

'I never asked. Before my time, certainly.'

and

'I haven't got a clue.'

The relentless woman did not give up until it was time for the students to return to the Castle. Snape, facing the window, noticed that the students from the Hog's Head were drifting out of the lane in carefully spaced groups of three and four. He kept Umbridge in conversation, determined that he would find out what was going on before she did.

Walking Umbridge back to the Hogwarts gate, Snape wished her a pleasant evening and turned back into Hogsmeade.

"Where are you going?"

"I had duty today. That means I have a free evening."

"Where are you going?"

"I haven't decided yet. I may stay at the Three Broomsticks. Or go to London to see a play. "The Hothouse" just opened at the Comedy Theatre, or I could catch "King Lear" in Leeds. It's supposed to be an interesting production."

"I didn't know you were interested in muggle theatrics."

"Now you know. Have a nice evening."

There was nothing Umbridge could do, and Snape whistled a little as he headed back to the Three Broomsticks. The only disappointing thing was that he wouldn't be seeing a play. He was going to Croydon.

The second self-defense class was tense. Snape didn't dare ask questions, but he kept his ears wide open. Something was happening in the next few days, and it would be inside a building. The two Death Eaters involved had to get in and out without raising an alarm, even if it meant failing in their mission. Since nothing but total success ever pleased the Dark Lord, even obeying orders could lead to a certain amount of punishment. Snape sympathized inwardly, though he made no outward sign that he realized what they were hinting at.

On arrival back at Hogwarts, Snape sent a patronus to McGonagall to admit him. She was patrolling the entrance hall when he walked in, and he quietly passed on the information. Then she asked about the play, and puzzled, he quickly invented something about the London comedy.

They wished each other good night. As he turned toward the dungeon corridor, Snape caught movement out of the corner of his eye. Umbridge had been watching them from a staircase.

On Sunday morning, after a leisurely breakfast, Snape and Flitwick started a game of cribbage in the Great Hall. They'd barely finished three hands when Filch came up to them – Snape later felt it had been timed to interrupt their game – with a message that was more of a command than a request.

"The Inquisitor wants to see you. She said now."

Flitwick's eyebrows lifted dramatically, and down the table McGonagall gave Snape a quizzical look.

"Tell her I'll be right up," said Snape.

"Tell her yourself. You'll make it up there as fast as me if you know what's what. She's in a foul mood."

Snape excused himself to Flitwick and went up to the second floor. Once again, Umbridge did not invite him to sit. Instead she kept him standing there for nearly three minutes while she finished writing something on a long scroll of parchment. It gave Snape a chance to look around the room, with its unusual dried flower arrangements and lacy frills.

Finally Umbridge seemed to notice he was there. She placed the quill feather to her lips and regarded him for a moment. "Interesting," she said, "how you can get entirely the wrong impression of someone at first. I would never have taken you for a shill."

"I beg your pardon."

"Yesterday. A shill for the students. You were coming up the lane from the Hog's Head and decoyed me into the Three Broomsticks. Do they buy you, or are you doing it for Dumbledore?"

"Oddly, it was for the pleasure of your company. Which I am beginning to regret."

"You're not good enough at flattery to be able to butter me up. Luckily I have other sources of information, so your little ruse didn't work. Where did you go yesterday evening?"

"Not that it's any of your business, but to London. To a play."

"Which one?"

"The Comedy Theatre. They're playing 'The Hothouse.'"

"How did you get in? It was sold out."

Warning bells screamed trap, but Snape was not sure which way the pit lay. Locking himself down, he looked into Umbridge's round eyes, hoping she had no occlumency skill. "It would be a poor wizard who couldn't get admitted to a sold-out performance," he said, and saw the spark of triumph behind her eyes. "But it wasn't necessary. The show wasn't sold out."

"How did you like it?" Umbridge sounded petulant.

"It's always delightful when the author is one of the actors. You never miss the nuances."

"Favorite bit?"

"All of Act III."

Unable to trip him up, Umbridge changed her tactics. "I've been very nice to you so far," she said, "but now it's time for me to inspect your classes. I'll be at your morning Potions lesson tomorrow."

"I look forward to it."

"Just out of curiosity, Professor, about how many of your students know about your – shall we say 'colorful' – past? More to the point, how many of their parents know? I for one might not be comfortable if a child of mine were under the tutelage of a former follower of You-Know-Who."

"I would say quite a few. Some of their parents had equally colorful experiences."

"But if there were to be a general protest at your continued employment here?"

_A year ago you'd have had me. I'd dance to your tune or face Azkaban. You may still have that power, but at least now I have other places to go._ "It would be up to the Board of Governors."

"Maybe. Maybe not. Fascinating about Educational Decrees, how much they can change things in the course of a morning. There's a new one coming out tomorrow."

Time to give in. "I understand, Ma'am. I hope you don't think I was being rude."

"Not at all, Professor," Umbridge replied, smiling with sickening sweetness. "I'm sure we'll work very well together. Now, what were the students doing in the Hog's Head?"

"I presumed they were planning something against Slytherin, since my house was the only one not represented. I didn't want them to be interrupted as they would then simply move somewhere else where I wouldn't be able to find out anything. As it is, I may be able to pick up some information from the staff or the other patrons. It would have to be done carefully."

"There's no need. They weren't plotting against Slytherin. It was against me. And henceforth you will allow me to make such decisions, instead of steering me away from the malefactors. Do you understand?"

"Yes, Ma'am," said Snape, and he was dismissed.

Most of the students had left the Great Hall for various intellectual and nonintellectual occupations appropriate to a Sunday morning, but most of the teachers were still there. At first Snape didn't think much of it until he returned to his seat next to Flitwick. Then he noticed that they seemed to be looking, not exactly at him, but in his direction.

McGonagall slipped over, her eyes on the doors. "What happened? Quick, before Filch comes in."

"Urge your students to be circumspect. She thinks they're plotting against her, and she already has a new Decree approved that'll be made public tomorrow. Do you talk regularly to Dumbledore?"

McGonagall nodded.

"She thinks he's the center and source of all plotting. No matter what happens, she'll try to pin it on him."

"That was Albus's own take on the situation."

"She's blackmailing me into helping her. It'll be easier if you all affect not to like me."

"In other words, behave normally."

"Cute."

"Anything else?"

"Walk softly. She'd dearly love to tighten the screws."

McGonagall left him and went to sit with Sprout and Vector. Flitwick moved down the table to speak to Sinistra and Pince. Snape was by himself sipping a last cup of tea when Filch looked into the Hall, then backed out again.

Snape rose to leave the Hall for his own rooms as Sprout joined Trelawney and Grubbly-Plank, Vector edged nearer to Futhark, Sinistra struck up a conversation with Hooch, and Pince went to find Madam Pomfrey.

_A good thing no one was really watching this time, but if the network goes this smoothly from classroom to classroom, Umbridge has a fight on her hands._

The next morning revealed the contents of Educational Decree Twenty-four. Every student organization, society, team, group, or club was summarily disbanded, and could only be reconstituted with the permission of the High Inquisitor. The Great Hall was frantic with little groups of students trying to find out if knitting circles and chess tournaments were now illegal.

Snape saw the word 'team' and called the Slytherin Quidditch team together. "Draw up a petition. Make it very respectful, subservient even, but get the team approved. Tell the captains of the other houses." He then gathered his prefects. "Any club or society we have, petition for reconstitution. If you have a Transfiguration study group, petition for it to be approved. Anything where you meet regularly in a group of more than two, call it a club or society and petition. We don't want to be on the wrong side of this Decree."

After breakfast, in the staff room, Snape confessed to quite a different motivation. "I want to hit her with every little gathering of students I can think of. Heck, if I could invent new ones now, I would. I want that woman buried in paperwork up to her…"

McGonagall and Grubbly-Plank, who like Snape didn't have classes that hour, were chuckling at the thought when there was a knock at the door. McGonagall opened it, and Snape could hear Potter talking outside. _What is he doing here now? Doesn't the boy have a class?_

Grubbly-Plank was next to the door, and suddenly got up and joined McGonagall. A moment's more talking, and Grubbly-Plank reentered the room holding a beautiful snowy owl. She set her newspaper and pipe to one side in order to tend to the bird.

McGonagall came back in as well, having sent Potter on his way. "What do you think, Wilhelmina?" she asked.

"Looks like it was attacked. Takes a real villain to go after a beauty like this one. She's strong though, to make it here with her wing injured like that."

Snape edged closer. "You think the owl was attacked on purpose? To keep a message from getting through?"

"Maybe," said McGonagall. "Or maybe just to have the chance to read a message before it reached its destination. That's how traps are set."

"Who would Potter be exchanging messages with anyway? He hates his muggle family."

McGonagall stared at Snape over her glasses. "He has a godfather in London. Or had you forgotten?"

Snape wanted to throw a conniption fit. He could not, however, say anything because of the presence of Grubbly-Plank. He could think it, though. _Potter's endangering every one of us by maintaining a direct, uncoded link with the headquarters of the Order in London. How many people don't know that the great snowy owl is Potter's bird? Azkaban must not be as terrible as they say. It didn't change Black at all. He's still reckless with other people's lives._

The first bell sounded, and the morning break began. Grubbly-Plank took the owl and headed out toward Hagrid's hut for her morning lesson. Other teachers came into the staff room, and prevented Snape from discussing the matter with McGonagall. Then another thought hit him. _How secure are the patronuses? Could Umbridge see me send the patronus to McGonagall to let me in every Saturday? How soon before she's wise to that?_

The bell rang signaling the end of the break, and Snape gathered his things, took his leave of the others, and made his way to the dungeon classroom. Umbridge was waiting for him with ill-concealed impatience, and he let her in, locking the door behind them.

"I expected you to be here to receive me," she snapped.

"Class hasn't started yet," he replied. "You will be able to observe from the corner without disrupting the dynamics of the class too much."

She sat where he pointed, and then Snape went to open the classroom door. What met him was totally unexpected. A line of Gryffindor students faced a line of Slytherin students, and in the middle were Malfoy and… Longbottom? Neville Longbottom was struggling to get at Malfoy, and was being restrained by Potter and Weasley. _I do not know what it is, and I do not care what it is, NOW is not the time!_

"Fighting, Potter, Weasley, Longbottom? Ten points from Gryffindor. Release Longbottom, Potter, or it will be detention. Inside, all of you."

The students filed into the room and to their seats. When most of them were settled, Snape announced, "You will notice that we have a guest with us today." All eyes turned to the corner where Umbridge sat, but after the short mention, Snape paid no further attention to her.

"We are continuing with our Strengthening Solutions today – you will find your mixtures as you left them last lesson. If correctly made, they should have matured well over the weekend. Instructions on the board." Snape waved his wand, and the instructions appeared. "Carry on."

Snape spend the next half hour moving around the room, checking as he normally did on the progress of the various students' potions. After half an hour, Umbridge got to her feet with an audible "Ha," and came over to him.

"Well, the class seems fairly advanced for their level, though I would question whether it is advisable to teach them a potion like the Strengthening Solution. I think the Ministry would prefer it if that was removed from the syllabus."

Snape forbore to comment, merely straightening from where he bent over a cauldron in order to look at her.

"Now… how long have you been teaching at Hogwarts?"

_I am sure that information is in my file, so your motive in asking would be…? To see if I remember? Or if I'm lying?_ "Fourteen years." _Two months and nine days._

"You applied for the Defense Against the Dark Arts post, I believe?"

_Why are you asking this?_ "Yes."

"But you were unsuccessful?"

"Obviously."

"And you have applied regularly for the post since you joined the school, I believe?"

"Yes."

"Do you have any idea why Dumbledore has consistently refused to appoint you?"

_As a matter of fact, I do. But I am not telling you._ "I suggest you ask him."

"Oh, I shall."

"I suppose this is relevant?"

"Oh yes. Yes, the Ministry wants a thorough understanding of teachers' - er- backgrounds."

_You misspelled witch! Let's just scrawl 'Death Eater' all over the walls._

Umbridge ceased her questioning of Snape and began talking to one or two students about the class. Snape felt a prickle in the back of his head, and turned to find Potter staring at him. For just an instant, he was gazing into the green eyes, Lily's eyes, and he felt the same way he'd felt the first time he ever looked at Potter. _I have to be careful. Luckily, Potter's no legilimens, but it wouldn't be safe to be surprised by Lily's eyes if one were in the same room._

Then Potter looked away, and Snape noticed he'd botched his assignment. As usual.

"No marks again, then, Potter. You will write me an essay on the correct composition of this potion, indicating how and why you went wrong, to be handed in next lesson, do you understand?"

"Yes," Potter answered sullenly, and Snape could almost feel the anger. A glance over at Umbridge, however, showed that the exchange had pleased her.

The students cleaned up, the bell rang for lunch, and the room quickly emptied. Umbridge remained, and came nearer after they were alone.

"Fourteen years. I have to check your file again, but doesn't that mean you started teaching here before…"

Snape turned and regarded her calmly. "I suppose it does," he replied.

"I didn't know You-Know-Who let his followers take other jobs."

"I'm sure I don't know what you mean."

"I'm sure you do. Dumbledore can be too trusting at times, no?" Without waiting for an answer, Umbridge left the room.

_If that woman ever learns how to put two and two together to make four, I could be in trouble. As it is, she thinks she has an ironclad hold on me. But if we ever reach the day when I can tell her how I really feel…_

Things at Hogwarts were quiet for the rest of the month. Part of this was because Umbridge had finished her interviews, and no longer interfered in classes. Part of it was because the weather was depressingly horrible, for it was a month of incessant wind and rain. And part of it was that for some reason many of the most active, irrepressible students seemed to be rather calmer than usual, as if they had found some outlet for their energy.

Snape and McGonagall were back to betting on Quidditch games, and the student body as a whole seemed more intense about Quidditch than usual.

"It's probably because there was no Quidditch last year," said McGonagall at supper near the end of October.

"That, and it's a relief to know Umbridge can't cancel it," added Sprout. "Is it true she tried to keep the Gryffindor team from being approved?"

"It is," said McGonagall. "I had to go to Dumbledore about it, and he overruled her. She was not happy about that, let me tell you."

Sprout nodded happily. "It's good to know Dumbledore still has a hand in things. He's been so quiet and retiring lately."

Snape was sitting a few seats away, listening to the conversation. Now he joined in. "How do we know Minerva doesn't have him locked up somewhere and is just pretending that instructions and intervention come from him? Maybe she's ruling Hogwarts now."

"You!" cried McGonagall. "I've been meaning to talk to you. What's this about allowing your students to hex mine and not stepping in to stop it?"

"Whatever are you talking about, my dear lady?"

"You know perfectly well that Bletchley hexed Johnson on Tuesday. There were witnesses."

"All of whom were Gryffindors conspiring to discredit the Slytherin Keeper. Besides, they've been hexing us, too, only they don't tell you about that. Bet they didn't say one word about the hex that Bletchley was retaliating for."

"You mean you knew all about this and didn't try to stop them?"

"About as much as you tried to stop a couple of Gryffindors from hexing me back when both of us were a lot younger than we are today. Consider it payback."

"You did look cute being carried up from Herbology with a Venus flytrap hanging onto your ear, and giggling like a lunatic. Even today I can look back and say honestly that it was the only time I ever saw you laugh."

Flitwick chuckled at the memory, too and Sprout, even though she'd heard the stories before, began begging for details. McGonagall settled herself to regale a growing audience with the legend of the famous Gryffindor-Slytherin hex wars of the '70s. Snape, knowing himself to be one of the stars of her story, stood and left the group to its fun.

"You be sure to get the story about Black's bats right," was all he said as he left the Hall.

Things were almost as calm in Croydon. The Dark Lord was displeased, but not with Snape. Whatever the two Death Eaters had tried to get, they'd not been successful. In the wake of two failures, The Dark Lord put in a series of requisitions for potions. Snape was interested in the combination.

There were Wit-Sharpening Potion, Unctuous Unction, various Sleeping Draughts, and Forgetfulness Potion, all of them very useful in situations were you did not want any fighting, or any traces left of your presence. Two items especially caught Snape's attention: Polyjuice Potion and Veritaserum.

It seems the Dark Lord was impressed by Barty Crouch's ability to fool the entire school, including Dumbledore, into believing he was Moody for over nine months. _If one of our people takes the place of someone in the Ministry, it could wreak havoc._

That was when Snape decided to use part of his time to tinker with the two most potentially dangerous potions. He asked for an interview with the Dark Lord.

"You wish extra funds to purchase ingredients for Veritaserum and Polyjuice Potion. You will explain why."

"It occurred to me that the Polyjuice Potion would be more useful to your operatives if its effects could be extended for longer than an hour. It may not be possible to accomplish this, but I should like to try. It would involve a large number of variant solutions, since I would have to test each ingredient separately in varying strengths and also the effects of different combinations of changes. I would also like to try producing Veritaserum in a gaseous form that could be sprayed in someone's face."

"Why is such extensive testing necessary? Is this normal in science?"

"No one knows what we are looking for. It has not been tried before. Edison tested over six thousand materials during a period of fourteen months before he found the right one for his incandescent electric light filament."

"We see. Very well, you have authorization to order materials and start your experiments."

Snape waited until he was back in his laboratory before he allowed himself a private thought. _I'd be willing to bet he doesn't know who Thomas Edison was._

xxxxxxxxxx

Snape went out and bought a stack of notebooks, pens that wrote in different colors, rulers, markers, labels, filing cards, and a couple of calculators. The crates of ingredients arrived the third week in October, and he started setting up his experiments. By the weekend before Halloween, he had fifty different solutions brewing, each one a slightly changed version of either Veritaserum or Polyjuice Potion. Everything was meticulously labeled, and he was taking extensive notes.

The scope of the experiments was a bit different from what he'd told the Dark Lord, however. In fact, Snape was trying to find a way to shorten the amount of time Polyjuice Potion would be effective. _Imagine someone infiltrating the Ministry in disguise changing back to his true form fifteen minutes before he thinks he will. The Dark Lord would think it was carelessness rather than the potion._

In the case of the Veritaserum, he was trying to produce a weaker brew, one that would make the victim want to tell the truth, but which a strong person could fight successfully. _If some people can fight Imperious Curses, they should be able to fight Veritaserum, too._

Unfortunately, a complication was thrown into Snape's life just at the moment when he thought everything was under control. He apparated back to Hogsmeade that evening and sent his patronus to McGonagall. On reaching the entrance hall, however, he found Umbridge waiting for him.

"Where have you been?"

"Out."

"Where?"

"Some of the teachers commute, you know. They apparate home every night and return in the morning. Just because I'm the head of a house doesn't mean I'm chained to Hogwarts every minute of every day. I'm not on call for emergency duty until eleven o'clock, and until then my time is my own."

"Where did you go?"

"It's none of your business."

"I can make it my business."

"Very well. I moonlight as a referee for World Championship Wrestling. I was in Detroit, Michigan prepping for Halloween Havoc tomorrow. Want a tip? Don't bet on Hulk Hogan."

Umbridge glared at Snape for a moment, then stomped up the stairs to her office. _She's going to check. Gad, I hope Hogan loses tomorrow, or I'm in trouble with her again._

Hogan, as it turned out, was disqualified, leaving Umbridge to debate whether Snape had been bluffing or telling the truth. He was not about to say. The following week was taken up with two events, the Halloween feast and the first Quidditch match of the season – Slytherin against Gryffindor.

Dumbledore reappeared at breakfast on Monday. The teachers tripped over each other in their hurry to welcome him back and express their concern about his absence. He admitted only to having been 'a little under the weather.'

"Severus," Dumbledore called down the table, "I understand that McGonagall has been showing you the fine points of chess. I am pleased that I might have an opponent who is at the beginning level, and therefore does not totally outclass me. Would you be interested in a game this evening?"

"It would be my pleasure, Headmaster."

And so that evening at the staff table, in full view of Umbridge, they set up a chess board, and Dumbledore and Snape played against each other. Dumbledore had not been lying about his abilities either, for Snape found himself playing an opponent at precisely his own level. Within minutes, all the other teachers were forbidden to comment or advise. Many of them left, bored by the amateurish game.

After several moments and the capture of Snape's second knight, Dumbledore looked up and smiled sweetly. As their eyes met, Snape heard in his head, _What has been happening at Croydon?_

_Not a lot. He wants something he can't get. I think it's in the Ministry. He's asked for potions that help get information or that conceal a person's presence._

_I hear you are still having problems with one of your colleagues._

_He thinks confronting the Dark Lord should be on a level with a Sunday picnic._

_You need to put it aside._

_I will if he will._

_What about the 'Lady?'_

_Fine until she thought I was helping the students skirt her rules._

_Were you?_

_Not by intention, but that was the practical effect._

_Stay on her good side. We may reach a point where you are our only contact. _"Checkmate," said Dumbledore, moving his bishop to attack Snape's king. "Thank you for a most pleasant game."

"Any time," Snape replied.

Halloween was uncommonly low-key that year. There were a few jack o' lanterns, and the occasional picture of a black cat, but the food was normal supper fare, and there was really no sense of its being a feast.

Snape felt it was the perfect occasion for being a bit morose.

_Doesn't anyone remember what day it is today? You'd think Potter would remember, but never once in his life have I seen him do anything to commemorate it. Neither does Dumbledore. I bet Black doesn't either. Lily died on this day fourteen years ago. The worst day in the whole year._

Snape left the table at the earliest possible moment and spent the rest of the evening in his own rooms.


	50. Chapter 50 – Preparations

**Yes, That Is My Job: Preparations**

_Saturday, November 4, 1995 (three days before the full moon)_

The following Saturday was the Quidditch match. The whole school was looking forward to it, and Snape was no exception.

Snape was up early on Saturday. It was cold and overcast, actually rather good Quidditch weather. There was a high level of excitement as Snape made his way to the Great Hall. Slytherin students were decked out in green and silver, while Gryffindor sported their own red and gold. Some of the Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff students wore red and gold, too, but most were less partisan for Gryffindor than they'd been in earlier years.

Little groups of Slytherins were laughing and talking around their table, and Snape noticed they were wearing badges. A little like last year when they got the badges supporting Diggory in the Triwizard Tournament. A close look showed him the badges carried a crown with the words 'Weasley is our King' inscribed inside.

_Weasley? He's the new Gryffindor Keeper, isn't he? I wonder what this is about._ A glance down the table made it clear that the source of the badges was Malfoy. Malfoy was the Slytherin Seeker, and his two goons Crabbe and Goyle had just been made Beaters. _I need to check out the parents of Bletchley, Montague, Warrington, and Pucey. We may be approaching an all-Death Eater Quidditch team here._

Once the game got started, the meaning of the badges became clear. Weasley was nervous and intimidated by the Slytherin team and the chanting from the Slytherin crowd. 'Weasley cannot save a thing, He cannot block a single thing…' rose in a well-practiced roar from the green and silver stands.

Snape was astounded, and immensely gratified. The students had been working behind the scenes on their anti-Weasley performance, and it was a powerful and unified show of house spirit, with flags and banners waving and the song rising as if it was one huge voice. Slytherin house by itself overpowered in chants and cheers Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, and Hufflepuff put together. It was rousing.

And the game did not let them down. With well-practiced skill, the Slytherin team tore into Gryffindor's defense and landed score after score. The board rang up forty points for Slytherin before Gryffindor managed to score once. Slytherin was outflying, outplaying, outscoring Gryffindor in every part of the game and then…

And then it was over. Both Seekers located the Snitch almost simultaneously, dove groundwards, and just before contact with the grass, Potter had the Snitch, with Malfoy so close to him that their hands were touching at the moment the Snitch was caught. The whole stadium rose to its feet in the last seconds, Snape with them, and then Gryffindor's stands erupted in cheers.

What happened next was not clear. It looked like an errant Bludger hit Potter, and Malfoy was saying something as the two teams converged on the Seekers, and then Potter and one of the Weasley twins charged Malfoy, Malfoy was on the ground clutching his stomach, and Potter was hitting him. Then Potter had been bowled over backwards by an Impedimenta charm cast by… Madam Hooch?

Snape clambered down from the stands and ran to the center of the pitch where he knelt next to Malfoy. A quick look into the boy's eyes told Snape that he really was in pain. Potter had punched him in the stomach, hard, and in the nose as well. Snape had vivid memories of what that felt like, having been punched in the stomach himself. He conjured a stretcher and supervised the other members of his Quidditch team as they carefully lifted Malfoy onto the stretcher, and started moving him up the hill to the hospital wing and Madam Pomfrey.

It was only then that he looked around and noted that the Gryffindor team had disappeared from the pitch, as had McGonagall. _She'll be angrier about this than I am. I would not like to be those students facing her wrath. I'll leave their punishment to her and find out about it at dinner._ As it was, he had to calm the team going up the hill, for Bletchley and Montague wanted to go after Potter and Weasley right then and there, and Snape had to talk them out of it.

_Why does Gryffindor always have to react with physical violence?_

Supper was tense, and not just because of the animosity between the two houses. Gryffindor was somber, reacting to the news that their Seeker and Beaters had been banned from playing Quidditch for the rest of their lives. Slytherin was in an 'it serves you right' mood, forcing Snape to threaten dire punishment to anyone who taunted Gryffindor. The other two houses were simply stunned.

And then there was McGonagall.

"Educational Decree Twenty-five! She's taking all authority out of our hands and giving it to herself! Not only does she have the power to determine punishments and sanctions, she has the authority to alter the punishments we determine for our students! If I ever get my hands on Fudge…"

"I take it there's no process of review for her decisions."

"Review her decisions? Severus, the woman thinks she's infallible! Infallible and omniscient!"

"And now omnipotent by the sound of it."

Sprout and Flitwick nodded glumly. It was the four heads of houses who were most affected by the new decree, since they had the most control over the individual students. "What do we do now?" Sprout asked.

"Think about it very carefully. This requires gathering information and planning. We can't let that woman take over the school like this."

Then Umbridge entered the Great Hall for dinner, and the four teachers moved apart. Snape couldn't have continued the conversation for very long in any case. He had to go to Croydon, and this time he would have news to report.

Thus it was that Snape did not learn until nearly midnight that Hagrid had returned to Hogwarts.

xxxxxxxxxx

Snape had no illusions about his meeting that night with the Dark Lord. He would have to be persuasive and be prepared to think fast.

On arrival at Croydon, Snape asked for an interview. It was granted an hour later. Once again, no one was there but Snape.

"Tell us of the situation at Hogwarts."

"The Lady is taking more power to herself."

"Describe that power."

"She has now been given the authority to determine all punishments for students, and to overrule the other teachers if she doesn't agree with what they have decided."

"This has little bearing on our main purpose."

"That is true, Lord, except that the other teachers are being pushed in the direction of rebellion. They resent her increased authority deeply."

"That is not what we wish. We wish you to explain why you think this was wisely done."

"It was not planned by our people, but it can rebound in our favor. The most important element of what is happening is that Dumbledore is not perceived as being part of it. The teachers wonder at his absence and his lack of action. They're beginning to doubt whether he has the will or the spirit to defend his own position. If they decide to act without consulting him, it means they've lost faith. Which also means they won't believe his stories about your return."

"We see. This is an interesting, even though unplanned development. Is there anything else?"

"Only that the students, too, seem to be rebelling against the Lady. Also without the assistance of Dumbledore."

"You will continue to keep us informed."

"Yes, Lord. Thank you, Lord."

Snape spent the rest of the evening with his self-defense classes and checking his simmering potions. It was too early to really tell with either the Polyjuice Potion or the Veritaserum, both of which took over a month to brew, but Snape had high hopes.

On his arrival back in Hogsmeade, Snape was met by an unseasonably early snowstorm and – Hagrid.

"What are you doing here? And more to the point, where have you been?"

"That's right Professor. Tell me how much ya missed me and were worried about me, and how ya couldn't live without my checking up on yer diet every two weeks. Go on. Tell me."

"I missed you and was worried about you. You can forget the diet part, though. I watch what I eat. Where were you?"

"We can talk about that later. Right now, I'm t' tell ya not t' send a patronus t' Dumbledore. Seems someone's watching. Seems someone's dying t' catch ya at something. Best not t' give them ammunition."

"Understood. Can you let me in the gate?"

"Well I'd be a poor groundskeeper an' I couldn't. What d' ya think Dumbledore sent me down here for?"

They walked to the gate, which Hagrid opened, then went their separate ways – Hagrid to his hut, and Snape to the castle. "Remember," Snape said as they parted. "You have to tell me everything."

A couple of inches of snow scrunched under Snape's feet as he climbed the hill, and his feet were soon wet and cold. _Luckily the falling snow will cover my footprints._ No one was watching in the entrance hall. _If she wanted to know whether or not I was in tonight, it wouldn't be so hard. All she had to do was knock on the office door to know I was out. Before I talk to her tomorrow, I need to establish an ironclad alibi._

The alibi turned out to be easier than Snape had thought. Even as he approached the short, narrow flight of stairs that led to the dungeons, Sprout's voice spoke his name.

"Severus, what are you doing up so late?"

"Checking the snowfall. And I might ask you the same question."

"I'm going back out to the greenhouses. I've shut all the roof and wall ventilation ports, but it's still terribly cold in there, and the outdoor frames need insulation. There're also some annuals that'll be frostbitten and useless by tomorrow morning, and perennials that need tenting. I could use some help, and with your knowledge of plants, you'd know right away what needs doing."

"My pleasure. Just point me where you want me to go. When did the snow start?"

Sprout looked at him quizzically. "About ten o'clock. Where were you, that you don't know that? On second thought, don't tell me. I might not want to know."

"Best you don't. You could do me a favor though."

They were outside now and heading for the greenhouses. "What favor? I'm not promising until I know."

"If anyone asks, I went out to tend the plants with you as soon as the snow started. I was coming downstairs from the Astronomy tower, and you caught me in the entrance hall on your way out."

"Oooo… deception. May I assume that 'anyone' means a certain particular one?"

"I love the way you jump right to the crux of the matter."

"Well, since you've been here since the snow started, you already know what needs doing. You get out into the field on the east slope and gather up the plants that are dying in the frost so we can start preserving them tonight."

"Aye-aye, captain. I'll bring them to the greenhouses."

The two separated and went about the business of saving Hogwarts's herb crop. A job that would have been impossibly large for two muggles was difficult but doable for a witch and a wizard and a pair of wands. While Sprout warmed the greenhouses and piled straw around the frames, Snape bundled piles of annual plants, sending them up to the herbology workrooms, and brought more straw down to the planted areas to shield the perennials. Some he covered in paper tents as protection from the cold air, and others that could weather a snowstorm easily, he left alone.

The plants now safe, Snape and Sprout met in the workroom to begin the lengthy sorting, chopping, and boiling of the frostbitten harvest to preserve their essences for potion-making. Outside the snow continued falling – it was now a foot and a half deep, and the stars wheeled overhead on their way toward morning, but neither Sprout nor Snape had any intention of deserting their task. The cold had damaged the cellular structure of the cuttings, and any delay in processing them meant loss.

By dawn it seemed that every pot, pan, crock, cauldron, or kettle that Sprout had was cheerfully bubbling over one of several flames. The two professors sat back and surveyed the results of their industry, only just now realizing how tired they were. It was a contented tiredness, though, for they knew the job had been well done.

Carefully locking the door to the workroom, Sprout and Snape made their way together to the Great Hall where Sunday breakfast was just being laid out. "I'm famished!" Sprout cried, and made a beeline to the food. Snape followed, a bit more restrained, but he too was hungry, and the smell of the food was alluring.

"Whatever you two were doing, it's certainly given Sprout an appetite," commented McGonagall as Snape took his place at the table.

"Herbs," Snape explained through a mouthful of kipper. "Snow. Cold."

"Ah! I'd not thought of that. It takes a gardener to realize that there's more to snow than fun throwing snowballs. Were the two of you out all night?"

"Mmmm…" Snape swallowed and was able to speak more coherently. "After covering the plants and bringing in the damaged ones, we had to start the preserving process or they'd have been ruined anyway. We just finished."

"Where were you last night?" asked an accusing voice next to Snape's ear. He turned to look Umbridge in the eyes.

"Saving Hogwarts's potions material," Snape replied. "We could have used some help, actually, Sprout and I."

"Why didn't you ask for it?"

"No one qualified enough. Except for us, of course."

"What about me."

"You never sat for a NEWT in either Potions or Herbology, much less passed one. That's definitely under-qualified."

"How do you know that?" Umbridge demanded, her face purpling.

"I checked. Hogwarts has files, too, you know." And Snape smiled sweetly at Umbridge.

After breakfast, since it was Sunday, Snape went to his own rooms, lay down on his bed, and fell quickly asleep. He woke again around one o'clock, which on Sundays was in the middle of the lunch period. He went to the Great Hall for a quick bite to eat, then decided to go down the hill to see Hagrid.

Hagrid at first didn't want to open the door. After several I-know-you're-in-theres, three open-this-door-nows, and a loud I-don't-need-a-key-to-bash-down-pine, the door opened and Snape was admitted.

"Tea?" said Hagrid, as if they'd not just had a confrontation about Snape's being allowed to visit at all.

"What the hell happened to you?" Snape countered.

Hagrid turned away, hiding his face in the ceremony of pouring tea. "It's nothing. We went up t' talk t', well, you know… giants… and they wasn't always so hospitable."

"No. You're lying. Some of those cuts and bruises are no more than thirty-six hours old. Some less. You got them shortly before you arrived here, and maybe…" – Snape looked closely – "maybe even in the last hour or so. There's a slight swelling there that's going to be a bruise tomorrow."

"Can't hide things from you, can I? Ya read minds, ya do. Sneaky trick."

"I'm not reading your mind, Hagrid. I'm a healer. I know bruises and cuts. Something is beating on you, and you don't want to tell me what it is."

"Well then, maybe ya should go."

"Well then, maybe you should tell me what's happening."

"Well it ain't like anyone could stay up there with what was going on."

"Well that sounds like you brought one of them back with you."

"One o' them? Ya ain't getting racist too, are ya?"

"Progress! You brought a giant back with you and are now defensive about his presence. You're afraid others will reject him for what he is, and he is so close to what they think that even you're not sure he'll pass inspection. And you are the most obstinate, pigheaded, self-absorbed…"

"Ya keep talking like that, and I'm going t' pound ya…"

"Who is he, Hagrid?"

"How d' ya know it ain't a she?"

Snape paused. How did he know it wasn't a giantess? "Well… I… well… She-giants don't beat you up like that!"

"A lot you know about she-giants! They ain't worth nothing if they don't beat ya up!"

This was incontrovertible. Snape retreated. "All right, you have a little friend hidden back there in the woods. Just as long as you're okay, I'll leave you alone. Forget I said anything."

"You just remember that, Mr. Big Shot wants t' jump all over everyone else's fun."

"I'll leave you alone. I will, I swear I will. I just thought…"

"Don't think. Ya think too much. So do them others. Ya just don't let them think for ya, see. You don't think, and they don't think, and we're all happy. I catch ya thinking, and I'll sit on ya 'til yer circulation stops and ya can't walk no more. Got me?"

By this time, Snape was backing quickly away. This was a Hagrid he'd never seen before. This was a Hagrid to set against Umbridge, and Snape was already trying to figure out how to do it. _Not today, surely, and not tomorrow either. Not for many days. But someday, get Umbridge down here checking on this giant…ess, and we're going to have the Donnybrook of all Donnybrooks._

"Not to worry, Hagrid. I'm leaving, and I won't disturb you further. If you need anything, let me know."

Snape made his way back up the hill to his office and room. _Too much in too short a time. I need some rest. I need to think this one through. I need to figure out how to get Umbridge and Hagrid in the ring together._

The thought was a pleasant one, and comforted him all afternoon.

Umbridge sent for Snape later in the day.

"You weren't in your office last evening."

"I know."

Umbridge waited for a moment, until it was clear no more information was coming. "So you don't intend to answer my question?"

"You didn't ask one." _Careful, Severus. You don't want her to get too impatient with you._

Not having a quill in her hand to tap, Umbridge began drumming her fingers instead. "Where were you last evening?"

"I told you. Out saving the potions-grade plants from the frost. You can check the concoctions, decoctions, tisanes, effusions, tinctures, and other preparations that Professor Sprout and I worked on all night if you doubt me."

"I mean before that."

"I went up to the Astronomy tower."

"Why?"

"To observe cloud structure and take barometric readings."

"You're not the Astronomy teacher."

"That's not astronomy. That's meteorology." _I could string her along like this forever, but do I really want to waste that much time?_ "The study of weather," Snape continued, "Weather, especially humidity, affects potions-making, and I was also worried about the herbs. A potion is only as good as the ingredients that go into it. A sudden frost can be a disaster."

"No one saw you go up there?"

"I assure you, the next time I take barometric readings, I'll arrange for witnesses."

Umbridge seemed to debate with herself the value of continuing this unprofitable line of questioning, then suddenly changed the subject. "Tell me about Hagrid."

"I doubt I could add to what's already in his file."

"You went to see him this morning."

"I did. I've been acquainted with Hagrid for twenty-four years and wanted to say welcome back."

"He's been in some kind of fight, did you notice?"

"Hard not to. I even asked him about it."

"And?"

"He preferred not to tell me. Since it isn't really my business, I didn't press the issue."

"In your opinion, is he a good teacher."

"I've never watched him teach, and have no basis on which to form a judgment."

"It would be better for you if you cooperated a little more."

"I've answered your questions."

"I need a different kind of answer."

"I believe that's called suborning a witness."

The drumming stopped. Umbridge's eyes narrowed, and the corners of her mouth twitched in the crude imitation of a smile. "I can think of places much better suited for this kind of interview than Hogwarts. Tread carefully, Potions master, or you may find yourself in one of them."

"Is Educational Decree Twenty-Six going to give the High Inquisitor the authority to arrest and incarcerate the teachers?"

"Perhaps. I have a short list. You're on it. When the time comes, you may wish you'd kept on my good side. You may go now."

"Yes, Ma'am. Thank you, Ma'am."

On Monday morning, Hagrid was back at the staff table for breakfast. The teachers all came up to greet him, as did several of the students – mostly from Gryffindor. There was a certain tension, and the definite sense that many would miss Professor Grubbly-Plank.

Hagrid plunked his chair next to Snape's and began helping himself to an enormous plate of food. "Sorry 'bout the way I spoke t' ya yesterday, lad," he muttered. "I was a little testy."

"Understatement of the year," Snape replied, also in a low voice. "Snap my head off, was the way I regarded it. Have you met the Lady yet?"

"She sent me a message she would observe a class. Tomorrow."

"Who do you have?"

"Gryffindor and Slytherin, fifth years."

"Drat! She must have picked that one on purpose. You have to be careful."

"I thought it was pretty good." Hagrid sounded puzzled. "It's got the students as like me best."

"It's also got the student who dislikes you most, and Lucius Malfoy is hand in glove with the Lady."

"Well, that's all right, though. I got a powerhouse lesson planned. Knock her socks off."

"I'd rather see you have a nice, safe lesson. You can't afford to take chances."

"That's what Hermione said."

_Point to Granger. The girl does have a head on her shoulders._ "You should listen to her. What's your lesson about, anyway?"

"Nothing out of the way. Animals we keep right here at Hogwarts."

"Sounds adequate… Heads up! There's Umbridge. Pretend we're not talking."

Snape and Hagrid finished their breakfast in silence.

The morning Potions lesson was with the same students Hagrid would have for his inspection the next day. Malfoy, released from hospital the previous afternoon, was thirsting for revenge, while Gryffindor was still reeling from the shock of losing Seeker and Beaters at one blow.

It was a tinderbox waiting for a match.

The potion of the day, a rather complex one, was meant to stimulate the hippocampus, and was called the Elixir of Remembrance.

"Maybe it'll help Weasley remember which goals he's supposed to be defending," sneered Malfoy, loud enough so the Gryffindor students on the other side of the room could hear.

Snape weighed the relative merits of having a man who was both Dolores Umbridge's advisor and the Dark Lord's lieutenant angry with him, and allowed Malfoy to keep talking.

"Of course, first he'd have to remember that he plays Quidditch, and then he'd have to remember to take the potion."

Crabbe and Goyle laughed at Malfoy's witticism, but Snape cringed. Approaching Malfoy, Snape whispered quietly for his ear alone, "Your bon mot was lacking in literary quality. If I were you, I'd hold back until you had something of truly astounding wit to offer. Otherwise you might find yourself the butt of a few jokes."

"What do you mean?" Malfoy hissed.

"Your comment was on a twelve-year-old level. You can do better than that. Don't give them the chance to shoot your poorer efforts down when you can flatten them with your best."

The attempt to come up with something that was his 'best' kept Malfoy quiet and occupied for the rest of the double lesson.

Hagrid's inspection by Umbridge was, by all accounts, a disaster. According to the Slytherin students, who were not at all sympathetic to Hagrid, Umbridge had treated him like an ignorant buffoon, pretended she couldn't understand what he was saying, accused him of exposing the students to vicious animals, and accepted at face value all the jokes they wanted to tell her. It was a while before Hagrid was ready to show his face to the staff.

Which was probably just as well, since his face continued to be cut and bruised with what were clearly fresh injuries, leading Snape to wonder if there wasn't after all a giantess somewhere in the background.

"Has he been to you for treatment?" Snape asked Madam Pomfrey on Thursday, two days after the inspection.

"I haven't seen him at all. If it weren't for the rest of you, I wouldn't know he'd been injured."

"Rest of us? Who else told you?"

"Who hasn't? Everyone who saw him on Monday and Tuesday at the staff table. McGonagall conveyed Dumbledore's concern, Flitwick and Sprout came together, Hooch was calling Trelawney a nervous old biddy for worrying that it might be contagious… I may be the only one at Hogwarts who hasn't seen Hagrid's face."

"Could you go visit him?"

"Not without his asking. It doesn't seem life-threatening, or likely to cause permanent disability. I can't treat him without his permission."

xxxxxxxxxx

November slipped away in relative quiet. The weather continued cold and snowy at Hogwarts, confining the students to the castle more than usual. This, oddly, did not increase the number of violent incidents, and Snape wondered again where some of his problems were channeling their energy.

The teachers had by now perfected the information chain, together with a series of coded messages, so in a way it was a disappointment that Umbridge gave them no opportunity to use it. The Lady once again appeared dormant, though the more rabid members of the staff were sure she was just waiting for the proper moment to spring her next surprise.

Things were happening at Croydon.

In the laboratory, the first experiments with Polyjuice Potion came up duds. Most of the alterations Snape had made merely rendered the potion completely ineffective. The only two ingredients that seemed to offer any hope for manipulation at all were the Boomslang skin and the Bicorn horn. At least when Snape adjusted them, the potion still brought about a transformation. He started several new batches brewing.

The Veritaserum gave more hope. It was harder to test, since Snape didn't want to use it on himself while he was at Croydon, so he brought a couple of samples with him to Hogwarts. Since he was absolutely certain that McGonagall would pump him for information if she were involved in the testing, Snape confided instead in Professor Flitwick. The results were, not surprisingly, mixed.

"I never knew you had… dear me… problems with your father," was Flitwick's response to testing with the first batch.

The second and the third, tested on different days, were similar, but the fourth batch showed promise.

In fact, it showed more than promise. Having drunk a dose of the potion, Snape found himself filled with unexpected feelings. He knew he'd been given Veritaserum, and he resented it. He wanted to resist, but that was not all. He wanted to deceive Flitwick. He began, in fact, to invent answers that were plausible but false.

"Now I am confused," said Flitwick at the end of that session. "How could _Witch Weekly_ name them couple of the year when you said before that they had so many problems?"

Snape explained, and the next time he was in Croydon, he made sure to bottle up several vials of the 'adjusted' Veritaserum to keep with his supplies at Hogwarts.

Then, in December, Croydon was once again tense with activity. A new class came in for defensive training, and requisitions were made on the stores for potions of cooperation and forgetfulness. It appeared that everyone involved had been constrained by a need-to-know order, and the two times someone started to say something in Snape's presence, they were hushed immediately by their comrades.

Snape reported this to Dumbledore at once. Dumbledore called for a meeting of the Order for midnight Monday the ninth. Snape didn't usually leave Hogwarts during the week, and by midnight Umbridge would be convinced he was asleep. Long before breakfast Tuesday morning they would both be back.

Molly Weasley opened the door to them at Grimmauld Place, though Black came directly from the kitchen to the hallway at the sound of their voices. After a quick greeting to Dumbledore, he edged over to Snape and muttered, "I hear you're giving Harry a bad time."

"If you mean he's been producing inferior potions and receiving correspondingly low grades, you're quite right. Typical of him to go crying to you."

Dumbledore stepped between them, forcing the two apart. "No bickering!" he demanded in a menacing tone, then led the way into the parlor.

Snape's report was short and to the point. "Half a dozen Death Eaters, maybe more that don't need training. They have someone inside who'll admit them. They're carrying potions for interrogation and forgetfulness, so they're hoping to be in and out without being detected. They're not anticipating resistance or violence, but…"

"But what?" prompted Moody.

"They're under a strict secrecy order – they won't talk in front of me – but they're nervous about something, something at headquarters, not the target building. A couple of them were projecting rather strongly. It seems someone important's going with them, and they're scared."

"Any idea who?"

"The highest ranking would be Malfoy or Macnair. If I were one of the ground troops, I'd be a lot more afraid of Macnair than of Malfoy."

"Understood," Moody said. "We have to set watchers again. We can rotate through the night hours like we did before." Tonks left right away, and the others stayed for refreshments.

Dumbledore followed the others into the dining room, but Snape hung back in the parlor. The rest affected not to notice, so Snape stayed there, lounging in a comfortable chair, ignoring the hum of conversation in the other room, and glancing around at the walls and the shelves of the parlor. Dark objects from every corner of the world were displayed there.

_My great-grandfather would have loved this place. Great additions to his own collection. Pity they all belong to Black._

A half an hour later, Dumbledore was ready to go. Snape rose and joined him on the way to the door, where Black let them out into the night. They exchanged no words.

Once in the street, Dumbledore turned to Snape. "One of these days, you will accept his hospitality." It was a command.

"I think he prefers that I don't. It would require his being hospitable to me."

"One of you is going to have to take the first step."

"Why? As it is now, we both know where we stand. No surprises."

"It is bad for the morale of the others. It impedes teamwork."

"The day I have to join the others as a member of a team is the day my usefulness to you as a spy is over. Better to keep things as they are."

"I want you to make peace with Sirius."

"Tell him to make peace with me. I wasn't the one who went around beating other people up."

Dumbledore looked puzzled. "Is this an incident I do not know about?"

"There were a lot of incidents you didn't know about."

"I would still like you to make the first move. Sirius spent twelve years in prison with little to do but brood. It is not surprising that he finds it hard to let things go."

Snape made eye contact with Dumbledore for several seconds. "Define prison," Snape said at last, and it was Dumbledore who looked away

Dumbledore said no more, and together they apparated back to Hogwarts. There were still a couple of hours left for sleep, but Snape was not able to avail himself of them, as his conversation with Dumbledore had revived too many bad memories. For the next few days, he was more bad-tempered than usual.

The situation between Croydon, Grimmauld Place, and Hogwarts remained unchanged for a week and a half. That was just enough time for it to begin to seem routine, even normal. Then, shortly after midnight the Thursday before the winter break was to begin, all hell broke loose.

Snape was driven from sleep by sudden searing pain in his left arm. He staggered from his bed in blind panic, the mind-numbing brutal insistence of the summons so intense that he was out of his rooms and halfway across the entrance hall before reality brought him to a wrenching halt.

_I can't disapparate from Hogwarts. I can't even leave Hogwarts walking through the gate on my own feet. Someone has to open the defenses for me._

Sprinting up the stairs to the gargoyle statue that was the entrance to Dumbledore's tower, Snape became aware that he was not the only person being summoned. The place was full of Weasleys of various ages, McGonagall apparently having just aroused them and brought them to Dumbledore. Snape hissed at her from a niche, and she came over after shooing the Weasley children up the spiral staircase.

"What are you doing here?" McGonagall asked, almost accusingly.

"I'm being summoned. Urgently. I need the gate opened."

McGonagall's look was almost fearful. "I think Albus will want to speak to you first."

Snape waited on tenterhooks while McGonagall brought Dumbledore down.

"He is calling you? When did it start?"

"Maybe fifteen minutes ago. Please, Headmaster, I have to go."

"Only a moment. We shall be leaving from here shortly, and you will be able to disapparate from this spot. Much faster than going to the gate. Do you have any idea what he wants?"

"No. There's no way to tell."

"We must assume that he knows, then. My concern is how much to give him. A little information will help you, and may also help us." Dumbledore thought for a moment. "Harry had a dream tonight, and in that dream he was present in the body of a huge snake that attacked Arthur Weasley. Only the snake really did attack Arthur. He is being taken now to St. Mungo's. Riddle must be aware of the contact, or he would not be summoning you so urgently. You are authorized to tell him what I just told you. See if you can find out what the experience was like from the other side."

"Get the snake to talk, you mean? I thought you were going to give me a hard assignment."

"Do not be cheeky. Minerva will signal you when it is safe to disapparate."

Each second seemed like a minute as Snape waited for the signal to go. At last McGonagall appeared on the spiral staircase where he had a good view of her. She motioned to him to wait, paused, and then gave him a thumbs-up. Snape concentrated on Croydon and disapparated.

Malfoy was waiting when Snape walked into headquarters. "Thank goodness you're here. He's getting very impatient. What kept you?"

"Magical shields. He knows that."

"Just let what you have be valuable."

And yet, when they came to the interview room, it was only Malfoy and Snape before the Dark Lord, and they were not required to kneel.

"You did not come to us at once."

"It is impossible to leave Hogwarts without the assistance of the headmaster or deputy headmaster. Leaving at one in the morning is unusual."

Malfoy drew in a sharp breath, and pain tickled the corners of Snape's brain. _Don't be flippant. Don't even approach being sarcastic. This man owns you, Severus. Be respectful._

The Dark Lord allowed silence to fill the room. Then he spoke again.

"Who allowed you to leave, Dumbledore or McGonagall?"

"Dumbledore."

"Then he knows you have come here."

"Yes, Lord."

"What does he want?"

"He wishes to know of the snake."

"Tell us how he is aware of this snake."

"The Potter boy had a dream, and in the dream he was the snake. He saw himself attack Arthur Weasley, and upon awaking alerted Dumbledore that Weasley was injured. Weasley has been taken to St. Mungo's."

"What else does Dumbledore know of the snake."

"Nothing, my Lord."

"So Dumbledore wishes to scan the mind of a snake. This amuses us. Has Potter had such dreams before?"

"None have been spoken of."

"So it begins. This is excellent news. We must study how this serpentine propensity of Potter's can be manipulated to our advantage. You may go."

Snape and Malfoy left together, each to apparate to a different part of Britain. Before they parted, Malfoy said, "You have no idea how relieved I was to hear you had something to tell him. I don't know what happened to him tonight, but it was as if someone had set him in a bed of nettles. He hated not knowing. I owe you another one."

In Dumbledore's office later, Snape tried to make sense of it all.

"Malfoy said something had happened to the Dark Lord himself. And the Dark Lord thought it funny that you wanted me to look for a snake. What are the chances that the Dark Lord was the snake?"

"You mean that Harry touched the mind of Riddle directly? That would explain how Riddle knew at once of his presence. You have a better feel for this than I do, Severus. What are the chances that Riddle, having already unconsciously influenced Harry's dreams, will now try consciously to influence those dreams further?"

"I think it's very possible."

"Will he start immediately?"

Snape thought for a while. "My sense was that he doesn't want to alarm Potter. Or you, for that matter. I don't think he has anything specific that he wants Potter to believe or do. When he comes up with something, he'll move. We may have some time to plan before he does."

"How would you feel if I asked you to teach Harry to block Riddle's thoughts?"

"You're joking. Please tell me you're joking."

"Why not? It seems a logical step."

"The Dark Lord nearly killed me last June because he thought I was teaching myself occlumency. Can you imagine how he'll react if he finds I'm teaching it to someone else?"

"How would he find out?"

"Through Potter. Once he tries contact with Potter's mind, unless Potter has already mastered occlumency, it's a direct link to me. Are you trying to kill me?"

"Not if I can avoid it. What makes you think Harry cannot master occlumency?"

"He's his father's son. There's nothing subtle about him. James was as transparent as the daylight, and his boy is no different. He'll sacrifice the thing he loves best to sentiment, and anything else that gets in the way. I prefer not being a sacrifice. At least not to his sentiment."

Thursday and Friday passed quickly, and suddenly the term was over and they were on Christmas break. Students and teachers deserted Hogwarts en masse, leaving the usual skeleton crew and stragglers. Even Umbridge left for the holidays, and Hogwarts was temporarily transformed into an island of peace in a tumultuous world.

Saturday found Snape back in Croydon.

Malfoy stuck his head in the door of the laboratory, but hardly glanced around. "He has a question for you. It'll take just a minute."

Snape went down to the interview room and stood before the Dark Lord.

"Has Potter had any more dreams?"

"I don't know. He left Hogwarts early Thursday morning and is in… the south now. He won't be back at Hogwarts until next term."

"Do you know exactly where he is?"

"Yes, Lord."

"Tell us."

The safest thing at that moment was to honestly try to think and say the name, which Snape did, knowing full well that it wouldn't be possible. "He's in… south… at… square…"

"Look at us."

Legilimency revealed the shield of the Fidelius Charm. There was no way to break through it, and the Dark Lord was satisfied. "That is of no consequence. We have already received information from another source. We have sufficient weapons. You will attempt to discover if Potter has had more dreams. It is important."

Back with Malfoy, Snape confided his task. "He also said we had a new source of information."

Malfoy chuckled. "It came to me, totally unexpected. You might say it fell from the blue, but it gave us a tool to use against Potter when it comes to it. Enough said. The less you know, the safer."

Snape returned to his class and his potions, but on his return to Hogwarts he went straight to Dumbledore.

"He's trying to project dreams into Potter's head. He wants Potter to know something or do something to the Dark Lord's advantage. I'm to find out if the dream incursion has been successful, and what the dreams are."

"Harry has told no one of any dreams. I shall contact the members of the Order and have them watch out for any sign that he is connecting with Riddle."

"Why don't you just ask him?" When several seconds passed without an answer, Snape looked over at Dumbledore. "He wouldn't tell you, would he?"

"He would be more likely to tell Sirius. It is fortunate that he is spending the break at headquarters. With the two of them together, Sirius may be able to find out things that would be harder for us here at Hogwarts."

"I don't suppose we could just explain the situation to him."

"Unfortunately, that might make things worse. That would open the possibility that Riddle would find out the full extent of our knowledge of his actions, putting Potter and you into greater jeopardy."

"Now I see where this is going. You're making another case for occlumency lessons. If I don't teach him, he's likely to give everything he knows about me to the Dark Lord." Snape stood and walked over to the cabinet where Dumbledore kept his mead and poured himself a glass. "This is a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation, isn't it?"

"I fear so. You must weigh which action is likely to give you the most protection and place you under the least risk."

"Does that mean you're leaving the decision up to me?"

"It does."

"Then I would prefer not to."

"That quick a decision? May I ask why?"

"It's more personal than you realize. You can find someone else to teach him. You could do it yourself. I could teach any other student. I do not want to teach him."

Dumbledore remained silent, waiting.

_I have to explain to him. He thinks I'm refusing because of some childhood feud involving James and Sirius. But Arthur Weasley's lying in St. Mungo's – he could have been killed – and I can't let Dumbledore think that I'm being that petty at a time like this. I can do this if I just figure out how to start._

The long, gentle silence helped. Snape knew Dumbledore would wait patiently until he was ready.

"It's instinctive. Shutting people out, I mean. I was shutting my father out before I was old enough to understand that I didn't have to – that he couldn't read me anyway. The first time I locked you out, I wasn't really intending to do it. It just happened. The same with the Dark Lord. I didn't want to shut him out. It just happened."

Snape took a deep breath. "Letting people in can be instinctive, too. I won't say I never shut my mother out, but the few times I did required conscious effort, hard effort, and she could sense the strain. There's one other person I was never able to lock out. She didn't know how to read me either, but that wouldn't have made a difference. Every time I looked into her eyes, I was an open book."

Dumbledore nodded. "And he has his mother's eyes."

"I felt it from the beginning. The day he was sorted. He touched his scar as if it hurt, and looked straight at me. It was like looking into her eyes again. If he'd known how to read that day, he'd have had me from that moment. But he didn't know. And now you want me to teach him that reading is possible. I'll never be able to let down my guard around him again."

"This is a serious issue for you, I see."

"It's worse. What if he can't learn occlumency? There are things… The fastest way to get someone to want to hide his thoughts is to try to access the thoughts he most wants to hide – thoughts of humiliation, fear, intense or shameful emotion… It can boomerang, and he could conceivably access my thoughts, and I might not be able to keep him out. Those thoughts would then be available for the Dark Lord to see every time Potter sleeps. Some of those thoughts, if the Dark Lord sees them through Potter, would let him know that I deceived him from the very first. They're a death sentence."

"I had not thought of that." Dumbledore rose now, too, and poured himself a glass of mead, refreshing Snape's glass as he did so. Then he asked a strange question. "How many of these thoughts are we talking about?"

"I don't know. I wasn't even considering the question before this little chat of ours. What difference does it make?"

"What if you could put those thoughts somewhere where Potter could never access them?"

"You can't just take thoughts out of your head."

"I have a pensieve."

"Oh."

This was not, truth be told, Snape's idea of an optimal solution. The optimal solution was for Dumbledore to teach Potter himself. That, however, could lead to the same worst-scenario situations that Snape foresaw for himself, except that having the Dark Lord access Dumbledore's thoughts was, over all, a greater disaster.

"Let me show you the pensieve," Dumbledore said. "Have you ever used one before?"

Learning to use the pensieve was easy. Deciding what to place in it was hard. The capacity of the basin was limited, so it could hold a large number of short memories, but only a few long ones. Snape sat in his office for hours, staring at the ancient symbols carved around the outside of the stone, reviewing all those thoughts he'd managed to keep hidden from the Dark Lord in June.

_It really is a matter of what I can explain to the Dark Lord and what I can't. There's nothing about my family I have to worry about, except the moment I discovered that Death Eaters arranged Nana's death with an Imperius spell. That has to go into the pensieve._

The memory swirled in the basin like a liquid mist, lightly coating the bottom with white silver. After that, Snape's choices revolved around three people – Dumbledore, Hagrid… and Lily.

_Thank goodness the Dark Lord knows that Dumbledore considers me his own spy. Almost all of our conversations can be explained. And since I'll be evoking unpleasant memories in Potter, that's what Potter'd be most likely to see in me. Most of my interactions with Hagrid were pleasant, and therefore unlikely to come out, or explainable if they do. The most dangerous memory is of the day I returned to Hogwarts and betrayed the Dark Lord to Dumbledore._

That was a long memory. The pensieve was filling up, the silver clouds of his thoughts rippling as if disturbed by a breeze. Now there was the problem of Lily… Lily, who'd brought about the destruction of the Dark Lord through the power of her love… whose friendship would, in the Dark Lord's eyes, constitute the blackest of treasons.

_I have never shown Lily to the Dark Lord. Anything he sees of her will tell him I've been hiding my thoughts, deceiving him. There's too much, and I can only fit two more long memories into the pensieve. Most of my memories of Lily are good, pleasant memories, though. Best to concentrate on the bad ones, the ones most likely to be pulled out during occlumency lessons._

That narrowed the list down considerably. First and foremost was the day that Lily died. The whole episode – from the moment of hearing of the Dark Lord's demise, through the black despair of the Astronomy Tower, to waking up from sedation in the hospital – all had to go.

One other long memory remained – the day Sirius and James had humiliated him in front of the whole school, and Lily had come charging to his defense. _If the Dark Lord sees that, he'll know there was something between us, will wonder why he never saw it before, and will look for more._

Now there was room for only two short memories, and they were obvious. First was the day Snape had struck Lily, the day he'd realized that his father's demon lived in him and that he could never be close to anyone without hurting them. The other was the argument when he'd accused Lily of betraying him by teaching his spells to James. With that last memory, the pensieve was full.

_Three long memories, and three short memories. The others either unlikely to be drawn out or something I can explain. Something I hope I can explain._

xxxxxxxxxx

"It will work, then?" Dumbledore smiled. "I am pleased."

"It'll work as far as past memories are concerned. At least the most dangerous things can be protected. There still remains the very act of teaching occlumency. He's not going to be happy about that."

"Will not the fact that I have ordered you to do it be of any help in deflecting his anger?"

"You haven't ordered me to do it."

Dumbledore turned his back on Snape, then wheeled suddenly, wrath blazing in his eyes. "Enough of your excuses and your petty scruples!" he snarled. "I will not tolerate your disobedience! You will teach this boy to hide his thoughts, or your tenure at this school is over. If you cannot be useful to me, you might as well be dementor fodder at Azkaban! Do you understand!"

"Yes, Headmaster," Snape whispered, hanging his head and allowing fear to wash through him.

After a pause, Dumbledore relaxed his pose. "Do you think that will assist you in making your case?"

"It's better than nothing. Have you ever considered a career in the theater?"

The Saturday before the new term, Snape left early for London. He had first to visit Grimmauld Place to let Potter know about the occlumency lessons, then go from there to Croydon. Dumbledore had covered one of Snape's problems by giving him a letter to let Black know he was to be allowed to speak privately to Potter. The second problem was trickier. Snape had to decide whether or not to tell the Dark Lord about the lessons.

"Come in, Professor. What a pleasant surprise," Molly Weasley smiled at him as she opened the door. "Will there be a meeting?"

"Good afternoon, Mrs. Weasley," Snape replied. "No meeting today. At least no large one. I'm here at Professor Dumbledore's request to speak with Master Potter."

"In that case, you'll probably be most comfortable in the kitchen. I'll let Harry know you're here."

"Look what the cat dragged in," said a voice from the stairs, and Snape and Molly looked up to see Black descending towards them. "Or maybe it was a snake. Look what the snake dragged in."

"I've been instructed to speak with Potter," Snape said calmly, holding out the letter. "Professor Dumbledore…"

Black seized the letter, tore it open, and read quickly. "Fine. You can talk. The kitchen's perfect. Molly, you can tell Harry to meet us there. Unless, of course," he sneered, "Mr. High-and-Mighty also objects to smelling my food."

Snape ignored the jibe. "I believe you'll notice that the letter says a private conversation."

Gesturing Snape towards the kitchen, Black growled, "I'm not leaving Harry alone with you." The volume of his voice was rising, and Snape wondered suddenly if Black had been drinking. "I wouldn't trust a sneak like you alone with Harry. So you take me, or you get out of my house."

"Very well," Snape responded. "I suppose when one is truly bored, even eavesdropping provides entertainment."

"Get in the kitchen, Snivelly, before I decide to throw you out."

"Believe me, I have as great a desire to return to fresh air as you have to see me leave."

They sat for a moment in stony silence, the width of the kitchen table between them, staring at opposite sides of the room. Then the door opened, and Potter said, "Er…" and entered.

Trying to act as if Black weren't there to threaten him, Snape motioned toward a chair. "Sit down, Potter…"

"You know," Black interrupted, tipping his chair back and staring ceilingwards, "I think I'd prefer it if you didn't give orders here, Snape. It's my house, you see."

Potter took Black's cue and sat next to his godfather so that Snape was obliged to talk to both of them. Snape forced his anger down, and with an effort to be calm said, "I was supposed to see you alone, Potter, but Black…"

"I'm his godfather!" Black was now close to shouting.

"I am here on Dumbledore's orders, but by all means stay, Black. I know you like to feel… involved."

Black's chair slammed back into its place. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Merely that I am sure you must feel… frustrated by the fact that you can do nothing useful for the Order." Black was silent, and Snape continued. "The headmaster has sent me to tell you, Potter, that it is his wish for you to study Occlumency this term."

"Study what?" Potter said, and it was clear he'd never heard the word before.

"Occlumency, Potter. The magical defense of the mind against external penetration. An obscure branch of magic, but a highly useful one."

"Why do I have to study Occlu… thing?" His obtuseness brought vivid images of Crabbe and Goyle into Snape's mind. _How can you be Lily's son? If it weren't for the eyes…_

"Because the headmaster thinks it a good idea. You will receive private lessons once a week, but you will not tell anybody what you are doing, least of all Dolores Umbridge. You understand?"

"Yes. Who's going to be teaching me?"

_Do you honestly think that I came all the way here to play messenger boy for someone else? Or does the prospect distress you so much that you refuse to accept its reality?_

"I am," Snape replied.

Potter stared at Snape, the look on his face one of horror. Black thrust his own face forward intimidatingly. "Why can't Dumbledore teach Harry?" he demanded. "Why you?"

The angrier Black became, the more sharp and focused Snape felt himself growing. The conversation was nearing a point of actual battle, and Snape began automatically to shut down even as he prepared to leave the house. "I suppose because it is a headmaster's privilege to delegate less enjoyable tasks. I assure you I did not beg for the job."

Rising, Snape adjusted his cloak around his shoulders. It was nearly time for him to be at Croydon. He addressed Potter, turning slightly to shut Black out of his vision. "I will expect you at six o'clock on Monday evening, Potter. My office. If anybody asks, you are taking Remedial Potions. Nobody who has seen you in my classes could deny you need them."

As Snape turned to leave, Black snapped, "Wait a moment!"

"I am in rather a hurry, Black… unlike you, I do not have unlimited leisure time…" Snape was shut down completely now, sensing attack. His hand moved toward his wand. Just in case…

"I'll get to the point then," snarled Black, rising. His height and bulk loomed forward over Snape, a clear physical menace, and the memory flashed into Snape's mind of Black's fist slamming into his stomach. He gripped his wand as Black continued. "If I hear you're using these Occlumency lessons to give Harry a hard time, you'll have me to answer to."

"How touching. But surely you have noticed that Potter is very like his father?"

"Yes, I have."

"Well then, you'll know he's so arrogant that criticism simply bounces off him."

Black charged around the table, his wand now out in his hand, but Snape drew his wand, too, and they faced each other, barely two feet apart, for the duel that had been set brewing twenty-three years earlier, the first time Black threatened Snape in the halls of Hogwarts. Potter was yelling Black's name, but Black paid him no attention, and Snape concentrated only on the coming fight. Black's voice rose in anger while Snape's sank to a controlled whisper.

"I've warned you, Snivellus, I don't care if Dumbledore thinks you've reformed, I know better…"

"Oh, but why don't you tell him so? Or are you afraid he might not take the advice of a man who has been hiding inside his mother's house for six months very seriously?"

"Tell me, how is Lucius Malfoy these days? I expect he's delighted his lapdog's working at Hogwarts, isn't he?"

"Speaking of dogs, did you know that Lucius Malfoy recognized you last time you risked a little jaunt outside? Clever idea, Black, getting yourself seen on a safe station platform… gave you a cast-iron excuse not to leave your hidey-hole in the future, didn't it?"

The goading worked. Black raised his wand. _Now it begins. Watch his eyes. You'll see the spell in his mind before he can cast it._

And then Potter was between them, screaming "NO!" and trying to stop Black. "Sirius, don't…"

His spell casting blocked by Potter, Black still pushed forward. "Are you calling me a coward?" he roared, as Snape sidestepped Potter to get a clearer shot.

"Why, yes, I suppose I am."

"Harry. Get. Out. Of. It!" and Black broke loose, lunging at Snape while Potter scrambled to intervene again. The boy planted one hand firmly on Snape's chest as he blocked Black with the other, and the two stood, the distance between them that of Potter's outstretched arms, wands pointed at each other's head.

_Come for me. Come for me. Make my day._

And then the kitchen door banged open and the whole tribe of Weasleys burst into the kitchen, Arthur among them gleefully pronouncing, "Cured! Completely cured!"

The tableau froze for a moment as the Weasleys took in the strange scene and Snape and Black began to retreat from their confrontation.

"Merlin's beard," gasped Arthur Weasley, "what's going on here?"

It was over. The duel would wait for another time. Recovering faster, Snape pocketed his wand and strode to the kitchen door, still too focused on Black to speak to the Weasleys. His last words were for the boy. "Six o'clock Monday evening, Potter," he said, then turned and left the house.

Snape walked quickly away from number twelve. Even though he was late, he wandered the streets around King's Cross for a while. He couldn't apparate directly to Croydon because it would be noticed instantly by the Dark Lord that something had disturbed him. _If he calls me in to report, he'll know._ In addition, he'd not yet decided what to do about the occlumency lessons.

_If I tell him, he'll be angry. If I don't tell him and he finds out later, he'll be furious. Either way, I'm in for a rough ride. How can I explain teaching occlumency when I've told him my own is involuntary? How will he react if I'm successful with Potter? How much can I blame Dumbledore?_ It helped that Dumbledore had given him permission to disclose the lessons, but it didn't make the decision easier. _Fascinating that I am allowed to tell the Dark Lord, but Dumbledore absolutely does not want Umbridge to know. Sad, that we can't trust our own Ministry._

When he was finally calm enough, Snape apparated to Croydon, where he left a request to speak with the Dark Lord, then went directly to his laboratory. The next batches of the Polyjuice Potion and the Veritaserum were nearing their completion, and he tended them. Within the hour, a messenger came to ask him about his interview request.

"He wants to know if it's urgent or routine. If it's urgent, he'll see you tonight. If it's routine, it can wait until next week."

Snape stared at the man. "The Dark Lord has always seen me before."

"Not tonight, Professor. Big things brewing in the next couple of days. Wouldn't be surprised if they locked some of us out. Security, you know."

"It's routine. It will wait."

Snape fretted for another half hour, then the word came down that all extraneous personnel were to leave the building for the weekend and return the following Tuesday. Snape walked out with the others, then apparated directly to Hogsmeade.

Fifteen minutes later, he was with Dumbledore.

"You decided not to tell him about the lessons," Dumbledore said as Snape walked into his office.

"I never had the chance. They sent us all home and locked the building down. Something big is happening this weekend, or Monday by the latest."

"How do you know?"

"They told us to return on Tuesday."

"We shall reposition our people on guard at the Ministry and double the number. Any more than that, and Fudge will get suspicious. What are the chances that it is a different target?"

"I don't know. I know I was denied an interview and sent back here for security reasons. And I wasn't alone or singled out. This one is top, top secret."

"So we can only watch and wait."

"What if the Ministry wasn't against us?"

"We would alert the muggle Prime Minister and put a watch around every important building or site. The guards at the Ministry and at Azkaban would be reinforced, and listening posts would be alerted to report any unusual increase in magical activity. If the Ministry was not against us."

Snape went to bed and slept fitfully. The next day the students returned from their break, and the day after was Monday, and the beginning of Potter's occlumency lessons.


	51. Chapter 51 – Occlumency

**Yes. That Is My Job: Occlumency**

Monday should have been a thoroughly normal day, and to outward appearances maybe it was, but inwardly Snape was dreading the evening. At the end of his last class, he went up to Dumbledore's office, using side staircases to avoid Umbridge, now back at Hogwarts, and took the pensieve down to his own rooms. There, in the dark, he set it on his desk with a candle on either side to help him focus.

Seating himself in a chair in the corner, Snape contemplated the pensieve, then began to review and lock away all his thoughts about Lily. It was painful to remember what had been lost, but beneficial, too, for this was Lily's son he was trying to help. Lily's son. He hadn't felt that so strongly since two years earlier, when Sirius Black escaped from Azkaban. How much had changed since then.

In the dim silence, Snape rose and placed three memories into the pensieve, the one long and two short of Lily that he'd chosen. Every other trace of her was locked away. Then he sat again to review the long relationship with the Dark Lord, that had started in trust and turned so foul, shutting away all of it, hoping it would not burst open and spill out when he confronted the green eyes.

A knock startled Snape from his reverie, and he watched as the office door opened and Lily's son stepped into the room, confused by the dark and the candlelight. "Shut the door behind you, Potter," Snape said quietly, and the boy did as he was told. Snape moved forward and motioned to a chair on the other side of the room from the desk. He himself sat in front of the pensieve, watching Potter's shadowed face across the room, shadows that hid Lily's eyes.

"Well, Potter, you know why you are here. The headmaster has asked me to teach you Occlumency. I can only hope that you prove more adept at it than Potions." _If not, I am dead, and you are dead, and all is lost._

"Right," Potter replied, his voice not masking the scorn.

"This may not be an ordinary class, Potter, but I am still your teacher and you will therefore call me 'sir' or 'Professor' at all times."

"Yes… sir."

_This is going to be harder than I thought. We've added a new layer. Now I have Lily's eyes, James's face, and Sirius Black's mannerisms._ "Now, Occlumency. As I told you back in your dear godfather's kitchen, this branch of magic seals the mind against magical intrusion and influence."

"And why does Professor Dumbledore think I need it, sir?"

_Because you did a mind-meld with the Dark Lord and attacked Arthur Weasley while inhabiting the body of a snake._ "Surely even you could have worked that out by now, Potter? The Dark Lord is highly skilled at Legilimency…"

"What's that? Sir?"

"It is the ability to extract feelings and memories from another person's mind…"

"He can read minds?"

_How do I explain this? I speak to Dumbledore of reading, and call myself an open book, but that's because we both understand that to be a quick way to refer to something far more complex. But if Potter thinks only of the simplistic action of reading, he will not learn to hide his thoughts and feelings._

Snape tried to make Potter understand the subtle control of memory and emotion that allowed an occlumens to reveal those thoughts that would confirm what he was saying while concealing those that would contradict him. It was almost as if the boy was not paying attention.

"So he could know what we're thinking right now? Sir?"

"Time and space matter in magic, Potter. Eye contact is often essential to Legilimency."

"Well then, why do I have to learn Occlumency?"

_I don't know. Maybe you vicariously enjoyed attacking Weasley. Maybe you have secret ambitions of becoming a Dark Lord yourself and want to pick up hints on how to go about it. Maybe you're just lazy and stupid._

With a deep sigh, and a prayer for patience, Snape went back to the beginning and once again tried to explain.

_Make it simple, Severus. He has to understand this._ "The usual rules do not seem to apply with you, Potter. The curse that failed to kill you seems to have forged some kind of connection between you and the Dark Lord. The evidence suggests that at times, when your mind is most relaxed and vulnerable – when you are asleep for instance – you are sharing the Dark Lord's thoughts and emotions. The headmaster thinks it inadvisable for this to continue. He wishes me to teach you how to close your mind to the Dark Lord." _Any simpler, and I'll be using words of one syllable only._

"But why does Professor Dumbledore want to stop it? I don't like it much, but it's been useful, hasn't it? I mean… I saw that snake attack Mr. Weasley and if I hadn't, Professor Dumbledore wouldn't have been able to save him, would he? Sir?"

_This is like beating my head against a brick wall! He really does need words of one syllable. I can't tell him how I know – he's dumb enough to blab it to everyone, including the Dark Lord. Was James like this?_ "It appears that the Dark Lord has been unaware of the connection between you and himself until very recently. Up till now it seems that you have been experiencing his emotions and sharing his thoughts without his being any the wiser. However, the vision you had shortly before Christmas..."

"The one with the snake and Mr. Weasley?"

"Do not interrupt me, Potter. As I was saying… the vision you had shortly before Christmas represented such a powerful incursion upon the Dark Lord's thoughts…"

"I saw inside the snake's head, not his!"

"I thought I just told you not to interrupt me, Potter?" _Does two plus two always give you three, Potter? Can you not infer the simplest thing? Is there no intuition in you at all?_

"How come I saw through the snake's eyes if it's Voldemort's thoughts I'm sharing."

Pain lanced through Snape's left arm, and his breath hissed inward with the shock of it. "Do not say the Dark Lord's name!" he gasped. The two of them glared at each other.

"Professor Dumbledore says his name."

"Dumbledore is an extremely powerful wizard." _And I will not give you the truth as a weapon to use against me._ "While he may feel secure enough to use the name… the rest of us..."

"I just wanted to know why…"

"You seem to have visited the snake's mind because that was where the Dark Lord was at that particular moment. He was possessing the snake at the time and so you dreamed you were inside it too…"

"And Vol… he… realized I was there?"

_Thank goodness! We've arrived at last!_ "It seems so."

"How do you know? Is this just Professor Dumbledore guessing, or…"

Snape froze. That information in Potter's brain was dangerous. He shifted the subject. "I told you to call me 'sir.'"

"Yes, sir, but how do you know…?"

"It is enough that we know. The important point is that the Dark Lord is now aware that you are gaining access to his thoughts and feelings. He has also deduced that the process is likely to work in reverse; that is to say, he has realized that he might be able to access your thoughts and feelings in return…"

"And he might try and make me do things? Sir?"

"He might." _And if that were all, I would feel much calmer about this._ "Which brings us back to Occlumency."

It was time, but Snape still had three more memories to put in the pensieve. Placing the tip of his wand against his temple, he thought the nonverbal spell Dumbledore had taught him and withdrew the memories of Nana, his return to Dumbledore, and that terrible Halloween night. Then Snape carefully removed the pensieve to a safe counter and turned to face Lily's son, his own wand ready in his hand.

"Stand up and take out your wand, Potter." The boy obeyed, seeming relieved that the desk was between them. There was still the prohibition against a student attacking a teacher, but Snape quickly dismissed it. "You may use your wand to attempt to disarm me, or defend yourself in any other way you can think of."

"And what are you going to do?" Potter asked, his nervousness evident in his voice.

Explanation was necessary. Legilimency practiced against an unsuspecting target, except in battle, was unethical. "I am about to attempt to break into your mind. We are going to see how well you resist. I have been told that you have already shown aptitude at resisting the Imperius curse… You will find that similar powers are needed for this… Brace yourself now…" As Snape spoke, he also checked his own mind to be sure his thoughts were still locked away. Then, gazing into the well-loved eyes, he cried, _"Legilimens!"_

It was a bizarre feeling, for up until this moment Snape's only experience with legilimency was reading the surface thoughts of someone about to fight him, or the projected thoughts of Dumbledore. Now it was as if a window opened in the front of his mind, and through that window he could see and feel the thoughts flitting through Potter's brain. He projected an undefined negative feeling, and the memories responded as if trained.

A fat little boy – his cousin? – rode a red tricycle, and Snape himself felt the resentment at not receiving such toys… A dog chased a small Potter up a tree while others laughed… The Sorting Hat's voice told Potter he would do well in Slytherin – _He was almost sorted into Slytherin? Does Dumbledore know?_… Granger lay in the hospital after the disastrous experiment with Polyjuice Potion – _poor girl, muggle-born like Lily_, and Snape realized that the doors in his mind were being forced open… Dementors clustered around, and Snape cringed in remembered fear as he fought to keep his own vision of them away… A girl drew near, and Snape realized there was a sprig of mistletoe… Then Potter was yelling, "You're not watching it! It's private!"

Sudden burning pain hit Snape's right hand, and he broke the connection as he jerked hand and wand away from Potter's attack. Glancing down, he saw an angry red welt, like the mark of a whip, across his right wrist. _Interesting. The boy fought back because of the girl._

"Did you mean to produce a Stinging hex?" he asked.

Potter had moved closer to the desk and fallen as he attacked. Now he clambered to his feet. "No," he answered, his voice hard and wary.

"I thought not. You let me get in too far. You lost control." Snape was watching for any sign that Potter had seen his thoughts as well.

"Did you see everything I saw?"

"Flashes of it. To whom did the dog belong?"

"My Aunt Marge."

Snape rotated the injured wrist, trying to relieve the sting. "Well, for a first attempt that was not as poor as it might have been. You managed to stop me eventually, though you wasted time and energy shouting. You must remain focused. Repel me with your brain and you will not need to resort to your wand."

"I'm trying, but you're not telling me how!"

"Manners, Potter," Snape replied, though he realized the boy had made a point. _I can't tell you how to do it because I don't always know how I do it. It just happens. You can't teach instinct. I can't teach anything with Lily staring at me out of James's face. Try something different, Severus._

"Now, I want you to close your eyes."

Potter glared at Snape, clearly angry at being forced to reveal his thoughts.

_If you don't want to show me what you're thinking, learn to block me. Your anger is hindering your concentration._ "Clear your mind, Potter. Let go of all emotion…" Yet the boy was not letting go of his emotions. He didn't seem to be trying, his anger bubbling up so strongly that Snape could feel it even without eye contact. A familiar anger, boiling near the surface. "You're not doing it, Potter… You will need more discipline than this… Focus, now…"

Then the passion began to diminish, the turmoil to lessen. It was a hopeful sign. Snape raised his wand. "Let's go again… on the count of three… one – two – three – _Legilimens!_"

A great dragon reared up in attack, black scales glistening through the haze of fire and smoke, and then… Snape was startled to see Lily in front of him – Lily and James waving and smiling – _Is this my thought, given to Potter even with the green eyes closed?_ Snape struggled to control his own feelings, and noticed only at that moment that the image was framed in a mirror, a mirror he recognized… which dissolved into the staring dead eyes of Cedric Diggory…

Potter was on the floor, howling NOOOoooo! as Snape broke contact and released him, nearly as shaken and distraught as the boy. But Snape recovered faster, now burning with anger himself. _I know where this comes from, this self-indulgent, lethal sentiment that's going to get us all killed. He's been wallowing in it at Grimmauld Place. There's another one who never could control his emotions or his actions!_

"Get up!" he snapped at Potter. "Get up! You are not trying, you are making no effort, you are allowing me access to memories you fear, handing me weapons!" _Handing the Dark Lord weapons!_

Potter stood, and Black's uncontrolled, murderous anger blazed from Lily's eyes. "I. Am. Making. An. Effort." he forced out.

"I told you to empty yourself of emotion!"

"Yeah?" Potter snarled, and his mouth curled in a way James's never had. "Well, I'm finding that hard at the moment."

"Then you will find yourself easy prey for the Dark Lord! Fools who wear their hearts proudly on their sleeves, who cannot control their emotions, who wallow in sad memories and allow themselves to be provoked this easily – weak people, in other words – they stand no chance against his powers! He will penetrate your mind with absurd ease, Potter!"

They confronted each other across the desk, fire and ice, and Snape could see the violence brewing behind the green eyes as his own mind began automatically to lock down in the face of an imminent attack. "I am not weak," Potter hissed in a threatening whisper.

"Then prove it! Master yourself! Control your anger, discipline your mind! We shall try again! Get ready, now! _Legilimens!_"

A large man nailed a board over a slot… Dementors glided next to the lake at Hogwarts… Potter was running with a man, with Arthur Weasley, down a corridor toward a black door, but swerved aside down a flight of stairs…

"I KNOW!" Potter screamed. "I KNOW!"

Snape broke away again and stared down at Potter, once again on the floor. "What happened then, Potter?"

"I saw – I remembered. I've just realized…"

"Realized what?" A terrible feeling of apprehension was growing in Snape.

Potter looked up suddenly, "What's in the Department of Mysteries?"

Now fear began to overtake anger, and Snape could feel the blood drain from his face. "What did you say?"

"I said, what's in the Department of Mysteries, sir?"

"And why… would you ask such a thing?"

Potter's face took on a speculative look as he seemed to search Snape's features. "Because that corridor I've just seen – I've been dreaming about it for months – I've just recognized it – it leads to the Department of Mysteries… and I think Voldemort wants something from…"

Pain seared again. "I have told you not to say the Dark Lord's name!" But over and above the pain there was now well-defined and focused fear. _The Dark Lord has been trying to break into the Department of Mysteries for months, and Potter has been dreaming of the Department of Mysteries for months. They've been linked for months, this idiot boy and the Dark Lord, and we're only now finding out about it._ With an effort, Snape forced his own emotions into the background.

"There are many things in the Department of Mysteries, Potter, few of which you would understand and none of which concern you, do I make myself plain?" _And I thank Providence that I, too, am ignorant, for you now can never learn that information through me._

"Yes," replied Potter, rubbing the scar on his forehead.

_Once a week may not be enough._ "I want you back here same time on Wednesday, and we will continue work then."

"Fine."

"You are to rid your mind of all emotion every night before sleep – empty it, make it blank and calm, you understand?"

"Yes."

"And be warned, Potter… I shall know if you have not practiced..."

"Right." And Potter picked up his book bag and left the room.

Snape didn't watch him go. Shaken to the core of his being, he moved mechanically to the pensieve to retrieve his thoughts. Only then did he realize how the relationship between himself and Potter had subtly changed. The stilted formality of 'Professor' and 'Sir' had disappeared, and they had spoken and interacted as equals. Equals caught in a strange mesh of mental connections that included Lily and Black and, most frightening, the Dark Lord, who had now touched both their minds. It was a net that Dumbledore had to be protected from at all costs.

Picking up the pensieve, Snape started for Dumbledore's office, when another thought came to him. _Chased up a tree while everyone laughed. His childhood must have been miserable. Not what I imagined at all._

Filling Dumbledore in on the extent of Potter's contact with the Dark Lord and its implications was a matter of fifteen minutes. Dumbledore was concerned, and agreed that contact with Potter at this time could put them all into jeopardy. Then Snape went back to his rooms and tried sorting and reviewing everything he'd seen and felt that evening.

The summons came shortly before eleven, not a blinding, numbing insistence, but one strong enough that Snape knew he had to leave at once. Sneaking from the castle, he sent his patronus to Dumbledore with a request to be allowed out, and was soon disapparating from Hogsmeade.

Midnight Croydon was calm and peaceful as Snape made his quiet way to the headquarters building. Around him other Death Eaters were apparating in, all of them apparently as mystified as he. They filtered into the building in small groups, and were ushered into a now crowded interview chamber.

Lucius Malfoy was standing at the door, and pulled Snape aside as soon as he saw him. "They'll all know quick enough," he whispered, "but you're going to get a preview. Somebody wants to see you."

After the evening's session with Potter, that didn't sound like good news. Snape trailed reluctantly behind Malfoy down one of the basement corridors into a dim room where a group of people were gathered.

"Look who's here," chuckled a female voice, a sultry contralto that even after fourteen years Snape recognized instantly. "My little puppy dog's come running to greet me at the door."

Snape turned to the voice, registering as he did so the faces of Rabastan and Rodolphus Lestrange, of Aloysius Mulciber, Antonin Dolohov, and Augustus Rookwood, all suddenly and inexplicably free of Azkaban prison. She stood behind them, raven hair brushed back away from her face, heavy-lidded eyes and pouting lips crinkled in what might pass for a smile. Snape felt his heart sink down to his feet, even as he prayed that his voice sounded warm and pleasant.

"Hello, Bella," he said. "Welcome home."

"My, my. You've grown up," Bella commented as she moved to Snape's side. "The last time I saw you, you were scarcely more than a teenager. How did you survive the interregnum? I'll bet you have a wife and children by now."

Snape realized to his embarrassment that he was blushing, and Malfoy crowed with laughter. "You're talking to a monk, Bella. Dumbledumb keeps him locked in a cell most of the year, and the month he gets free, he spends with books."

"Dumbledore? You're still teaching at Hogwarts?"

"Fourteen and a half years now," Snape replied. "It was that or join you in dementor heaven."

"Sounds like Dumbledore knows how to tighten the screws. How did you manage to slip the chain and get here tonight for the party?"

Once again Malfoy answered for Snape. "Madam Lestrange, you are looking at a double agent. Dumbledore thinks Severus spies for him when Severus really spies for us."

"Really?" Bella hooked a finger in the fastening of Snape's cloak and pulled him closer to her. "I bet you make a great spy."

"I do my best," Snape said, feeling like a schoolboy again.

Rodolphus edged over to the little group. "Unhand this boy, wife, or I shall have to do battle for your honor." He winked at Snape and Malfoy as he grasped both Bella's wrists and pulled her into a kiss. "Gad, I've missed you."

The two locked lips just as an underling stuck his head into the room. "The Dark Lord is ready for you now. Just go through that door, please."

The escapees from Azkaban were introduced to the throng of Death Eaters, many of whom had apparated in from the branch offices, and there was cheering and back slapping, especially at the news that the dementors now worked for the Dark Lord.

"The best part," Macnair shouted to the crowd, "is that the Ministry still doesn't believe in our existence. [_Cheers from the crowd_.] They're blaming the escape on Sirius Black. [_Boos and jeers_.] And we are free to operate unchecked. [_Wild, tumultuous cheering_.]"

Of course, the whole evening degenerated into a mad party. At one o'clock in the morning, Snape found himself sitting next to Bella as she tried to twist his hair into ringlets. "You know," she teased, "we really have to find you someone. It isn't right for a man as young as you to be forced to live like a priest."

Snape 'd had just enough to drink to consider this highly amusing, thoughts of his father's demon being suspended in the general happy glow. "Just make sure she's dark," he said, "with deep, mysterious eyes."

"Ah, you like them hard to control."

"Why should I control them? Some of the most fascinating women in the world were born to be controllers themselves." Rodolphus, isolated in a corner, was beginning to get pugnacious, but Snape was not focused enough to care about him.

"I remember when I controlled you." Bella shifted her attention from Snape's hair to the buttons on his jacket.

"Happiest time of my life."

"'T isn't fair. A young man like you shouldn't be wasting away in a cloister. I'm going to find you a woman. A good woman. One who'll beat you when you want beating."

"I don't think I said anything about beating. Why not just someone who'll boss me around?"

"You got it, puppy dog. Now just point me in the direction of my husband, before he gets too antsy and tears your face off."

A couple of hours later, it was Dumbledore's job to get Snape to stop giggling and generally sober up enough to teach classes.

xxxxxxxxxx

By breakfast time, Snape was in acceptable condition, and Dumbledore left him to join the staff table. About twenty minutes later, Snape followed him down. For the most part, the Great Hall looked normal. Potter, Weasley, and Granger were deep in _The Daily Prophet_, so Snape assumed the news of the breakout was already public. Dumbledore and McGonagall were engaged in a private conversation, the seats on either side of them filled with teachers who were studiously not paying attention, while Dolores Umbridge scowled down the table at them, knowing there was no place she could insert herself to listen. Snape sat at the far end from her, not trusting himself to eat anything but toast and coffee.

Flitwick joined him.

"You're looking a trifle peaked this morning, Severus. You're not ill, are you?"

"Nothing time won't cure," Snape replied.

"Have you heard the news? _The Daily Prophet_ says ten prisoners escaped from Azkaban yesterday evening. The Ministry is claiming that Sirius..."

"Black is involved. Yes, I heard."

Flitwick peered at him. "It's in this morning's paper, which comes directly to the Hall, and which you have not yet picked up. Nor did you speak to anyone before speaking to me. So, did you have a pleasant evening? And did you get any sleep?"

Snape winced. "Yes and no, Sherlock," was all he said. _How many people know about my double life? How many other teachers are being admitted to the Order? I hope that's how Flitwick knows._

More information was filtering through the grapevine as teachers leaving the table for their classrooms ostensibly greeted teachers newly arrived for breakfast. "Good morning, Filius – Severus," bubbled Sprout in passing, managing to whisper "Trelawney – Hagrid – probation" as she passed.

Throughout the day it was the same. Tiny groups of teachers would form for thirty seconds, break, and reform in different groups in different places. There wasn't a lot to pass from person to person, but it was good to know the network was functioning.

Wednesday morning brought a surprise. Pinned to the house notice boards and to the staff room door was Educational Decree Number Twenty-Six: 'Teachers are hereby banned from giving students any information that is not strictly related to the subjects they are paid to teach.'

Snape and Sprout, both of whose houses were on the dungeon level, met in front of the staff room and read the notice together.

"That power-hungry, interfering old…" Sprout began, but then saw the look on Snape's face. "You have an idea. You're going to pull a Lockhart on her, aren't you? Spill, Severus."

"I can't do it myself because I'm under orders to stay on her good side, but you can. Especially since you are so good at acting innocent." He bent and whispered in Sprout's ear, and she grinned.

At the end of breakfast, a group of brave Hufflepuffs remained at their table after the bell rang for first classes. Sprout, seeming casual and unaware, contrived to pass by Umbridge as she left the staff table and was stopped.

"Isn't that your house," Umbridge snapped, pointing at the loiterers. "Tell them the bell's rung and their classes will begin soon."

Sprout smiled a timid and diffident smile. "I'm sorry, Professor," she replied. "That information is not strictly related to the subject I'm paid to teach," and she marched past and out of the hall without another word, managing to give her students a sly, conspiratorial wink as she did so.

All day, Umbridge found herself facing situations that had nothing to do with academic subjects and teachers who refused to disobey Educational Decree Number Twenty-Six, at least not in Umbridge's presence. By supper time, Professor Umbridge was very short-tempered indeed.

Wednesday ended unpleasantly with Potter's second occlumency lesson. Even before the boy arrived, Snape was regretting his decision to have two lessons in one week. Dumbledore'd said one, and though Snape felt Potter needed more frequent work if he was to have even a small chance of success, the experience was so distasteful to Snape that he wondered if it would be counterproductive.

"Did you feel anything Monday night?" Snape asked after Potter sat down in the chair opposite.

"I thought I wasn't supposed to. Sir."

"If you think I am going to let you get away with not answering the question, you are very much mistaken."

"No. I didn't feel anything. I emptied my mind like you told me to."

"We shall see."

They stood facing each other and Snape began, already knowing what he was looking for. He projected an image of the Dark Lord, and was rewarded with the memory of wild, almost insane laughter. He broke off contact immediately.

"You lied to me."

Potter glared back defiantly. "You don't know when that happened."

"Yes, I do. It happened Monday night, the moment the Dark Lord received word that the Azkaban breakout was successful. I am a mediocre legilimens, Potter, but even I could pull that out of you with absurd ease."

"But I wasn't asleep when it happened. You told me to empty my mind before I went to sleep."

"I didn't ask you if you dreamt anything. I asked you if you felt anything. You lied to me. Now, we shall continue."

It started with another string of bad childhood memories, but Snape wasn't looking for these. Although unpleasant, they didn't make Potter defensive enough. Snape was looking for the girl. "Tell me about Miss Chang," Snape said quietly.

The girl's image surfaced at once, and Potter did nothing to stop it, although Snape could now feel anger rising in him like a tide. "Mistletoe," Snape prompted, and got the image that Potter had reacted to on Monday.

"Stay away from that!" Potter yelled, the Stinging hex flying from his wand to be deflected by Snape, who was expecting it this time.

Snape broke contact. "Physical reaction. Typical Gryffindor move. No matter how you're attacked – verbally, mentally – you always react physically. But physical reaction won't keep me out. It won't keep me from seeing the image. And you won't be facing the Dark Lord with a wand in your hand either. You have to learn to block this mentally."

"So teach me how."

"Try thinking of your mind as two compartments. One is there to be seen, and the other is for hiding things. Put the image of Miss Chang in the second compartment and close it off so that even you can't see it. Then, no matter what I do, don't open that compartment."

"I don't have any compartments."

"Anger, any strong emotion, gets in the way. You can only keep me out if you can learn to regard me clinically, coldly, and leave your emotions out of it. Let's try again."

But it was useless. Either Potter would not, or he could not, let go of his anger. Snape deflected hex after hex, and saw image after image. Finally, drained, he stopped.

"You know, Potter, if I got you angry enough, I could watch your whole life like watching a movie. You are that open. Your next session is on Monday. Please try working on emotional control during the next few days. Try putting feelings aside and viewing everything dispassionately."

After Potter left, Snape sat for a while in front of his cold fireplace, his head in his hands. _James was like that. He never could hide his feelings. When the Dark Lord came that night, did James try to protect Lily? And did the Dark Lord read where she was just as easily as I saw Miss Chang in Harry's mind? James would have faced him with a wand, fighting. And he would have given Lily to the Dark Lord right there, even as he died trying to save her._

Snape informed Dumbledore of the signal lack of any progress at all in the occlumency sessions, and of Potter's lying. Dumbledore asked to be informed only of any change in Potter or, if there was no change, a monthly report. They decided that a lesson once a week was sufficient, especially since it appeared that too many sessions might cause Potter to rebel.

And then there was Croydon.

The next summons came the very next day, Thursday. Snape left after supper and was asked to wait at the entrance by a junior level Death Eater. A few minutes later, he was joined by Lucius Malfoy and Bella Lestrange, who smiled and said, "Good. Now you can show me around your laboratory."

A protest formed immediately in Snape's mind, but he never voiced it for Malfoy was making faces at him over Bella's shoulder. Instead he replied, "Certainly," and led them upstairs where he released the magical locks and ushered both into his fiefdom.

Bella wrinkled her nose as she sniffed the air. "I'm not convinced this is a useful setup," she stated. "You only come in once a week. What happens if we need supplies in the meantime?"

"Why does this concern you?"

"I'm in charge of Operations now." Behind Bella's back, Malfoy was nodding confirmation.

"Both Operations and the clinic are more than amply stocked. And you can always send for me to make a special trip down. As you've done tonight. The inconvenience is minor, whereas the damage that could be done by giving unqualified personnel access to brewing potions is enormous."

"The Dark Lord thinks you're being too secretive."

"No, he doesn't. You're the one who likes to poke around in everything." Malfoy was making hissing noises and emergency stop gestures, but Snape ignored him. Instead he continued, "Why don't we ask for an immediate interview with the Dark Lord and both explain our positions to him."

There was a pause, and Snape could practically see the gears turning in Bella's brain. "No," she said at last. "It's too minor an issue to waste his time with."

"I doubt he would consider the total collapse of his potions supply a minor issue." Snape stepped to the row of cords that attached to bells in the support staff area. A moment later a messenger appeared at the laboratory door. "Please request that the Dark Lord grant an interview this evening to me, Mrs. Lestrange, and Mr. Malfoy." The messenger was gone at once.

"This really isn't necessary," said Bella.

"I think it is," replied Snape.

To the surprise of all three, the interview was granted at once. With all three standing before him, the Dark Lord addressed Snape first. "We know, Potions Master, that you are not pleased with our desire to give our personnel in Operations access to your laboratory. You will explain your position."

Snape explained. He explained in excruciating detail. It was hard to tell if his words were making an impression. "Lord," he said finally, "if they are allowed into the laboratory, I can no longer be responsible for the quality of your potions. What if one of them decides it is too cool, turns up the heat, turns it back down, and doesn't tell me. I'd be giving your people doses of wound healing medicine that made them bleed more instead of less. No offense to your new head of Operations, but she doesn't know the basics of advanced potion brewing. I know. I used to tutor her. She couldn't even tell you what H2SO4 was."

The Dark Lord fixed his gaze on Bella, who turned crimson and looked at the floor.

Seizing his advantage, Snape pressed it home. "Please, Lord, keep them out of my laboratory. Or let me leave Hogwarts and tend it twenty-four hours a day. Or get another Potions Master. I would rather serve you as a soldier on the front lines of battle than supply you with potions whose quality I could not guarantee."

Bella lost. The Dark Lord pronounced that the laboratory would remain under the exclusive control of Snape, and that any person found entering it without express authorization would be punished.

Lucius Malfoy was pleased. Bella Lestrange was not. _I've made an enemy, perhaps, but winning this battle was worth it._

By the time of Snape's regular Saturday trip to Croydon, things were truly being shaken up at headquarters. Bella Lestrange had clearly finessed a power play and was now, with her husband Rodolphus, the Dark Lord's lieutenant for all of Great Britain. Her only disappointment was the continued influence of Lucius Malfoy. Battle lines between Malfoy and the Lestranges were being drawn, and Bella was out for blood.

Luckily for Malfoy, the Dark Lord was not entirely blind to Bella's shortcomings. She'd worked hard to persuade him to send Malfoy out to one of the branch offices, but Malfoy's value as a contact with the Ministry of Magic was too great, and he remained in charge of the London/Croydon headquarters.

It was in the context of this duel for power that Snape found he had unwittingly placed himself in Malfoy's camp. The confrontation between him and Bella over access to the laboratory highlighted certain areas of weakness in her leadership abilities, and while her energy, creativity, and devotion kept her in charge of coordinating all Operations in the country, her authority to intervene in the internal structure of the various branches was reduced. As a result, Malfoy valued Snape even more highly, while Bella…

"She's already got Macnair, and she's after you now, you know," was Malfoy's way of putting it as the two met for tea in the staff lounge. "At least that's what some of my contacts tell me."

"That could be interpreted in a variety of ways."

"She means it in a variety of ways. She'd like to seduce you over to her side. That would strengthen her and weaken me. If she isn't successfully in wooing you, she'll try to discredit you or eliminate you. No more power to her, but less for me. A dangerous enemy, that one."

"She was like that even in school. I've been wooed before. It's a carrot and stick operation. Rabastan and Rodolphus were the stick. Protection from them was the carrot. It worked quite well."

"I'm sorry you've gotten caught between Scylla and Charybdis. Things were nicer before. Part of me is beginning to regret the recent depopulation of Azkaban."

It was a dangerous thing for Malfoy to say, and Snape was keenly aware of being made part of a small conspiracy. "How would you like me to handle attempts at seduction?"

"It's a hard thing I'm going to ask you to do, but do you think you could string her along? Make her think that you might be for sale if the price is right? It could buy me some time, and in that time she'll have more opportunities for making mistakes. Ultimately, I think, she'll bring herself down."

The branch offices were experiencing changes, too. At the end of January, Yaxley was unceremoniously booted out of the position at Cardiff, which had seen almost no growth and very little in the way of action. Nott was ordered down from Glasgow to replace Yaxley in the hope that new management would spur the office to greater things, and Yaxley returned to Croydon.

Avery was fortunate enough to retain his control of the Lincoln office, while Rabastan Lestrange took over Nott's job in Glasgow. The attempt to establish an office in York was abandoned in favor of Manchester, where Rookwood was dispatched to set things up. Finally, the Norwich office opened under Dolohov, using some of the people from Lincoln as a core group.

In three weeks, the newly released lieutenants from Azkaban had managed to consolidate their power in the most important positions in the organization, with the sole major exception of Croydon itself. There was a sense that it was only a matter of time before both Avery and Nott would be replaced, and then Malfoy would be isolated in London.

Seduction started the first weekend in February. Snape had hardly been in his laboratory for ten minutes before Bella herself pushed open the door and walked in. Behind her was a younger female Death Eater with long dark hair and sultry brown eyes.

"I would prefer that you knock," said Snape. "Letting drafts in like that could spoil some of the Dark Lord's favorite potions, and then I would have to complain."

Bella ignored the comment. "I have a job for you. Top priority. This is Delphina Vaughn, a distant cousin of mine. She's being groomed in Operations for field work and needs self-defense training. You start today, come in three times during the week whenever you can make it, and finish next Saturday. The Dark Lord has particular interest in this one, and will be watching you." Then, abruptly, Bella spun around and left the room.

Snape regarded the young woman for a moment. He guessed her to be under twenty-five years old. "Just sit in that chair," he told her, "and don't touch anything. It will take me about fifteen minutes to finish up here, and then we can go to the training room." As he worked, Snape could sense that she was watching him, sizing him up. _I wonder what, exactly, Bella has assigned her to do._

The answer came sooner than he expected. In the training room, Snape started with the first routine lessons on falling, rolling, and recovering. Vaughn's first falls were clumsy, but she soon got the hang of it and was hitting the mat like a gymnast. On her tenth fall, however, she seemed to twist her ankle, and sat there for a moment, not even trying to stand.

"Are you all right?" Snape asked.

She nodded, and he walked over to her, holding out his hand to help her rise. She grasped his wrist and rose smoothly to her feet, clearly uninjured but now close enough to him to clasp her hands behind his neck, leaning against him as if for support. "That was fun," she whispered. "I know some good falls, too. Would you like to try them?"

Snape remained very still, acutely aware that he was as taut as a strung bow. "I think we had best stick to the lesson plan," he said coldly, his voice sounding hoarse in his own ears.

"Whatever you say, Professor," she teased, and instruction continued by the book, but now every move, every command and response was charged with flirtatious tension, a commodity Ms. Vaughn manipulated to perfection. It was insulting that Bella would think he could be ensnared in such a blatant fashion, and yet Snape was unable to ignore the effect that the sight, the touch, the very scent of this woman had on him.

When the lesson was over she glanced at him sideways, veiling her eyes with long lashes. "When is our next lesson? Tomorrow?"

"I don't know," was Snape's curt reply. "It depends on what's happening at Hogwarts."

"I hope it's tomorrow. I'd like to see you again soon." She stepped forward as if to kiss him on the check, but Snape pulled back an arm's length, then watched as she pouted her way to the door. "Next time," she said, "maybe we'll have more fun." And then she was gone.

Retreating quickly to the sanctuary of his laboratory, Snape sat for a while, rubbing his forehead with one hand. _Well, Bella said she was going to get me someone, but I honestly didn't think it would be like this. Does she think I'm going through a mid-life crisis, or something? I'm too young for a mid-life crisis. – Too young to live like a priest – that's what Bella said. I must have looked like a fool tonight, trying not to stare at a girl young enough to be… well, my younger sister._ Snape stopped, amused by the situation. _Why am I thinking of myself as ancient and of her as a child? I'm definitely not ancient, and someone in her twenties is certainly no child._

Apparating back to Hogsmeade, Snape sent his patronus up to Dumbledore and was admitted. The trudge up the hill in the snow gave him time to cool down, and Snape was feeling relatively calm as he entered his office, there to come face to face with Dumbledore.

"Here you are, Severus. I thought we might talk. To come straight to the point, that was by far the most vibrant patronus you have ever sent me, yet it also gave me the sense that all was not well. Did you have a… pleasant evening?"

"Doesn't this rank as a violation of privacy?"

"Well, I suppose it does. And normally I would have nothing to say about your personal life. But this was your normal visit to… London, and it was hard to imagine anything… well, normal… I mean usual… that would have produced such a… glow."

Dumbledore looked so confused, embarrassed, and expectant, all at the same time, that Snape could only sit down at his desk and burst out laughing. Several moments later, after he managed to control himself, he said, "Headmaster, I have a beautiful young woman who is trying to seduce me."

"You are joking."

"Thank you, sir. You have just done wonders for my morale."

"I did not mean…"

"Naturally not. It just slipped out, Freudian-like."

"Now Severus, you have caught me unawares and unprepared, and it is hardly fair…"

"I've always suspected that you think of me as a tool rather than a human being, and now I have proof."

"That is not…"

"Why can't I enjoy life a little? After all, it's not like I was a hundred and…" Snape looked shrewdly at Dumbledore, "fifty? …one? …two? I'm not out of the game yet, you know."

"The last time you giggled like this, you had been drinking."

"And enjoyed every moment!" Snape stopped, suddenly calm and wary again. "Professor," he said, "Bella Lestrange has brought in a temptress she claims is her cousin to entice me into her camp and leave Lucius Malfoy isolated in a headquarters power struggle."

"Ah," said Dumbledore, nodding, "now I understand. This is not a suddenly blossoming relationship. It is a trap. And a rather heavy-handed trap by the sound of it."

"I'm supposed to go back three times in the middle of the week for her defensive training, one on one, and finish next Saturday. I find the whole thing offensive, that Bella thinks I'm so starved for affection that I'll walk right into this one in such a short time. The young woman also seems to feel she can twist me around her little finger. Although she is very attractive. Very."

"Was she using any spells?"

"No. I detected none. Not that she won't in the future. This is going to be a very tense week."

"Is there any way you could take advantage of the situation?"

"I hope you don't mean play along with her? There are certain parts of my life I'd like to keep private, and the idea that Bella Lestrange would get a detailed account… You have the right to ask a lot of me, Headmaster, but there I draw the line."

"Well, it was a thought. You have been rather tense lately."

"Now you're joking at my expense."

"Why not? You joked at mine."

"Touché."

"Seriously, though," continued Dumbledore, staring into the empty fireplace, "there are many different layers of intimacy, some of them quite superficial. This young lady might be a source of information. It might also be valuable to have you neither in Malfoy's camp nor in Bella's. That way both would be trying to lure you to them, maybe with offers of higher status, and Riddle would see you as independent of faction and therefore more devoted to him. It could work very much to our advantage."

"It could backfire. They might both see me as another rival and conspire to get rid of me first."

"I leave it up to you, Severus. You have a much better feel for the situation on the ground than I do. But do consider it."

"Just out of curiosity, if I did follow your plan, would I have to report on it to the Order? Sirius Black is another person I'd rather not have know anything about my private life."

"It would be entirely between you and me. Think about it."

"Yes, sir."

Snape spent most of Sunday thinking about it, then decided to return to Croydon that evening. He knew Bella would see this as an indication that he was falling into her trap, but it also left him with more flexibility later in the week. He still hadn't determined how he would handle the whole situation, but there was something to be said for playing it by ear.

The best part was that Snape didn't have to worry about Umbridge spying on him. That Lady had put both Hagrid and Trelawney on probation and was now observing all of their classes and maintaining a running evaluation that had the two teachers on the edge of nervous breakdowns.

The good part was that it had Umbridge on the edge of a physical breakdown. In order to accommodate this killing schedule, she'd had to change the times of all her own classes, teaching Dark Arts in the early morning and evening, and also rearrange the times of Hagrid's and Trelawney's classes where they conflicted. It was only a matter of time before the woman suffered a total collapse (some of the teachers had a pool going), and in the meantime Umbridge had lost interest in Snape's actions.

So, after a fairly leisurely and meditative Sunday, Snape ate supper in the Great Hall and then left the grounds and apparated to Croydon.

Miss Vaughn stuck her head into the laboratory less than five minutes after Snape arrived. "Oh good! You're here. I was hoping we could continue the lessons today. Frankly, I think five lessons isn't enough. I'm hoping you can be here every day this week."

"That, I fear, is not possible. Let's just take this lesson business one day at a time and see how you progress. Who are you going up against, anyway?"

The question seemed to confuse her. "I really don't know yet," she finally said. "They'll tell me after I complete my training."

_Which means you probably aren't going out into the field at all. You probably have a nice, safe desk job, and the field assignment is a ploy to convince me that lessons are necessary._ "Wait there a few minutes and I'll be with you."

The session started with a review of the previous day's moves, then progressed to holds that used the opponent's own weight and movement against him. One week was definitely not enough time to teach the more advanced moves, but the simpler ones could be covered. Especially since it appeared that Miss Vaughn had excellent muscle control and coordination.

The instruction of necessity involved considerable physical contact. Snape had first to disarm or throw Vaughn, then he had to show her the holds to use on him and have her practice the throwing. She inevitably turned each move into one with more contact than was needed, and clearly derived pleasure from teasing and flirting with him.

They came to one move where he feigned an attack, and she was to use his forward momentum to pull him past her and trip him. Instead, she pulled him forward and then blocked him with her own body. They stood for that instant, face to face, touching, and then she kissed him.

Snape stood very still, his heartbeat throbbing in his ears, and after a moment she stepped back. "What's wrong?" she demanded. "Don't you like me?"

"I hardly know you."

"Why should that get in the way? Or maybe you just don't like girls."

Refusing to be baited, Snape crossed his arms over his chest and regarded her thoughtfully. "Maybe I don't like pushy, aggressive girls."

"I can be sweet and soft."

"Quite the chameleon, aren't you?"

"Come on, why do we have to be so serious?" She reached forward and pulled his arms away from his chest, placing them behind her at the small of her back. Suddenly, Snape wanted her to kiss him again, and he ceased thinking or caring about Bella. She leaned forward, and their lips touched.

Intensely aware of his own tension, Snape gingerly tried returning some of the pressure against his mouth. Her eyes widened in surprise, and she stepped back to stare at him in wonder.

"You've never done this before! Cousin Bella said you lived like a monk, but I didn't… Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to embarrass you."

Snape turned away, staring down at his hands. "Bella put you up to this, didn't she, Miss Vaughn?"

"No. Of course not. I mean… Well, yes she did. She said you needed to relax, a little recreation. She says the way you live isn't healthy for a young man. And I agree with her. I do. I mean at first I thought it would be more like a job, but most of the men I meet, well they just turn into octopuses around me, all hands, you know. But you – it was fun being the aggressive one, you seemed kind of nice, in a straight-laced, reserved kind of way. Look, I'm sorry. But you know, maybe I could give you some lessons."

"What would you teach me?"

"How to kiss. You don't want the next woman to know you're an amateur, do you?" She scooted around to the other side of him so that they faced each other again. "It's easy, really. Just put your arms around my back, and lean forward a bit. Relax the muscles in your face and open your mouth just a little. And when I press my mouth against yours, you just push back at exactly the same pressure."

It was like following instructions in a training course, but this time the kiss was far more satisfactory and lasted longer. "There," she said as they separated, "that was much better."

"You know, Miss Vaughn, I could get used to this very easily."

She had silver laughter. "Silly, you just kissed me. You can stop being formal. Call me Phina. It's what my friends call me."

The lessons, both kinds, continued for another hour. At the end, Phina was far more proficient at her studies than Snape was at his. "That's all right," Phina assured him. "You just need more practice."

Back at Hogwarts, Snape tried to figure out where all of this was going. _I'm using her for my own ends. But then she's using me for her own ends. As long as we're honest about that, is it so bad?_

Monday was Potter's occlumency lesson, but on Tuesday he could go back to Croydon. Snape found himself looking forward to the next lesson with some pleasure.

It was a trick of fate that Snape's lessons with Phina were the only bright spot in his life that week. Potter continued to be dismally inept in his occlumency, Hagrid continued to be bruised and insist nothing was wrong, Dumbledore remained aloof from everything to keep Umbridge from exploding, while Umbridge continued her harassment of both Hagrid and Trelawney. Trelawney had started visiting the staff room at odd moments, a place she'd never frequented before, clearly a little worse for having monitored the quality of the sherry in the kitchens. Hogwarts was running out of pleasant places to congregate with one's colleagues.

But in Croydon all was light and sunshine. Phina was bright, cheerful, amusing, gentle and, it turned out, a great listener. She was an apt and attentive pupil who always practiced her homework assignments (so different from Potter), but she never pushed or made demands on Snape. He was actually beginning to enjoy her company, despite the fact that academics were not her strong point.

"Have you ever gone to a play," Snape asked on Thursday, their fourth session.

"Is that like Quidditch?" was Phina's immediate response.

"No, it's something muggles do. A group of them performs a story in front of an audience. Plays can be quite entertaining. No magic allowed, though."

"Odd thought. Do you mean we'd pretend to be muggles? What would I wear?" She was dressed in midnight blue robes, rather plainly cut, almost like an evening coat.

"Without the hat, you'd be fine as you are. A little overdressed maybe, but no one would really notice."

"All right. Sounds like fun."

It took but a moment to leave headquarters, then apparate to Hammersmith, where _'Macbeth'_ was playing at the Lyric Theatre. Phina was giggling.

"What's so funny?"

"Cousin Bella was watching. She's going to be so pleased that I got you to go off alone with me. I don't think I'll tell her we were watching a play."

"What will you tell her?"

"I'll make up something. I always do."

"About me?"

"Not yet. I haven't known you long enough. You're not the first one she's set me after, you know."

Snape thought about this for a moment. "She's only been out of Azkaban for a month, and you would have been what? eleven? when she was sent there. Either you started young, or she works very fast."

"All right, I lied. But I'll still make something up."

The production was somewhat _avant garde_, but lost none of its dramatic impact. Phina giggled over the witch scenes, but followed Lady Macbeth with fascination. "They're like Cousin Bella and Rodolphus," she whispered. Then, as Macbeth waded deeper into murder, and Lady Macbeth sank into madness, she gripped Snape's arm, practically holding her breath until it was all over.

"They never lie," Phina announced as the two exited the theatre into a chilly London night.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Muggle witches. They never lie. Macbeth was told the truth. He was fooled by the truth. He assumed he understood the prophecies, but he didn't. That's what destroyed him."

The shock of what she said ran through Snape like a jolt of electricity. Six months earlier, he himself had been thinking the same thing about Dumbledore and a prophetic truth that had lured the Dark Lord to his doom. Was Dumbledore like Shakespeare's witches?

First escorting Phina back to Croydon, Snape then apparated to Hogsmeade, where the gate opened for him without bringing Dumbledore down. Which was just as well, since Snape needed time to think. _Banquo said it: But 'tis strange: and oftentimes, to win us to our harm, the instruments of darkness tell us truths, win us with honest trifles, to betray us. Did Dumbledore trick me into betraying the Dark Lord?_

Even though it was late, Snape did not go to sleep. Instead he started making notes to help him order his thoughts.

**Question 1:** Did Dumbledore know that Trelawney was going to make a prophecy?

Probably not. Prophetic utterances are neither forecast nor predictable. Trelawney herself would not know. At least, not if it was a true prophecy. The possibility exists that the scene was staged for my benefit, though I would not normally credit Trelawney with acting ability.

**Task:** Find a way to demonstrate that Trelawney's prediction was the real thing.

**Question 2:** Did Dumbledore arrange for me to come to Hogsmeade that day to overhear the prophecy?

The Dark Lord sent me to interview for a position. What prompted him to do that at exactly that time? Might Dumbledore have found a way to arrange it? And how would Dumbledore have known that I would overhear the prophecy? No one suggested that I follow him upstairs to listen outside a closed door.

**Task:** Find out why the Dark Lord decided to send me to Hogsmeade that day.

**Question 3: **Assuming that the prophecy was real and my overhearing it a coincidence, why then did Dumbledore let me leave and return to the Dark Lord with that information?

If I had just received a prophecy about a child who would destroy the Dark Lord, I would want to do everything possible to protect that child until he was old enough to fight. Letting the Dark Lord know could result in the child's death. So why didn't Dumbledore use a memory spell on me? Didn't he suspect that I was a Death Eater?

**Task:** Find out what, if anything, Trelawney knows about the aftermath of the prophecy incident. (Does she even know she prophesied?)

Tired now, Snape went to bed. He spent the next couple of days trying to work out how he could gather the information he wanted.

xxxxxxxxxx

_Saturday, February 10, 1996_ _[JKR calls it Valentine's Day, but Valentine's Day that year was the following Wednesday.]_

Saturday was calm and peaceful, primarily because three-quarters of the students were in Hogsmeade, and Snape did not have supervisory duties with them. It was only at supper time, with the students back on the grounds and his normal weekly trip to Croydon about to start, that Snape realized the questions about Dumbledore's actions had chased all thoughts of Phina Vaughn from his head.

_I suppose that's evidence that I'm not really infatuated with her. I feel better about a casual… friendship? than about a relationship._

The one who met Snape at the door in Croydon, however, was Lucius Malfoy.

"What are you doing? Are you trying to stab me in the back?"

"Why Malfoy… whatever are you talking about?"

"Word is Bella dangled a skirt in front of you and you're dancing to her tune now."

"Dancing. That might be fun. The word is wrong. Oh, yes, Bella is trying, and I'm not running away, but I haven't spoken to Bella in a week, and no one has talked to me about what 'side' I'm on."

Malfoy glared, stepped back, and then began to relax a little. "So you didn't fall straight into Bella's arms?"

"Now there's an unpleasant image. No, you can rest easy. Bella doesn't own me. Of course, you don't own me either."

"Wouldn't dream of it. All I want is you, safe and sound in your laboratory and not working against me."

"It sounds like we agree on something."

Malfoy and Snape went back to their respective stations, where Snape checked the potions that were brewing. The Polyjuice Potion was almost ready, and he estimated a Wednesday return to bottle it and start testing it. He wasn't as concerned about the Veritaserum, since he already had what he wanted. He brewed it now only in case the Dark Lord inquired.

A little later Phina came for what was supposed to be her last lesson.

"You seem distant today," she complained after a warm-up and the first few throws. "Are you tired of me already."

"You've learned what you were supposed to. Technically we're almost done."

"That's it? One week and a couple of kisses, and we're through?"

"I hardly see a future for us. You're going out into the field."

She was silent for a moment. "What if I wasn't going into the field?"

"Are you authorized to tell me that?"

"It's just a 'what if.' Can't you hypothesize?"

Snape registered that Phina's vocabulary seemed to have miraculously expanded. "All right, hypothetically speaking, if you weren't going out into the field, I might invite you to dinner. But I can't until you're authorized to tell me what you're really doing. Until then, we have no future, and it's useless trying to pretend we do."

Phina dropped the subject, but her face wore a strangely calculating expression throughout the rest of the self-defense lesson.

Before apparating back to Hogwarts, Snape rechecked his potions and realized the Polyjuice would be ready earlier than he had calculated. _Looks like I'm coming back on Monday. I'll have to reschedule with Potter._

That was the action of a moment the next day. Outside the Great Hall just before a leisurely Sunday breakfast, Snape pulled Potter aside and informed him that Remedial Potions lessons were being switched to Wednesdays. Potter seemed relieved at the postponement, but otherwise said nothing.

Croydon was back to normal on Monday, and Snape saw neither Phina nor Malfoy. He checked his potions, bottling small amounts to take back to Hogwarts and test, then got ready to leave. On the way out he saw Avery heading for the interview room.

"What brings you to London? I thought you were in Lincoln?" Snape said in greeting.

"Special assignment. Got to hurry now. He's waiting."

Snape delayed, hoping to hear something, but eventually returned to Hogwarts none the wiser as to what Avery was doing in London.

Wednesday's occlumency lesson with Potter was dismal as usual. Even young Dursley's pranks had become boring, since the muggle boy had no creativity whatsoever, his mind centering entirely on punching, stealing, predictable name calling, and toilets. Potter kept insisting that he was trying to clear his mind of emotions, but Snape knew he was lying. They were going nowhere.


	52. Chapter 52 – Mind Games

**Yes, That Is My Job: Mind Games**

_Saturday, February 17, 1996_

The following Saturday was the Quidditch match between Gryffindor and Hufflepuff. The only interesting thing about it was assessing Ginny Weasley's performance as a Seeker, and watching Potter and the Weasley twins try to conceal their bitter disappointment at not being able to play, that and the spectacular unity and involvement of the Slytherin stands in their drive to knock Gryffindor out of competition.

Louder than the stands of either of the two competing houses, the Slytherins set up a constant roar of 'Weasley is our King,' clearly flustering the Gryffindor Keeper, who missed save after save. The new Gryffindor beaters were more of a comedy team than Quidditch players, and the only reason Gryffindor didn't lose by 390 to 80 was Ginny's near miraculous capture of the Snitch, making the score a more respectable 240 to 230. Slytherin was now favored to win the Quidditch Cup. Snape tactfully stayed away from McGonagall for the rest of the afternoon, and didn't mention the word 'Quidditch' once at supper.

That evening at Croydon started out normally. Snape spent most of the time in his laboratory, a little disappointed that his training sessions with Phina were now over. _Maybe I should have done something more to show Bella I was interested in her cousin. Maybe her assignment could have be lengthened._

Snape also paid a couple of visits to the staff lounge, just to see who was there. He was almost hoping to see Peter Pettigrew, thinking that he could start an acquaintance that would eventually allow him to get information about Dumbledore and the Fidelius Charm, or about the Dark Lord's actions just before the death of the Potters, but headquarters was remarkably quiet, and there were few people in the halls, none in the lounge.

Just as Snape was about to leave, that changed. Without warning, the mark on his arm began to sting fiercely. Snape locked the last of his cabinets, shut up the laboratory, and hurried to the interview room. Death Eaters were coming in the main entrance, having apparated from all over the southern district, offices were emptying and soon several dozen people were gathered in the interview room, Bella and Rodolphus Lestrange prominent among them, looking decidedly worried. Malfoy was there, too, his cold face unreadable.

The Dark Lord appeared.

"You will explain how it is that you have misled me."

Bella spoke. "My Lord, we got you inside. It was more than anyone before us was able to accomplish."

"It was not what was promised. Malfoy, you will speak."

"Lord, this is why we must continue to use employees of the Ministry, and the potions of deceit that my staff provide. Only select functionaries of the Ministry know their way around the Department of Mysteries. If we go blundering in without knowing where we're going, we'll be detected, maybe even apprehended."

The Dark Lord turned his crimson gaze on Bella again.

Knowing herself to be under attack, Bella began to look for someone to blame. "Lord, I believe that a great part of our problem was the ineptitude of those who worked on this task before us. They not only failed, they alerted the Ministry to our attempts and made them more alert to our presence."

"Avery," was all that the Dark Lord said.

Snape felt sorry for Avery as his old school colleague stepped forward. _I guess this raid was the reason he was pulled in from Lincoln last Monday. Tough luck if Bella sacrifices him on the altar of her ambition._

"Lord, we haven't alerted the Ministry. The Ministry still doesn't believe we exist. The only ones who have any idea of our attempts to enter the Department of Mysteries are Dumbledore's people, and they have to use spells of concealment so that the Ministry doesn't know they're there. But if we go in fighting instead of by stealth, and leave unconscious or dead wizards for the Ministry to find the next day, they will know we're there, and we'll be further from our goal than ever."

_Unconscious or dead wizards? Was someone injured tonight? Someone I know?_

"Snape. Tell us of Dumbledore's people."

Stepping forward diffidently, Snape tried to look at neither Bella nor Malfoy. "Lord, the Order's watch on the Department of Mysteries is a routine that they established after the incident with Arthur Weasley in December. One of them is on guard each night. They've become a bit lax about it since nothing has been happening, or at least they had. If I understand correctly, after tonight they'll redouble their watch."

The Dark Lord turned to Bella. "This concerns me, as well. Not only have you failed in your mission, Dumbledore is once again aware of our attempts and will increase his precautions. What has been done with the one we disposed of?"

"We wiped his memory and took him to Devon. We left him bound on the moors. It'll be days before he's found." Bella seemed disappointed that it wasn't worse, but Snape feared the bitter cold of a February night.

"Is this true?" The Dark Lord fixed his gaze on Snape.

"No, Lord. The instant they realize he's not at his post, they'll search for him. Dumbledore can locate any of his people in minutes if he really wants to. They'll recognize the memory spell and know where he was attacked."

"Then he must be killed and his body disposed of."

"I'll go myself," said Bella.

"No, I want you here. Send an operative."

"It will take me only a few minutes to explain where he can be found."

"Good." The Dark Lord turned to the assembled Death Eaters. "If any of you has information that will assist in this task, you will not keep it from us. If any of you conceives of a plan, however poor its chances of success might seem, you will bring it to us at once. You may now go, excepting the Lestranges, Malfoy, and Avery. And you as well Snape, in case we have questions about charms or potions."

"Let me first show my agent where to find Dumbledore's man," Bella asked.

"Lord," Snape said quietly, "may I also go to lock things away in the laboratory. I left there hurriedly at your summons. It would only take five minutes."

"Go, both of you," the Dark Lord replied. "Return quickly."

Snape rushed to the lab. Nothing needed locking down, but now he had a moment alone. He couldn't apparate through the defenses of headquarters or of Hogwarts, but neither of them would stop a patronus. In all his years in the service of the Dark Lord, Snape had never heard anyone allude to using a patronus as a messenger, or of using a patronus at all. He prayed that the idea was so alien to the organization that even if seen, his fox would not be recognized.

Throwing open a window, Snape concentrated. _The one on guard tonight was attacked. They've bound and left him on the Devon moors, but are going now to kill him. You must work fast._ Then silvery Renard sped north on the wings of thought, while Snape rushed back for the Dark Lord's meeting.

In the corridor outside the interview chamber, Snape passed Bella and a tall blond Death Eater. They were walking slowly towards the main entrance where he could apparate once he was outside, Bella still filling him in on the location in Devon.

The meeting was brief, there being no new ideas to review that night. The five of them were put on call, with allowances made for Snape's schedule at Hogwarts. Before they broke up, however, the blond Death Eater returned with bad news. The quarry had escaped. Dumbledore, it seemed, had gotten there first.

Dumbledore didn't speak to Snape that night, nor all Sunday morning, but after lunch he once again brought out the chess board and set it up at the staff table in the Great Hall. By now fully aware of the abysmal level of play, the other teachers left them alone.

_Who was it?_

_Shacklebolt. Good that you got to us. He narrowly avoided frostbite._

_Did you go?_

_No. Tonks, Lupin, and Moody. Moody found him. Enchanted eyes are a godsend on a moonless night. How did it happen?_ For the benefit of the people in the Hall, Dumbledore said, "I'll have your knight in two moves."

_Bella persuaded the Dark Lord to attack the door directly. They disabled Shacklebolt and actually got inside. They found themselves in a room with multiple doors that kept shifting, so the Dark Lord is hardly any closer to what he wants. He's furious, and everyone is walking around like there was broken glass underfoot. He's obsessed. He thinks about it all the time. He has to get that prophecy._

_How are Harry's lessons going?_

_Useless. Worse than useless. He can't block the smallest probe. He always tries to fight back with spells, which leaves him open all the time. He won't do any exercises, though he lies and says he does. I'm beginning to think that he resents me so much that he's inviting contact with the Dark Lord just to spite me._ "There, no knight for you. Look out for your bishop."

_That is distressing. Do you know the source of this resentment?_

_It seems to have worsened from mild dislike ever since he came into contact with Black. Sometimes when he looks at me, it's like Black looking at me. The same tightness around the eyes, the same backward tilt of the head, the same way he lifts the side of his mouth…_

_We can only keep trying._

Monday morning brought catastrophe. Owls began inundating Potter with letters, attracting the attention of Umbridge. And then the Quibbler arrived. A few students got the scandal sheet regularly, but this time Miss Lovegood brought a few extra copies. She gave one to Flitwick, and the teachers gathered around. Snape listened for only a few seconds, and was horrified by what he heard.

Potter had given the Quibbler an interview about the return of the Dark Lord, naming the names of Death Eaters. Malfoy was mentioned, as were Crabbe, Goyle, Nott, Avery, Pettigrew, and Macnair. _I hope the Quibbler has good security. The entire editorial staff are now targets._

By ten o'clock, Educational Decree Number Twenty-seven threatened any student found with a copy of the Quibbler with expulsion, thereby guaranteeing that every student in school would want to read it.

And the owls and letters kept coming.

It was no surprise to Snape that his arm started aching during his first afternoon class. It was a 'come tonight' summons, so he caught Dumbledore's eye at supper and flashed a mental message to him. 'Good luck' was the silent response.

Once again Snape was on his knees before the Dark Lord, a triumphant Bella now smirking down at him, and Malfoy not allowed in the chamber. Once again subtle pain danced at the corners of his mind, warning of punishment to come if his answers didn't satisfy.

"Potter's actions are part of your assignment. This interview undermines all our efforts at secrecy. Yet you allowed it."

"Lord, it happened outside Hogwarts. The students had an excursion to Hogsmeade. I was not assigned supervisory duties for the excursion."

"Why did you not go anyway?"

"First and second years remain in the castle. Those who don't go to Hogsmeade supervise them." Snape gasped as fire flickered along his spine.

"You hide your failure behind excuses."

Bella smiled. "Macnair wants you all to himself for about five hours. Shall we indulge him?"

There was silence in the chamber as Snape closed his eyes and simply waited. The Dark Lord spoke again.

"You should be punished."

"Yes, Lord."

"Macnair will be given this happy task."

"Yes, Lord."

"If there is any good news to be gleaned from your failure, you will tell us now."

"The Umbridge woman still believes Potter is lying. She's published Decree Twenty-seven. Any student holding a copy of the Quibbler will be expelled."

"This is better. So all is not yet lost. Tell me, Potions Master, can you guarantee that the woman will continue to believe as we wish her to believe?"

"Yes, Lord."

"You speak quickly. Surely you know that you wager high stakes in this game – Macnair is hungry. Bella…"

"Yes, Lord."

"Do you trust that this miserable servant will perform the task he has been given?"

"With the proper oversight, Lord, I do."

"Then he is yours. If he repeats his pitiful failure, you may punish him as you see fit."

"Thank you, Lord," but the Dark Lord was already gone. Bella looked down at Snape, gloating. "You see, puppy dog? I always get what I want. You may stand up now."

Snape rose slowly, his knees stiff from their long contact with the stone floor. Bella twitched a finger, and Snape fell in behind her as she left the chamber. Macnair was waiting in the corridor, and Snape had the distinct impression he was salivating. Bella flirted her way over to him.

"Sorry, Walden," she cooed, "no toys today. I get to play first. Keep your knives sharpened, though. You never know…"

Beckoning again, Bella led Snape to her own office on the second floor. "Sit down, Cursemaster," she said, pointing to a chair. "We're going to talk."

Snape sat while Bella perched on the edge of a large, wide desk. "Let's make sure we understand each other," she said. "You used to help Malfoy, but you screwed up. You didn't keep your eyes on all your little chickens, and one got away from you. Now Malfoy's star is falling, while mine is rising, and I get rewarded with all kinds of perquisites, one of which is you. And to think I wasted Phina's talents on you when you were just ripe for plucking . By the way, didn't you like Phina?"

"She was very attractive."

"But not your type. What is your type, puppy dog? Not me, surely? What about Narcissa? Or maybe Lucius? Is that why the two of you are suddenly so devoted?"

"You know better."

"Do I? You're the subject of quite a bit of gossip, you know. I keep telling them you're like a priest, serving a cause higher than yourself, but most of them think it's just a matter of finding out which way you swing. Macnair even hopes you secretly enjoy being punished. It's his fondest dream."

"I thought we were supposed to be talking about business."

"You are my business, puppy dog. When I say 'heel,' you jump to my side. Understand?"

"Yes, ma'am."

Rodolphus stuck his head in. "Having fun, I see. Well, you're just going to have to play later, so pack your toy back to Hogwarts and help me, sweetheart. I need a briefing. I've got a day to learn the ropes up in Manchester, and then Augustus is coming down here."

Bella grinned at Snape. "You know your job. Get back up there and do it, or I may find answers to some of my questions sooner than you'd like."

Snape left quickly, though Rodolphus managed to snag him for a moment in the corridor. "She does love to get her claws into someone, doesn't she? So much better you than me."

Seldom had Snape been so relieved to be back at Hogwarts.

Umbridge had her spy antennae up again, so Dumbledore thought it best to continue to play chess. It was much less suspicious than meeting in either office or going out of the castle for a private stroll. Unfortunately, chess needed time, and on a Tuesday they only had time after supper.

_I was pleased you made it back in one piece._

_It was touch and go. Seriously. Macnair was drooling. Now I'm on probation, and I belong to Bella Lestrange._

_You have my sympathy. What is it that you are supposed to do to avoid being chopped into little pieces?_ "Ah, Professor Snape, once again your knight is in jeopardy."

"I see it, Headmaster." _I have to make Umbridge believe that Potter is a liar._

_Not a difficult task. I was afraid it would be much harder._

_There's more. They're bringing Rookwood in from Manchester today. Something so important that Bella is losing Rodolphus to it. Dolph has to baby-sit Manchester for awhile. She is going to be so antsy._ "Watch your queen-side rook, Headmaster. I'm castle hunting."

Dumbledore pondered his next move. _That is disturbing news. You are probably not aware, but in the time before he went to Azkaban, Rookwood worked for the Ministry... in the Department of Mysteries. We need to know what he tells Riddle. When do you go back next?_

_Not until Saturday, unless I'm called._

_We must be contented with that, I suppose._ "Check."

Snape found abundant opportunities during the next few days to malign Potter's credibility to Umbridge. The Lady, now totally isolated from the rest of the faculty, hung onto Snape's apparent support like a drowning swimmer.

After a day, Snape noticed he was being observed with some respect by Malfoy, Crabbe, Goyle, and Theodore Nott. Lucius must have told them that I'm working at the Dark Lord's express orders. Looks like he doesn't hold it against me that I've been captured by the Black Queen, or the boys wouldn't be so respectful.

Saturday revealed that the organization had been shaken up again. Rookwood was back in Manchester, Rodolphus was back in London, Avery was in disgrace at headquarters, while Yaxley took over Lincoln. Everyone who'd backed Avery was trying to look inconspicuous, and Malfoy was backtracking and flattering Bella shamefully.

Phina sashayed into Snape's laboratory shortly after he arrived. "Cousin Bella is upset that you didn't go report to her first," she said, then grinned wickedly as Snape hurried out of the laboratory and up the stairs, Phina right behind him.

Bella was pacing her office as Snape rushed in. "It's about time you remembered who was important in your life," she snapped. "What's happening at Hogwarts? Does Umbridge still dance to our tune?"

Snape reported that that was, indeed, the case, at which point Bella seemed to lose interest. "Go back to your beakers and test tubes. Next time remember where you go first."

"Yes, ma'am."

He returned to the laboratory, Phina in tow. She sat quietly in a corner, watching his every move like a hawk, but Snape didn't have the courage at that point to tell her to leave, even though her presence hampered his movements. When it was time for him to go, she blocked the doorway. "No lessons tonight, Professor? Maybe Cousin Bella is right. Maybe I should be jealous of Macnair."

The following Saturday was more of the same. Snape went first to report to Bella, then down to his laboratory where he found a leather-clad Phina swinging a riding crop. "I thought I'd take on Macnair on his own ground," she sneered.

"It's bad enough having Bella torment me, I don't need you, too!"

She smiled. "You mean Mommy's little boy doesn't like being spanked?"

"I hate being spanked!"

"I'm so glad to hear that, because I'm just not the spanking type." She walked over to him, put her arms around his neck, and kissed him, and it was so wonderful to have something even a little bit normal happening in his life at that moment, that Snape kissed her back, willing to do anything she wanted just to keep her there to chase the image of Bella away.

Phina leaned away from him, satisfaction shining in her face. "Take me to dinner?" she said.

It was the best offer Snape 'd had in nearly a month. _Anything to get out of here!_

"I don't know," he said. "How do you feel about garlic?"

"I suppose if we both eat it, it won't matter. Why? Do you have a place in mind?"

"I don't know if it's still there, but around ten years ago I went to this nice Greek place near the Tottenham Court Road tube station…"

"Sounds great. Can I wear this?"

"Only if you want them to call the police."

Phina settled for a long skirt with a peasant style blouse and dangling earrings. Both donned warm coats, checked out with personnel, and apparated to an alley near the tube station. From there it was a short walk to Percy Street and a cozy looking restaurant with an orange and blue marquee. Tables were set on the sidewalk despite the cold, but Snape and Phina went inside.

A small flick of a wand put Snape's name on the reservation list, so they got a table at once. The back of the restaurant was wider than the front, and they sat in the corner where the wide section met the narrower front, shielded from the windows and the door by the jog in the wall.

"So teach me, Potions Master. How does one eat Greek food?"

"The best way is to start with the appetizers, the _mezedes_. A lot of them are like spreads or dips that you eat with pita bread." The restaurant had a mixed plate of _taramosalata_, _houmous_, _tzatziki_, and feta cheese, which Snape suggested as a good introduction to Greek food.

"So what are they?" Phina demanded, but Snape refused to tell her until after she tried them.

"This one is my favorite," Phina declared after trying them all several times. She was pointing to the _houmous_.

"Pureed chickpeas with sesame seed butter and lemon juice. That one is fish eggs, that's yogurt with cucumber and mint, and that's goat cheese. And they just about all have garlic."

Any prejudice Phina had ever had about garlic seemed to be disappearing. She loved the chopped lamb cooked in grapevine leaves and the seafood pilaf, fascinated when Snape told her the rings of slightly chewy meat were squid.

"Why did you come here ten years ago?"

"I got to know London during the Dark Lord's first reign, but after his fall I had to stay at Hogwarts. I hate Hogwarts. So after awhile, on my free evenings I used to come down to London to eat at a restaurant and take in a play. It made me feel a little bit less like I was in prison."

"I didn't know Hogwarts was so bad."

"I suppose just as a place, it isn't. But it wasn't what I wanted to do with my life. And anytime you're forced to stay in a place, you hate it."

"What did you want to do with your life?"

"More like what I'm doing now. Work in a laboratory."

"Why didn't you just leave?"

Fortunately for Snape, the floor show started just then, so Phina's attention was diverted by the Greek dancers. She swayed and clapped to the music, then played an amusing game of trying to keep Snape from looking at the belly dancer.

By the end of the show, they were relaxing over baklava and coffee, talking about the school in France that Phina had attended. They even managed to extend the evening with glasses of amaretto, but by then they both had to admit that it was time to be returning to Croydon. Phina took Snape's arm as they returned to the alley near the tube station and disapparated.

Bella was there almost as soon as the two arrived. "Where have you been," she asked curtly.

"Out," Snape replied, and Phina giggled.

Bella just nodded. Snape didn't need legilimency to deduce from the glint in her eyes that Bella was mentally removing Lucius Malfoy's name from the list of possible rivals. Macnair's, too. "I hope you had a good time," was all she said, and then she went back upstairs.

Snape left Phina at headquarters and apparated back to Hogwarts.

xxxxxxxxxx

_He was in the interview chamber, staring down at Rookwood kneeling before him…_

_I have been badly advised, it seems._

_Master, I crave your pardon…_

_I do not blame you, Rookwood. You are sure of your facts?_

_Yes, my Lord, yes… I used to work in the Department after – after all…_

_Avery told me Bode would be able to remove it._

_Bode could never have taken it, Master… Bode would have known he could not… Undoubtedly that is why he fought so hard against Malfoy's Imperius Curse…_

_Stand up, Rookwood._

Snape was fighting now, fighting against the vision, fighting against the memory, suddenly locked into something that he didn't want to see, that terrified him.

_I shall need your help. I shall need all the information you can give me._

_Of course, my Lord, of course… anything…_

_Very well… you may go. Send Avery to me…_

The link was broken, and Snape staggered back, breathing hard. As he stared down at the boy kneeling on the office floor, so similar to the man kneeling in the memory, Snape realized he was shaking. Swallowing quickly he said, "Get up, Potter. That last memory. What was it?" Of course, Snape knew what it was. He needed to find out if Potter knew.

Potter pushed himself to his feet. "I don't know. You mean the one where my cousin tried to make me stand in the toilet?"

"No. I mean the one concerning a man kneeling in the middle of a darkened room…" _A familiar room. A room where I have knelt too many times. Have you seen me kneeling there, Potter?_

"It's… nothing."

Snape tried to read the boy, but Potter was avoiding eye contact. "How do that man and that room come to be inside your head, Potter?"

"It… it was… just a dream I had."

"A dream." _A dream where you enter the Dark Lord's head and look out from his eyes. And when the Dark Lord sleeps, does he dream through your eyes? Is he dreaming of me teaching you occlumency right now?_ "You do know why we are here, don't you, Potter? You do know why I am giving up my evenings to this tedious job?" _Not so you can betray me to the Dark Lord on a daily basis._

"Yes." The hard edge of Potter's defiance shone through his apparent obedience.

"Remind me why we are here, Potter."

"So I can learn occlumency." The green eyes looked everywhere except at Snape. _Is this how Dumbledore used to see me?_

"Correct, Potter. And dim though you may be, I would have thought that after two months' worth of lessons you might have made some progress." Potter was looking at him now, hatred in his eyes. "How many other dreams about the Dark Lord have you had?"

"Just that one."

_Liar. Right now I don't care whether or not you get yourself killed, but I'll be damned if you take me with you._

"Perhaps you actually enjoy having these visions and dreams, Potter. Maybe they make you feel special – important?"

"No, they don't." Yet the boy's body language belied his words.

"That is just as well, Potter, because you are neither special nor important, and it is not up to you to find out what the Dark Lord is saying to his Death Eaters."

"No," Potter spat back at him, "that's your job, isn't it?"

_You have no clue, do you? You hate me for seeing the images that you broadcast freely, but you have no idea what it's like to have your mind ripped open by brute force. You have no idea what other people are enduring for your sake. Bode dead, Podmore in Azkaban, Weasley lying poisoned in a hospital, Shacklebolt freezing on the Devon moors, all to keep your miserable little self safe. All to keep the Dark Lord from finding a prophecy that could destroy you. What I wouldn't give to be looking into your eyes the moment you realize how many people suffered for you, you ungrateful little piece of…_

"Yes, Potter. That is my job." _And I do my job. As Weasley does his, and Shacklebolt does his, and Dumbledore does his._ "Now, if you are ready, we will start again… One… two… three… _Legilimens!_"

Dementors. All the boy saw were dementors coming closer. It was not what Snape wanted to see, and he tried to change the image, reminding Potter of Dursley, and of the Chang girl. It did no good. It was as if Potter controlled the dementors. Snape had his own memories of dementors and now, as he stared into Lily's eyes, he felt Potter's images and his images merging, joining, opening the doors that he fought to keep closed, opening them to the green eyes…

"_Protego!"_ Potter screamed, and the shock wave of the spell hit Snape and flung him back so powerfully that he nearly lost his footing on the stone floor. His wand hand swung upward to flail for balance, and he staggered back against the shelf where the pensieve lay holding his thoughts.

Then Snape felt his own memories drawn up and out from the locked down areas – his parents fighting, always fighting… scenes of cruelty and humiliation from other children… himself, sinking into deep depression after the death of his parents… a vial of slug juice… "ENOUGH!" and Snape's own nonverbal shield struck out, knocking Potter backwards into shelves of jars and bottles, breaking one.

The Reparo spell was instinctive in a potions master, and as the broken jar repaired itself, Snape realized first that Potter was pale and trembling, and then that he himself was as well. He turned now to the pensieve, to straighten it.

"Well, Potter… that was certainly an improvement… I don't remember telling you to use a Shield Charm… but there is no doubt that it was effective…" Over and above the distaste he felt at knowing that Potter had seen thoughts he had always managed to keep private, Snape was cognizant of two immensely important things. The first was that Potter had actually begun to resist him mentally. Not with the Protego spell, but before that, when he refused to show images of Dursley or of Chang. The second was that Potter had read him, used legilimency. It was no simple surface contact – what had been on the surface was dementors. No, this probe had reached deep, and Snape was fairly certain that Potter was not aware of what he'd done.

"Let's try again, shall we?" They took their now familiar positions, the boy clearly more nervous than usual. "On the count of three, then. One… two… three… _Legilimens!_"

It was one of Potter's dreams. They were in a corridor Snape did not recognize, speeding past torchlit stone walls toward a black door… light beckoned through the partly open door… and then – Snape dropped his wand, struggling desperately now to break the contact. He knew Potter's mind, had been touching Potter's mind weekly for two months now, and this was not Potter's mind!

He was inside the Dark Lord's mind as the Dark Lord reviewed his own memory of a day two and a half weeks earlier. This was the Department of Mysteries. These were the doors that blocked him from his goal. He had a plan, and that plan involved Potter. And so he reached out now to Potter's mind, to lure him, to entice him… to intrigue him with the puzzle of the doors… to touch the mind that touched Potter's mind…

In blind panic, Snape struck Potter, knocking him to the ground, and wrenched himself away from the link. Staggering backwards, he banged into the work counter and fell to the floor on his hands and knees. Potter lay, apparently unconscious, on the other side of the room.

_Dear God, did he see me? Did he look through Potter right into me and recognize who he was looking at? Am I a dead man from this moment?_ Minutes passed, and no summons blazed on his left arm. Slowly Snape's heartbeat and breathing returned to normal.

Snape pulled himself to his feet and went to check Potter. The boy lay on his back and, despite the fact that he was breathing heavily, seemed to be all right. "Potter?" Snape said quietly. There was no response. "Potter. Potter! POTTER!"

Potter opened his eyes, gazing around the room in bewilderment.

"Explain yourself!"

"I… dunno what happened. I've never seen that before. I mean, I told you, I've dreamed about the door… but it's never opened before…"

_Fool. Fool. He's reaching right past every shield and defense Hogwarts has, right into the midst of us, and you're too precious to try to do anything about it._ "You are not working hard enough! You are lazy and sloppy, Potter, it is small wonder that the Dark Lord…"

Potter's held tilted up and back, the way Black's always did just before an attack. "Can you tell me something, sir? Why do you call Voldemort the Dark Lord, I've only ever Death Eaters call him that…"

Snape gritted his teeth against the stab of pain and then…

A woman screamed outside, from above, from the entrance hall. "What the…?" Snape murmured, listening as other sounds mingled with and replaced the voice. He glanced over at Potter. "Did you see anything unusual on your way down here, Potter?"

Potter shook his head just as another scream pierced through the stone. Snape was out the door in an instant. If something was wrong in the castle, the teachers were needed.

The entrance hall was filling rapidly. Students poured out from the ground floor classrooms where they'd been studying, from the Great Hall where some were finishing supper, from the floors above. Pushing his way through a crowd of Slytherins blocking the dungeon stairs, Snape took in the trunks, the hysterical Trelawney, and the dumpy, smirking figure of Umbridge on the marble staircase and headed for the great oak doors. He had to call Dumbledore, but he couldn't do it where everyone could see.

As it turned out there was no need, for Dumbledore already knew. Snape burst through the doors into the night, where the bright disk of the moon, just past the full, had already risen above the hilly horizon. Its light illumined the lawn, the path up the hill, and the tall figure of Dumbledore striding towards the castle. He was coming from the forest, a fact made obvious by the creature that was following him.

The palomino body and pale blond hair of the centaur shone like gold in the moonlight, but Snape was far more concerned about the powerful hooves that cut into the path with every mighty step. He scooted out of the way of the pair, over to the side and well out of striking distance, the only disadvantage being that he could no longer hear what was happening inside.

_She can't sack Trelawney. Dumbledore has to do something. She can't send Trelawney away. The instant Trelawney walks off these grounds, she's easy prey for the Dark Lord. He wants the prophecy. There are three ways to get the prophecy, and he's trying to break into the Department of Mysteries because he can't touch the other two. But if Trelawney leaves, the Dark Lord doesn't have to break into the Department of Mysteries. All he has to do is break into Trelawney's mind._

The door into the entrance hall was open, but blocked by the great bulk of the centaur. Snape strained to understand the threads of conversation that filtered out to him. Then it was over, and the crowd in the entrance hall began to drift away. The centaur entered the castle, leaving the doors now free to pass. Snape slipped inside.

Dumbledore was ushering the centaur to the corridor of classrooms on the left that were mostly used as study rooms. Umbridge was stomping up the marble stairs, steaming with rage. Potter was standing by the dungeon stairs, watching the centaur go by, a look of great joy and wonder on his face…

_Potter! I have to talk to Dumbledore about Potter._ Snape walked swiftly across the hall and down the kitchen corridor to the rear staircase. He took the steps two at a time up to the floor where the gargoyle statue was, there to wait until Dumbledore returned, trying to sort out everything that had happened in this very confusing evening.

xxxxxxxxxx

Snape stood in front of the fire in Dumbledore's office, staring down at his hands. They'd been arguing for half an hour, and Snape felt drained, exhausted, fear and helplessness swirling through his brain like malevolent harpies, prodding, goading, laughing.

Dumbledore came over and laid a hand on his shoulder. "I wish the situation were different," he said gently. "Have you thought of any plans?"

"Yes. Nail the two of clubs to a tree and blow my brains out."

"I would like to hope that things are not that bad."

"If he saw me, they're worse. And you want to keep me where he'll continue to see me. Isn't there anyone else? Someone who doesn't have to walk into his lair every week? Someone who can stay safe at Hogwarts?" _Someone like you?_

"We cannot help it, Severus. The situation exists, and we must deal with it as best we may. Harry must learn occlumency. The bitter truth is, only you can teach it to him."

"He won't learn from me. He refuses."

"He has already learned. He started to block you out today."

"It isn't fast enough or complete enough. The Dark Lord will find me. He may already have found me."

"You have not been summoned."

"Suppose it's a trap, that he's luring me in with a false sense of security, so I'll walk into headquarters unsuspecting on Saturday? Then it'll be too late."

They stood there for awhile, watching the fire as Snape ran scenario after scenario through his head, but none was a solution. It was growing late, so he took his leave and went to his own rooms to go to bed. But not to sleep.

"Y're off yer feed again."

"I'm not hungry, Hagrid. What do you keep doing to your face?"

"'T ain't nothing important. But you got to keep yer strength up. I ain't seen ya so thin since ya was a first year. Have some kipper. Ya always liked kippers."

"I'll tell you what, Hagrid. You stop getting your face all beaten up – then I'll think about eating more." But this was Saturday, and anything as normal as eating was impossible.

Wanting to be alone, Snape returned to his own rooms. For some reason he felt a compulsion to straighten and clean everything. He noted that supplies of powdered lichen and dried marula fruit were running low, and left a note on his desk that they would have to be ordered before the first of May. Another note advised that the potions the fifth years were working on needed to be stirred three times clockwise on Sunday, or they would not be in fit condition to use Monday morning.

Skipping lunch entirely, Snape began drawing up outlines of the material that needed to be covered before the OWLs and NEWTs in June. A separate piece of parchment contained the numbers of a vault at Gringotts and an account at Barclay's. It was only after he noted down that the dark items from his great-grandfather's collection should go to Hogwarts school that Snape fully realized what he was doing.

As he left his office for supper, Snape locked the doors with the set of keys Dumbledore had given him almost fifteen years earlier instead of using the magical locks he'd devised himself. Then he went to supper, where he toyed with a small plate of food while listening politely to Flitwick telling him how poor Sibyll Trelawney was still weeping over her fate three days after being sacked, and to McGonagall about how the weather was making her miserable with her aching bones, and to Sprout about the wilt that was attacking the early sprouting heart's-ease and feverfew.

When Dumbledore left the Hall, Snape rose and followed. "Headmaster," he called softly in the entrance hall. Dumbledore stopped and waited for him. "I thought I would leave a little earlier than usual, if you don't mind opening the shields for me now." Then Snape extended his right hand.

"Of course not," said Dumbledore, looking puzzled and worried as he took the proffered hand. He looked into Snape's eyes, but Snape had shut down, and there was nothing for Dumbledore to see. When their hands separated, Dumbledore was holding the set of keys.

Snape turned and walked through the doors, down the hill, and into Hogsmeade, where he disapparated.

xxxxxxxxxx

Snape apparated into Croydon several streets away from headquarters and made his way through lines of cars and groups of pedestrians, his pace slowing noticeably the nearer he approached. _Why can't I just walk in as if nothing were wrong? Look at me. My skin is clammy, my mouth is dry, my stomach is tied into knots I never knew existed… This is my punishment for calling Sirius Black a coward…_

A turn to the right, and there it was. The door to headquarters, a short block away. _This is it. There is no other route to take. Whatever lies on the other side of that door must be faced and dealt with. Fear must under no circumstances be allowed to hinder action. I've been hammering into Potter for two months that emotions must be controlled. Practice what you preach, Severus._ Straightening his back, his head high, Snape walked up to the door, raised the latch, and entered.

Three steps into the building and they seized him, Rodolphus on one side and Macnair on the other. "Good boy, showing up early. Dark Lord wants to see you," and they hustled him down the stairs and along the corridor to the interview chamber. Bella was already there, as was Malfoy, as was the Dark Lord.

"He comes? this servant who serves me not," hissed the Dark Lord. "Your memory grows dim. We must refresh it for you. You will kneel."

Even before his knees settled on the floor, the Cruciatus Curse hit. Snape's body arched backward, and then he had no body, only pain that radiated into every corner of his being, obliterating everything else except the echo of screaming…

And then the pain was gone. It had lasted, Snape reckoned as he lay very still on the cold stone floor, but a few seconds. This was not punishment, only a reminder. A rough hand gripped his left shoulder and turned him onto his stomach, so he could push himself back onto his knees. _Angry, but not murderously angry. Steady. Find out what's wrong._

"What are your tasks, faithless one?"

"To provide your people with potions and charms, and to teach them to defend themselves against enemies."

"And what else?"

"To bring you information about Dumbledore and his followers."

"And what else?"

"To persuade Dolores Umbridge and the Ministry that reports of your return are false, so that we may operate in secrecy."

"And what else?"

Snape was thinking feverishly now. What else had the Dark Lord ever commanded him to do, even if it was not given as a formal task?

"To report on the dreams of Harry Potter."

"What do you know of the dreams of Harry Potter?"

_This is it. He knows. _"He dreams of snakes, and of the Department of Mysteries."

"What has he seen of the Department of Mysteries?"

"A door."

"Has he gone through that door?"

"Yes, and found many other doors."

"Does Potter confide his dreams to you?"

Snape walked through a minefield, and he knew it. A wrong step meant, not death, not yet, but the end of life. "No, Lord, he does not."

"Then how do you know?"

"He confides in Dumbledore, who speaks to… McGonagall." _Who never leaves Hogwarts and is therefore not an easy target._ "She lets things slip from time to time."

"And it did not occur to you that we might want this information at once."

There. That was the transgression. Relief flooded through Snape, while he struggled to turn it into a semblance of misery. Covering his face with his hands he said, "I have failed you, Lord. Punish me."

"That will come. Tell us why Potter does not enter the dream."

Snape was baffled and made no effort to hide it. "Lord, I do not understand."

"We wish him to enter the dream, to seek the prize, to choose a door. He merely watches."

"Forgive my ignorance, Lord, but how can one do more with a dream unless he seeks the real door? And nothing will induce him to leave Hogwarts."

"We are better informed. You will all leave now, except Lucius who will consult with us. Macnair, you will spend a few minutes – a very few minutes – impressing upon this servant why his reports must be timely."

Malfoy flashed a quick smirk of triumph at Bella, and then the four of them – Bella, Rodolphus, Macnair, and Snape – were back in the basement corridor. A door was ajar to a vacant room just ahead, and the three shoved Snape unceremoniously into it.

"I guaranteed your performance to the Dark Lord, puppy dog, and you made me look bad. This doesn't stimulate my maternal instincts." Bella's wand was in her hand.

Snape let his own wand slip from sleeve to hand as well, but Macnair stepped between them with a wicked grin. "Don't forget the Dark Lord, Snape. He gave me a few minutes with you, and if you fight me, you disobey him."

"He didn't give Bella anything."

"Why, Bella, I believe he's right. You'll just have to step outside." The Lestranges retreated and shut the door behind them.

"Don't worry," Macnair chuckled as he took the wand from Snape's now unresisting hand. "I won't do anything fatal – or even permanent. Just give you more to think about for say, a week. Besides, I watched you last June. You thrive on danger. Pain makes you feel more alive. No reason why we can't both enjoy this." He seized Snape's wrist, twisted his arm behind him, and pushed him into the wall. "You do understand that the Dark Lord's business overrides everything else? Say 'sir.'"

"Yes, sir."

"And you will bring him every tidbit of information as quickly as you can, not caring about your own safety or convenience?"

"Yes, sir."

"Now for the reminder." The tip of the wand ran slowly down Snape's side. "Something you don't use often. Something you won't really need…" The wand stopped as Macnair whispered _"Ignis - Renes Dextimus!"_

Fire seared the middle of Snape's back, and he cried out once before he slumped to the floor. Macnair tossed his wand beside him. The pain was already subsiding to a sharp ache.

"Don't worry," Macnair said. "You'll notice it for about a week. That should be enough to impress the lesson on your mind. After that you'll be fine. You don't really need more than one kidney anyway." Then he was gone, and Snape was alone in the room. Slowly, gingerly, he got to his feet.

_Fine. The Dark Lord is pissed, and now his sadistic chief executioner is in love with me. Well Dumbledore is going to hear about this. I want a new job. Or at least a raise in pay._

xxxxxxxxxx

Dumbledore tapped a finger thoughtfully on the arm of his chair as he watched Madam Pomfrey examine Snape's back. "Have you ever considered the possibility that Macnair may be right," he said after a while.

"Don't you start in on me! I'm getting just a little tired of all this insinuation that I might be sick and twisted!"

"Now, do not get defensive. You do not exactly lead a normative life. And you do have a… tolerance for unpleasant situations exceeding that of any other person of my acquaintance."

"That's because you put me into more unpleasant situations than you do any other person of your acquaintance."

"Only because I know you can tolerate it."

Madam Pomfrey cleared her throat. "He's right about the damage. There isn't much I can do outside of pain killers. It will continue to hurt for about a week, then it will clear up. There's no permanent damage to the kidney. Shall I get you something for the pain?"

"No, that's all right. I can…" Snape stopped and glared at Dumbledore. "On second thought, Madam Pomfrey, I would love something for the pain. I hate pain."

"Here then," she replied, handing him some lozenges. "Two every four hours. And you…" – this was to Dumbledore – "try not to damage him anymore. At least not for a while. I do have other things to attend to."

"Yes, Madam Pomfrey. Of course." The two men waited until the nurse was out of the room. Dumbledore poured mead.

"I am serious, Severus. You have an attitude toward pain that is positively unique in my experience. You neither embrace it nor flee it. You seem to view it as a natural and unavoidable part of existence, to be dealt with on a practical level. And there are times, I swear, when it seems that you regard suffering as a kind of validation. It is no wonder that someone as unsubtle as Walden Macnair misinterprets you."

"You didn't see me today in Croydon. I was terrified. I had to force myself to walk into the building."

"But you did walk into the building. I have never understood why people equate lack of fear with courage. I must remind you that anything is easy if you are not afraid of it. And many times lack of fear is merely an indication of ignorance. No, true courage means being afraid, being horribly afraid, and doing something anyway."

"Lots of people do that. Every day."

"Very few would ask me to cast a Cruciatus Curse just to be sure he could stand up to the pain." When Snape didn't reply, Dumbledore smiled. "You see? Practical. Pain for you is a tool."

"I have never wanted to inflict…"

"No, no, Severus. I mean your pain. Admit it. You used your own willingness to endure pain as a means to inspire Riddle to trust you. It is a rare ability. I should like to think that I could do the same, but I have yet to be put to the test."

"But I don't ever want it to happen again."

"Good. That is healthy. A tool of necessity, never of choice. That is what Macnair does not understand."

They sat for a while in silence. Then Snape changed the subject. "What do you think the Dark Lord meant when he said that he was better informed?"

"I do not know. But this I do know. Harry must never leave Hogwarts except to go to a place equally secure. Riddle has some task for him that requires Harry's physical presence. I do not know what it is, though I can guess from the things that you have told me. No, Severus, we cannot relax our vigilance. At all costs, Harry must not set foot off the grounds of Hogwarts."

The following Saturday was the middle of March. Snape went immediately to Malfoy on arrival in Croydon.

"I just wanted you to know that nothing special happened at Hogwarts since last weekend. I've heard of no changes in Potter's dreams. Should I tell him that myself?"

"No, I'll do it. I'm seeing him in a few minutes. It's only hearing through someone else what he should have heard first that sets him off."

"What if something happens and I don't hear about it?"

"Then you have a rough night." Malfoy watched Snape's face for a moment. "Look, I wouldn't worry too much. You're in a valuable position and you've provided some useful information. He has no one to replace you with. You'd have to out and out betray him to be in real trouble. He's not really that angry. He knows you're loyal. And you get hyper enough about a couple of pinpricks; you're not going to risk real punishment. If you tell him you didn't know something, he'll believe you. He may nudge you to keep you on your toes, but he'll believe you."

"Comforting thought."

"It should be. Avery 'd give his right arm to be as safe in front of the Dark Lord as you are. He's in serious trouble. By the way, when's the next Hogsmeade outing?"

"Two weeks."

"Good. Maybe we can get Potter then."

Snape went cold inside. "I… don't think you will." In response to Malfoy's quizzical look, he explained. "That interview for the Quibbler – it was given in Hogsmeade. In punishment, Umbridge has revoked Potter's Hogsmeade privileges. He can't go there for the rest of the year."

"Ha! Another blow against Bella Lestrange! She was so certain that she could finesse a kidnapping. I have to give this news to the Dark Lord at once. Maybe then he'll listen to my plan."

"Your plan?"

"Best you not know. What you don't know can't throw you to the lions. Or in this case, Macnair."

Working later in his laboratory, Snape registered the sound of someone entering, but didn't immediately turn around.

"You might look at me, you know," said Phina.

"You were conspicuous by your absence last week."

"Last week you were in trouble."

"And what weathervane forecasts 'fair' for today?"

"You think I'm very shallow and self-serving, don't you?"

"Not at all. If I were concerned about my health I wouldn't associate with me either."

"You make me laugh. I like that." She moved to a position where she could watch his profile as he mixed a cough medicine for the clinic. "I thought we might go to dinner."

"No, my lovely. You tell Bella I'm not stepping out of observation range of the security guards for all the tea in China."

"I told her you wouldn't bite. Are you always this cautious?"

"Only where my life and health are concerned."

"Suit yourself," said Phina, "but that doesn't mean I won't try again next week."

"Kidnapping?" said Dumbledore later that night" "That is more serious than I thought."

"It's a very good thing that Umbridge already restricted him. If it'd happened after I heard about that, I could be in Avery's position."

"We shall do our best to keep you away from such an unpleasant spot."

"Shouldn't you tell Potter? Maybe it will make him cautious and give him incentive to work on his lessons."

"Now Severus, the boy is only fifteen. He is safe here on the grounds; there is no need to frighten him with this. He has enough to worry about. McGonagall and the other heads of houses, however, need to know that he must not leave Hogwarts under any circumstances. Every other consideration has to be sacrificed to that."

"Headmaster… What's in this prophecy that I don't already know about… that the Dark Lord doesn't already know about… that makes it so dangerous?"

"Best you not know."

Snape accompanied Dumbledore to Grimmauld Place later in the week. Kingsley Shacklebolt opened the door this time. He seemed surprised to see Snape, but offered his hand as soon as they were inside and the door closed. Snape took it.

"I owe you one," Shacklebolt said, and Snape nodded. There was no need to say more.

"Look what the cat dragged in," was Black's muttered comment as they entered the parlor.

Dumbledore glared at him, anger seething in his eyes. "Don't start it, Sirius, or…"

"That's all right, Headmaster," Snape said gently. "I understand the need to appear to be frustrated by inactivity."

Black growled in response, but held his tongue.

After Snape reported on the friction at headquarters between Malfoy and Bella Lestrange, and explained the Dark Lord's desire to kidnap Potter, Dumbledore rose.

"Voldemort – you will excuse me, Severus, but it must be said – Voldemort wishes to obtain the entirety of a prophecy currently stored in the Department of Mysteries. This prophecy was spoken by one person, who does not consciously remember it, heard in its entirety by another, myself, and in part by a third, which is how Voldemort learned of it. That partial knowledge nearly destroyed him fifteen years ago, and he fears to act without knowing the rest. The prophet was Sibyll Trelawney, and she is being housed for her protection and ours at Hogwarts. I am in relatively little danger. There remains the stored prophecy, which cannot be retrieved from the Ministry except by it subject. Hence Voldemort's desire to capture Harry Potter. Like Trelawney, Potter must now at all costs be kept within the grounds of Hogwarts for his own sake and for ours."

The matter was discussed at some length and then the group retired to the kitchen. Snape once again waited for Dumbledore in the parlor. After a few minutes, Black came back in.

"Don't stand up. I won't be long. How are Harry's lessons going?"

"Poorly. Either he has no mental aptitude for this at all, or he is deliberately resisting for reasons of his own."

"Maybe he's just too honest to be a good occlumens."

"Allowing yourself to be swept away by an emotional roller coaster is not the same thing as honesty. And it will not help him fight the Dark Lord."

"Harry's stood up to Voldemort before. He's not afraid."

"Lack of fear in the face of danger is sometimes just stupidity." Snape watched carefully as Black's face began to crimson. "And courage is no shield against legilimency. Potter will stand, wand in hand, bravely facing the Dark Lord, and spilling out through his honest, undisciplined mind every piece of information the Dark Lord needs to accomplish his goals." He paused. "Just like his father."

Black lunged at the seated Snape in fury, but Snape had already read the move and dove for the floor, rolling back onto his feet in one smooth motion just as Dumbledore came through the door.

"It's all right, Headmaster," Snape said calmly, replacing his wand quickly into his sleeve. "Black and I were just debating the relative merits of physical versus mental defenses."

Dumbledore gripped Snape's elbow and steered him out of the house. "Sometimes I think the two of you together are more trouble than Riddle and all his Death Eaters combined."

xxxxxxxxxx

"He wants to see you," was all Macnair said, then accompanied Snape to the interview room, but without any kind of physical pressure. Malfoy and Avery stood on one side of the room, the Lestranges on the other. Snape stayed back, but in between them, as did Macnair.

The Dark Lord arrived. "Speak, Bella."

"Lord, the quickest way to get our hands on Potter is the Hogsmeade excursion next weekend. We could have operatives at every major gathering point in the town. They would not fail to capture Potter and bring him to you."

"Lucius."

"Lord, is it not still our policy that we must keep our presence secret and out of the public eye? We are strong, but not yet so strong that we can afford to give up our well-planned caution. Even if Bella is right, and Potter can be taken, the kidnapping of a Hogwarts student from the middle of Hogsmeade, in full view of seventy-five percent of the students, would destroy that secrecy. It is, of course, my Lord's decision whether or not the capture of Potter is worth revealing our presence to the entire wizarding world, but I must point out that this should only be done if it has a one hundred percent guarantee of success. Sending even half a dozen of our people into Hogsmeade would alert the populace and the students to our presence regardless of whether they kidnap anyone, and all that we have worked to preserve will be lost…"

"Stop. Severus, you will now speak."

"Lord, the people of Hogsmeade will notice strangers, as will the students. The capture of Potter may well be worth the risk of exposing our operations – I am not competent to speak to that point – but you will not get Potter. Umbridge was furious with Potter about his interview for the Quibbler, and she is obsessed with punishing him. She won't let him out of Hogwarts, and any attempt to kidnap him will fail. He won't be there."

"So you side with Malfoy."

"Lord, I side with no one. I tell you what I know."

"Go then, all of you. Lucius and Bella, we will inform you of our decision."

The six filed out of the interview chamber.

"'Lord, I side with no one.' That's a good line. I'll have to remember that." Macnair was chuckling.

"It's the truth."

"Didn't say it wasn't. It's still a good line." Macnair left them.

Bella crossed over to Snape and hooked a finger under a button on his frock coat. "Puppy dogs shouldn't cross their mistresses," she said quietly.

Malfoy pulled Snape away. "Severus has lab work to do, Bella. Go sharpen your knives somewhere else. And remember – his work is important to the Dark Lord. Don't distract him."

"I wouldn't dream of it."

The arrival of Phina in the laboratory was as predictable as the outcome of a Stalinist election.

Snape didn't even look up from his work. "Bella doesn't believe in following Lucius's advice does she?"

"What advice?"

"Not to distract me."

"She's not distracting you. I am. I want to go to dinner."

"Tell me, what did you like best about that dinner, the food? the entertainment? the novelty of pretending to be a muggle?"

"I notice you didn't say the company."

"I hate the whole process of being disillusioned, so I tend to skip over it."

"Well, I liked the company and the food the best."

"Do you want to try doing something ordinary and mundane."

"Depends on what it is."

"Go shopping. Bring back shoulder of lamb, onions, garlic, and an assortment of vegetables – anything you like."

"Who's going to cook it?"

"I am."

By the time Phina got back, Snape had two cauldrons set up over flames. As she watched with some trepidation, he cut everything into chunks and added them to one or the other cauldron, then began sprinkling them with powders from a variety of jars.

"What's that stuff?" she finally asked.

"This is cumin." He pointed to the other jars. "Those are ginger, cinnamon, saffron, turmeric…"

"Is this going to be Greek?"

"No. Moroccan."

"I didn't know you could cook."

"What's to know. You add the right ingredients in the right amounts in the right order and heat at the right temperature for the right amount of time. It's just like potion making."

"I never thought about it that way." Phina fidgeted as Snape watched her dispassionately. "Okay," she finally admitted, "I never thought about it at all."

They magicked a low table, pillows, and cushions, and sat on the floor by candlelight, eating Moroccan lamb and vegetables with their fingers, and washing their hands with mint scented water.

"That was wonderful," sighed Phina, and suddenly it seemed quite natural that she should be next to him, reclining on a cushion, teasing him with strands of her hair.

_This is crazy. If Bella catches us, she'll skin us both alive._ But Snape knew that death lay waiting at every turn – in Bella's overarching lust for power, and in Macnair's lust for a more private dominance, in the chance memories sifting through Potter's brain in sleep, and in his own stumblings caused by fatigue or fear. Now, more than anything, Snape wanted life. Life that smiled and giggled up at him from an embroidered pillow. No longer caring about the consequences, Snape folded Phina in his arms and kissed her, his whole being taut and vibrating like the strings of a harp as she melted…

"You SLUT! You TROLLOP! You WHORE!" The door slammed open with a crash that shook the room, Bella screaming at the top of her voice, advancing on the suddenly parted duo like the wrath of a vengeful god. "The fortunes of our whole house hang in the balance, and you DEMEAN yourself with this half-breed FLUNKY, this SERVANT…"

Snape was on his feet, wand in hand, long pent-up frustration boiling over in fury. "Get. Out. Of. My. Lab., you villainous Witch!" To his right, window panes exploded outwards in violent shatterings of glass – cabinet doors burst apart as jars and canisters leapt to the floor – Bunsen burners flared, setting the cauldrons bubbling again, filling the room with the acrid smell of burnt meat. His wand raised, Snape advanced while Bella retreated, dodging beakers, test tubes, cruets, and pipettes as they smashed into the wall behind her, showering her with shards of glass.

Then Bella was out of the room, and Snape turned to Phina. To Phina, whose white face and wide eyes revealed her shock and fear. "I… think… I need to be going now," she said, as she edged towards the door.

There was no point in trying to stop her. Snape watched, hating both Bella and himself, as Phina slipped through the door into the hallway. Then, quickly, she looked back in, sweeping the chaotic destruction with a glance. "Did you really do all that? Wow!"

Snape set about the patient task of repairing the damage. The only other time he remembered losing control like that was at the age of thirteen, and then Dumbledore and Hagrid had been his targets. _Have I truly learned so little in all that time?_


	53. Chapter 53 – Flirting with Enemies

**Yes, That Is My Job: Flirting with Enemies**

They spoke in quiet voices, even though it was late and the castle slept, even though Snape's office was too far from any other room for them to be heard.

"…and if he finds a way to sneak out, Bella's people may snatch him, despite the certainty of being seen. On the other hand, if he stays at Hogwarts they'll try Lucius's plan, and I don't know what that is, but it involves luring Potter off the grounds."

"So we keep him here. I shall alert everyone I can. Do not fret, Severus. We shall succeed in this."

"Can we trust Potter not to do something horribly stupid? He is the most unpredictable factor in all of this."

Dumbledore sighed. "The day will come, Severus, when you will understand that there is good in the boy. And a glimmer of intelligence. He knows that now is not the time to be breaking rules."

There was a pause heavy with portent, and then Dumbledore spoke again. "Now tell me about this girl."

"What girl?"

"Do you love her?"

"I presume you're asking if I'm going to bring her to Hogwarts and introduce her to you."

"No, I am asking if you love her."

"I'm not even sure what that means."

Dumbledore leaned back in his chair. "You are serious, it would seem."

"Yes, I am. People throw that word around like a weapon. They use it when they're talking about a whole range of emotions, some of them contradictory. Does it mean affection, tenderness, infatuation, the desire to protect, the desire to dominate, possessiveness, jealousy…? People use it to cajole, coerce, and manipulate, but I've never seen anything I could separate out and point to and say 'this is love.' I don't think it exists." Snape had risen and was standing by the fireplace, his back to Dumbledore.

"What about Lily?"

"What about Lily."

"She sacrificed herself for her child. Is not that love?"

"Maternal instinct. Rabbits have it. Wolves have it. Mother birds will risk their lives for their young and then not even recognize them the following season. How is 'love' different?"

"You are bitter tonight. Something happened."

"I wanted something. I almost had it. It was taken away. There was no love involved. Satisfied?"

"No, but I shall have to be content with it." Dumbledore rose, too, and laid a hand on Snape's shoulder. "You have a right to some joy in life. I hope you find it."

After Dumbledore was gone, Snape stood for a while staring down at the cold stone of the fireplace. He was thinking of his father. Toby had needed Eileen. Needed her presence in his life, her care, her validation of his existence. Needed her so much that when she died, he died too.

_Is that love? The desperate need that supersedes and overwhelms the need for life itself? Who would want that? I can understand sacrifice. I can understand being given a choice and choosing to die so that something else can live. But even that isn't love. Sometimes it's pride, or fear of consequences, or guilt, or most likely a strong sense of duty…_

The question didn't go away as Snape mechanically readied himself for bed, though it did permute into a wide-ranging variety of different aspects. Restless, sleepless nights were becoming habitual.

The week passed quickly, with end of term and Easter break coming up, the need to both court and avoid Umbridge, the mind-throbbing frustration of Potter's occlumency lesson – and suddenly it was Saturday and the Hogsmeade excursion.

Potter stayed on the grounds, his friends keeping him company rather than go to Hogsmeade. From returning Slytherins, Snape learned that there'd been several strangers in the village, strangers that seemed to be waiting for something. Snape had a reasonable idea of what he would find when he apparated that evening to Croydon.

No one was waiting to usher him into the interview chamber. Snape breathed a sigh of relief, then went up to his laboratory where the next batches of Polyjuice Potion and Veritaserum were in their final stages of preparation. A half hour later, Malfoy came into the room looking immensely pleased with himself.

"Your information was perfect. She had eight people up there from three different offices. Not a hair of Potter did they see. Ha! Poor Bella. She's still with the Dark Lord, answering for her sins. He is not happy with her, oh no. He'll want to speak with you when he's finished with her."

"Why?"

"To find out how much damage was done. I wouldn't mind being a fly on the wall right now, I will admit."

It came sooner than Malfoy expected, for a Death Eater stuck his head in then and said simply, "He wants you. Both of you."

They hurried down to the chamber, where a groggy Bella was still on her knees before the Dark Lord. Snape did not feel the least sympathy for her.

"You will report to us now."

"Potter did not go to Hogsmeade. Returning students were commenting on the unusual presence of a number of strangers. Although they were curious, no one seems to have connected it to us."

"Then this careless servant has been more fortunate than she deserves. Presumptuous one, you will beg this servant's forgiveness for having impugned the quality of his information to us."

Bella twisted around, her eyes slightly glazed from her punishment. "You were right, Snape," she forced out in a rasping voice. "Forgive me for questioning you. You were right, and I was wrong."

Red eyes turned on Snape. "You will respond."

The assessment of possible future needs took only a second. "There's nothing for me to forgive. You serve our Lord loyally and advise him to the best of your ability. If you err in your advice, it is for him to forgive you, not me."

Malfoy did not look at all pleased, but the Dark Lord nodded. "You say well. Malfoy, you will remain and give me your counsel. Potions master, you will leave and take this erring one with you."

Snape bent and helped Bella to her feet, supporting her out of the chamber. Steering her into the same room they'd been in before with Macnair, he sat her at the table and went to find Rodolphus, who was waiting nervously in the staff lounge, forbidden to come nearer while his wife was being disciplined. Snape quickly prepared a cup of tea and followed Rodolphus down.

The tea was hot and soothing, and though Bella shuddered a little as she drank it, she seemed to feel better. Shakily she recounted her experience to Rodolphus, who looked up at Snape.

"It was good of you to say what you did. I owe you one."

"I was looking out for myself."

"It was still good of you."

A half hour later, Phina walked into the laboratory. "Cousin Bella sent me," she said, grinning provocatively. "She wants to make it up to you for all the things she said last week. I'm a peace offering."

"Have you ever come here on your own initiative?"

"Yes. Last week. That's why cousin Bella was so angry. I'm not supposed to like you, just get you all hot and bothered."

"Nice image."

"I thought so," said Phina, closing the laboratory door. "Are you all hot and bothered?"

"Hot and bothered? Not really. More cool and collected. I get like that when heads are rolling." Snape continued checking his potions, not wanting to face Phina at the moment.

Phina pouted a little. "Cousin Bella will be fine. The Dark Lord really does value her, you know."

"Did he tell you that, or is that Bella's version."

"You can tell just watching him. He gets all gooey-eyed… All right, it's Cousin Bella's version."

"I'd be careful how you speak of the Dark Lord. That came very close to ridicule. If I thought you meant it, I'd have to report you."

"You're serious!"

"Always where my life and health are concerned. Has Bella mentioned why the Dark Lord holds her in such high regard?"

"Oh, yes. It's because out of all of you, she was the only one who refused to believe he was dead and gone. She got herself thrown into Azkaban not for what she did before, but for searching for him when everyone else believed he'd been destroyed. She never gave up hoping for his return. Never. He prizes that, and he prizes her."

"Surely that includes Rodolphus and Rabastan."

"No, because she had to work hard to convince them. The only other one was Barty Crouch. He never gave up hope either, not until he was finally captured anyway. They say he cracked then. Bella never cracked. And she's still here. Don't you want to get all hot and bothered?"

"Not really. The ease with which we were interrupted last time rather puts a damper on things. It might have been much more embarrassing."

"That's all right," Phina laughed. "We don't have to go that direction. There are other fun things." Behind him, Snape sensed a wand being drawn and items being conjured. He turned to find the cushions and pillows arranged on the floor again. Phina stepped near and began undoing buttons. "First we have to get this jacket thing off of you."

The frock coat off, Phina insisted Snape lie down on the cushions on his stomach, hands under his head. Caution warred with curiosity in his mind, but curiosity had caution beat by a good four to one, so he did as he was told. "Normally I prefer bare skin," she said, "but it can be just as good through the shirt."

Snape hardly had time to wonder what 'it' was when she positioned her hands, fingers on his shoulders and thumbs at the base of his neck, and began to massage his back. Gently at first, then with increasing pressure, she worked her way to the small of his back, up the rib cage, to his neck, shoulders and upper arms, where the cycle began again, kneading and stroking the tension out of muscles that had been tight for years. It was wonderful. Snape had no idea how much his back ached until Phina began to make it feel better.

The rhythm and pressure were hypnotic. Snape found himself drifting, unthinking and uncaring, his eyes closed, aware only of the purely physical relaxation that spread through him, wanting it never to stop…

His eyes opened lazily to candlelit darkness and the softness of pillows. Phina lay beside him on the cushions, staring at the ceiling. At his movement she turned to look at him. "I wish I could say that was the first time anyone ever fell asleep on me," she said, "but actually it happens a lot. How do you feel?"

"Fantastic. Where did you learn to do that?"

"I don't know. It seems to come naturally. Now, put your arms around me. We're just going to enjoy the moment." Which Snape did, losing himself in the warmth and peace, in the scent of her skin and hair, until reality impinged on his content.

"What time is it?" he asked suddenly.

"Nearly midnight."

An hour later than usual. Snape started to rise, but she pulled him down, and they kissed for the first and only time that night. Then he stood and slipped on his coat, helped her to her feet, and together they removed the evidence of the evening. After locking the laboratory, he bade her good night, and left to return to Hogwarts, wishing for the first time that he could stay at Croydon instead.

Even though there was only one chess board out in the Great Hall the next day, two games of chess were being played.

_You were late in last night._

_Not inordinately so, I don't think._

_Any trouble?_

_Not what I would call trouble. Not for me at any rate. Bella had some explaining to do._

_Until midnight?_ "Check."

_Oh no. Bella was out and about long before that._ "You forgot to cover that bishop. Serious mistake."

_So you were being interrogated until midnight?_

_No. I was in the laboratory by eight._

_What happened in the laboratory? An explosion?_

_Define explosion._

Dumbledore paused, his hand on an unmoved knight, peering at Snape over the rim of his glasses. _Do not be cheeky. Your young lady was there, no?_

_Well if you already knew that, why were you beating around the bush?_

_And?_

_And what? Why didn't I ever realize before what a voyeur you are?_

_Here I am, shepherding my young son through his first dating…_

_I'm not that young!_ "Check!"

_Compared to me, you are an infant._ "Capture your rook and check to you."

"How dare you think that because of your age you have a right to…" Snape paused, suddenly realizing he was speaking out loud. "…show off how good you are at chess. I swear you deliberately made me think you were an amateur just so you could beat me now."

"We all have our little secrets, Severus. I am not as clever as you seem to think I am, but then again, neither are you."

The game ended five minutes later when Dumbledore mated Snape's king.

Monday started out normally. There were the usual problems in Potions class, and the usual end of term hysterics, but on the whole, normal was the operative word. In fact, Snape might not have known anything was amiss until the following morning had not he and Sprout lingered in the Great Hall after supper discussing the early summer plantings.

The evening was well advanced when Snape and Sprout left the Hall, both towards their respective rooms. At once, as if a floodgate opened, a flurry of Hufflepuff students came clattering down the staircase, ignoring the two professors entirely, and heading for their own dormitories as if bloodhounds were after them.

"Whoa!" yelled Sprout, but none of them heeded. A boy at the tail end of the stream was easier to catch. "Zacharias, what is the meaning of this!"

The boy paused only a moment. "Sorry, Professor. Umbridge… caught us… Potter… hide from her… Dumbledore… gotta go…" and he vanished into the kitchen passage with the others.

Sprout hurried after him and was gone for many minutes while Snape waited in the entrance hall. When she returned, she was almost running. "They've been organizing a combat group behind Umbridge's back," she gasped to Snape. "They called themselves Dumbledore's Army."

Both professors sprinted for the stairs, Snape ahead of Sprout only because he was younger and had longer legs. As they reached the floor with the gargoyle statue and the spiral staircase, they narrowly avoided running into a group of people. A group of impressive people headed by the Minister of Magic himself, Cornelius Fudge. Umbridge was with them, as was Kingsley Shacklebolt, who saw Snape and gave him a short, decisive shake of the head, then looked quickly away. Behind them McGonagall was descending the spiral stairs with Potter as Umbridge turned to the group from the Ministry.

"Shall we discuss this grave matter in my offices, gentlemen?" she said, and they nodded agreement and followed her.

McGonagall sent Potter up to Gryffindor house and was about to leave when the two professors hissed her over to them. "Oh, it's terrible!" she exclaimed in unconcealed anguish. "They caught the students organizing an army, and now Dumbledore's fled from Hogwarts!"

xxxxxxxxxx

Malfoy and Snape left the interview chamber together.

"Very timely news. He was wondering what was going on. He thought old Dumbledore looked a bit combative."

Snape felt his heart nearly skip a beat. "The Dark Lord can see Dumbledore?" he asked, trying to keep his voice sounding casual.

"From time to time. It takes quite an effort, and the Potter boy's mind has to be in the right receptive condition. It only lasts a moment, so it's nowhere as useful as the dream connection, but he hopes to be able to improve the link with practice."

It was cold. The corridor was very cold. _Maybe it's me. Maybe I'm cold._ "Can he hear what they're saying?"

"Not yet, but he's working on it. Can you stay? I'd like to go over a few things with you."

"No, not tonight. I have to get back before Umbridge notices I'm gone. I'm not sure how easy it'll be to get out anymore. The Dark Lord may wish to be reminded of that."

"All right. Good luck at Hogwarts."

Snape made it in good time. It was another hour before Umbridge was finished and the Minister left. Then he was summoned rather brusquely to her office. She did not invite him to sit.

"I think I commented to you before that you seem to spend quite a bit of time away from Hogwarts, Professor."

"No more than I'm entitled to. Less than many of the others."

"Yes, but you come back at very late hours."

"Eleven o'clock can hardly be considered late, certainly not if one goes to the theater."

"You must have the spells for opening and closing the gates, though, to be able to move around so freely."

"No, I don't. The Headmaster always lets me in. Occasionally the Deputy Headmistress." Snape knew exactly where this conversation was going. McGonagall must have refused to turn over the spells.

"I see. Well, until this whole matter of chain of command can be resolved once and for all, your excursions may be somewhat restricted." She waited, but Snape saw no reason to comment. "There is another matter I wish to discuss with you. All potions kept for the needs of the school in general are in your custody, no?"

"Except for medical stores. Madam Pomfrey has those."

"I understand you are required to stock a small supply of Veritaserum."

"Yes, Ma'am. Very small. One vial."

"Bring it to me."

"I can't do that, Ma'am. The regulations are very strict. I can only give it to the Headmaster or to the Deputy Headmistress."

"But I'm the High Inquisitor."

"There is no mention of the title 'High Inquisitor' in the regulations. If I were to give the Veritaserum to you, I would be breaking the law."

Umbridge tapped her fingers on the desk, clearly debating whether to push the issue or not. At last she said, "That's all. You may go now."

Snape sped down to his office and unlocked the cabinet with the controlled stock in it. The little vial of Veritaserum with its Ministry registration label was near the front, full except for three drops that had been used on Barty Crouch the year before. Quickly Snape got another vial and emptied the Veritaserum into it, stoppered it, and hid it in the wardrobe in his bedroom. Then he rinsed out and dried the official vial.

The little flask of false Veritaserum that he'd made in Croydon was in another cabinet, unlabeled and anonymous. Carefully, Snape filled the official vial with the false serum, full except for three drops. The deception was undetectable. Snape replaced the vial in its cabinet and locked it securely.

The next morning, Educational Decree Number Twenty-eight was posted, announcing that Dolores Jane Umbridge, High Inquisitor, was now also Headmistress of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. One of the new headmistress's first actions was to summon her potions master and demand the vial of Veritaserum that was kept locked in his office in case of need. Snape went down into the dungeons and returned at once with the vial.

It was interesting to Snape to note that Umbridge was still working out of the Dark Arts office. It seemed that the headmaster's office refused to recognize the authority of the Ministry of Magic. As far as the office was concerned, Dumbledore was still headmaster. _How would one go about punishing a piece of architecture for insubordination?_

McGonagall was not in the mood to be kind at breakfast.

"I see you caved in very quickly. And here I had just convinced myself that you'd developed a spine."

"Now, now. You were nasty to me last year, too, and then you had to backtrack and apologize."

"You mean all is not what it seems in faeryland?"

"All is not what our beloved and fearless leader wishes it to be."

"So counsel me. What should I do if offered a cup of tea on the second floor?"

"Accept it graciously and drink it politely. It cannot harm you. Just don't give in to sudden impulses unless you actually desire to make enemies."

"Mendaciuserum?"

"More like Fraudiserum, but you have the right idea."

"You wicked, wicked boy. And to think there was a time when I was naive enough to consider you trustworthy."

"It depends on who's trusting and what it's worth."

"There. I have no illusions left."

Word passed quickly among the teachers that no one was going to be overwhelmed by a sudden passion to confess all, and they relaxed and tried to formulate plans.

As it turned out, the one called before Umbridge was Potter. Were it not for the fact that the whole school was in danger, Snape would have been quite content to have Potter forced to spill his soul to Umbridge. It served the evil little prima donna right for causing all the trouble in the first place.

_He knew she was looking for any excuse to take over the school, so he hands her one on a silver platter. I still believe Dumbledore should have told him the Dark Lord wants to kidnap him, but I honestly don't think it would have made any difference. He's too conceited to imagine that an idea of his might have a flaw, so he'd have gone right on with his meetings, and the result would've been the same. I'd wager even now Potter doesn't realize he forced Dumbledore out. If he thinks of it at all, which he probably doesn't, he probably believes that Dumbledore took the blame out of affection, because precious Harry Potter is so unique and lovable that the whole world must want to sacrifice themselves for his benefit. Just like his father. Just like Black. Now it's Potter against Umbridge, and I don't know which I'd prefer to have lose, since they both so deeply deserve it._

As it turned out, Potter told Umbridge nothing, though whether this was as a result of the false Veritaserum or not, Snape never learned. The day was full of surprises, most of which could be credited to Fred and George Weasley, and Umbridge was kept busy all day answering the desperate calls of teachers with firework dragons in their classrooms, none of whom seemed to be the slightest bit upset with either Fred or George.

A select group of Slytherin students had begun working for Umbridge, headed by Draco Malfoy and several other children of Death Eaters. Snape was reasonably sure that Lucius had approved the action, since it would help deflect attention from the work of their parents and keep Umbridge focused on Hogwarts as the center of her problems. The only headache for Snape in all of this was that one of his Chasers had vanished, and he had Slytherin students combing the castle for any trace of the boy.

Umbridge didn't seem to think the disappearance of a student was worth her notice, and refused to be of assistance.

By Wednesday, things seemed to have returned to a semblance of normality. Classes were conducted as usual, and it turned out that most of the fireworks had been used up in one day, so that there was no repeat of the previous day's chaos. The only thing that spoiled Snape's peace was the thought of occlumency lessons with Potter.

Snape hadn't seen Potter since Dumbledore's departure. Every time he thought of Potter, he became furious and ill at the same time. Part of it was the sheer arrogance of the boy, combined with a talent for committing stupid actions unparalleled in Snape's experience. _How could he not have realized that Umbridge would be watching him more closely than anyone? Wasn't it Potter's account of the return of the Dark Lord that had brought Umbridge to Hogwarts in the first place? Wasn't it Potter's interview that had suddenly upped the stakes? How could he disregard his own role in the events of the entire year!_

That was the furious part. The ill part was waiting for the mark to itch or burn, wondering how he would be able to depart Hogwarts unseen on either a scheduled or unscheduled trip to Croydon. And how he might return undetected. Dumbledore had been sheltered up in his office, but McGonagall's rooms were near Umbridge's, and Umbridge's wrath was now directed against McGonagall for withholding precisely the information that allowed Snape to enter and leave the grounds. _Which makes me feel like a paramecium on a glass slide under Umbridge's microscope._

Too tense to even go to supper, Snape waited for Potter in his dungeon offices. The time for the lesson came, but no Potter. Snape began to place the dangerous memories into the pensieve anyway. _Thank goodness Dumbledore allowed me to keep it down here instead of carrying it up to him every evening. If it had been in his office Monday, I'd have no way of hiding these._

The door opened. Snape recognized Potter's step without turning around. "You're late, Potter," he said, trying to keep his anger out of his voice. Then he turned to face the boy. "So. Have you been practicing?"

"Yes," answered Potter, in a blatant lie. The boy's own dislike was palpable.

"Well, we'll soon find out, won't we? Wand out, Potter." Snape was now making a serious effort to control his own feelings, the very sight of Potter rendering that discipline more difficult than usual. _Control yourself, Severus_. "On the count of three then. One… two…"

The office door was opened suddenly by an agitated Malfoy, whose shocked look told that the last thing he expected was to find Snape and Potter together, wands drawn. Snape lowered his own wand quickly and tucked it away. _Death Eater child and Inquisitorial Squad. That's all I need. To have both Umbridge and his father know that there is some special arrangement between Potter and me._

"Professor Snape, sir… oh… sorry," was all Malfoy managed to say.

"It's all right, Draco. Potter is here for a little Remedial Potions." It was the cover story already planned and used before, but Snape realized from Malfoy's gloating expression that Potter was going to be more than a little teased about it. He was unconcerned about Potter's feelings. Quite the contrary.

"I didn't know," was all Malfoy said.

"Well, Draco, what is it?"

"It's Professor Umbridge, sir… she needs your help. They've found Montague, sir. He's turned up jammed inside a toilet on the fourth floor."

"How did he get in there?" _And how did Umbridge get involved? I thought she didn't care about Montague._

"I don't know, sir, he's a bit confused…"

"Very well, very well…" Getting a student out of a toilet might take some time, presuming that Umbridge did not want the plumbing damaged. "Potter, we shall resume this lesson tomorrow evening instead."

Malfoy trailing behind, Snape hurried out of his office and up the stairs to the fourth floor boy's lavatory. He assumed that Potter had left the office at the same time.

It took longer than expected to extract Montague from his predicament since, from what they could glean from the dazed Montague himself, he had apparated into the toilet and was therefore wedged in as tightly as was possible. A series of enlarging (for the pipe) and shrinking (for Montague) spells eventually effected his release, and Snape helped get him downstairs to Madam Pomfrey before returning to his office.

Potter was still there. Potter was not only still there, he was deeply immersed in a pensieve memory, oblivious to the fact that Snape had reentered the room. Snape felt a moment of stunned shock as his mind registered that Potter had no scruples about violating another person's privacy, and then anger and panic began to surge in him as the full import of what was happening struck. The memories he'd worked so hard to conceal from the Dark Lord were now freely available for discovery and review, floating around in Potter's undisciplined mind, accessible by dream connection, waking intrusion, or face-to-face legilimency.

Edging nearer, Snape was able to see which memory Potter had found. It was the Levicorpus incident, with Lily standing bravely in front of the whole school, challenging James Potter in his defense. One glimpse of that memory and a decade and a half of concealment from the Dark Lord would be shattered.

Furious, Snape gripped Potter's arm and dragged him from the pensieve. "So," he hissed between clenched teeth, "been enjoying yourself, Potter?"

Potter struggled to release his arm from Snape's grip. "N-no…" he stammered, though whether from fear or shame was hard to tell.

_Not that this boy will ever feel shame. He has no concept of what that is, not Mr. Perfect Potter. Just like his father._ "Amusing man, your father, wasn't he?"

"I… didn't…"

Snape realized then that he was shaking Potter, and pushed the boy away from him. Potter staggered and fell to the floor. "You will not repeat what you saw to anybody!" Suddenly Snape saw a vision of students passing gossip through the different houses… and someone telling Draco… and Draco telling Lucius… and Lucius telling…

"No, no, of course I w…" Potter was saying, but Snape wasn't listening.

"Get out!" he screamed at the retreating Potter. "Get out! I don't want to see you in this office ever again!"

There was a jar in his hand, and Snape hurled it at the door, narrowly missing the boy, who was out into the corridor and racing toward the stairs and Gryffindor house. It didn't end there for Snape, though. Two more jars followed, shattering on the threshold, at which point some instinct of survival kicked in and the next spun a hundred thirty-five degrees and smashed into the back of the fireplace.

Two dozen beakers, flasks, cruets, vials, bottles, crocks, and other vessels were flung savagely against the hearthstones, until Snape finally collapsed exhausted next to his desk. It did no good. Ultimately nothing could do any good, for the danger was not within Snape's control. The danger was within Potter's control, and that was no control at all. All Snape could do was wait until the moment when Potter revealed his secrets to the Dark Lord, and then all the plotting and scheming would be over.

There was only one thing that might have helped at that moment, and that was to talk to Dumbledore, but Dumbledore wasn't there. Dumbledore was gone, perhaps forever, because of Potter. Potter with his total disregard for the rights, the interests, the needs of anyone but himself.

At that moment of blank despair, Snape hated Harry Potter with every fiber of his being.

Then the Easter break began, and the school emptied. Only the fifth and seventh years stayed in any numbers, studying madly for their OWL and NEWT exams.

On Saturday morning, Snape slid into the chair next to McGonagall and said in a more or less conversational manner, "Going anywhere during the holidays?" then dropped his voice and added, "I need out tonight."

"I hadn't thought about it. There's so much that needs to be looked after here. Timing, of course, is key. Do you have a particular time when you like to go?"

"Generally at the beginning of the break," Snape said, then bit off a piece of sausage, murmuring 'seven' at the same time. "But I usually come back early so I can spend the last week preparing for the third term." Another bite of sausage covered the word 'eleven.'

"Well this break you may have to forgo a vacation." McGonagall's voice dipped as she added 'done.' "We have a duty to ensure that our classes do not suffer from the turbulence of the events that surround them. This coming term in particular we must work hard to see that the standards of Hogwarts do not fall." – 'Be punctual,' was the last whispered exchange.

Snape snuck out of the castle at six thirty, just to be sure that nothing delayed him too much on his way to the gate. By ten to seven he was crouched behind the bushes that lined the path up the hill, waiting for the percussive snap in the air that said the shields were lowered. When that came, he slipped through the gate then, out of curiosity, waited to see how much time McGonagall gave him. The thrum of the closing spell shivered through him a bare five minutes later.

_That woman really believes in punctuality. I can't be late tonight, or she'll lock me out for the rest of the weekend._ It was not the most comforting thought as Snape apparated to Croydon.

Things had gotten to the point that Snape expected to be met at the entrance to headquarters and directed to the interview chamber. That the messenger was a lower-level operative was the good news. _Unless the Dark Lord is becoming more subtle in his management techniques._

Malfoy joined Snape in the basement corridor, and they went in together. The Dark Lord was direct and to the point. "Has Potter dreamed of entering farther into the Department of Mysteries?"

"I do not know, Lord. Potter does not discuss his dreams with me. The one he might have spoken with was Dumbledore, but now Dumbledore is gone from Hogwarts, that line of communication is closed."

There was silence, and then the Dark Lord spoke again. "The good news was not entirely to our benefit. Our plans would progress more swiftly if we were certain that the boy receives the images in their entirety when they are sent. When was it that the boy first knew he had entered and encountered the many doors?"

"The Wednesday before you reprimanded me for my slowness in reporting."

"You are sure."

"Yes, I am, Lord. I was near him when it happened and… he commented on it."

"And yet that was many days after the initial projection."

"Lord," interjected Malfoy, "perhaps all you must do is project the same image multiple times. He'll think it's a recurring dream. Slow certain steps will lead us to our goal more safely than quick, uncertain ones."

"You see, Potions master, Malfoy counsels caution while Bella Lestrange counsels precipitate action. What do you counsel?"

It wasn't a question Snape wanted to answer. He was more than content to have Lucius and Bella be the Dark Lord's advisors. Let them take the blame when something didn't work. He took a deep breath. "Make wise use of the time we have, Lord. Right now we are undetected and may operate at leisure. This is the time to move carefully and be sure that every step is successful. Later we may not have the luxury of abundant time. Then, we'll have to move quickly and take our chances."

"You have a talent for taking both sides, Potions master. This amuses me. Take care that you always do it for my sake, and not for your own."

"Yes, Lord. That is always my intent, Lord."

Malfoy and Snape left together, each heading for his own work area after they left the basement area.

Phina didn't come to the laboratory that evening, and Snape found that he missed her presence. He even worried a little that something might have happened to her. The rest of the evening was quiet and restful, however, until Snape left headquarters to apparate back to Hogwarts. That was when he was accosted by a ghostly image in the form of a phoenix. "The Order needs you tonight," it said in Dumbledore's voice, and then vanished.

_Wonderful. McGonagall will have the gates open in ten minutes and keep them open for five. What are the chances I can get back to Hogwarts before I'm locked out? And how do I explain that to Umbridge tomorrow morning? This had better be important._

Snape apparated at once to Grimmauld Place, where Lupin opened the door. "Dumbledore's already here," he said, "but this isn't a full meeting. Basically he wants to talk to you."

Dumbledore was in the kitchen talking to Black when Lupin and Snape walked in. Snape immediately stepped to one side, away from the table, and waited quietly. Black leaned back in his chair and regarded Snape thoughtfully, a small, wry smile on his lips.

After a moment, Dumbledore spoke. "I hope you will excuse me, Sirius, but I have asked Severus here because I need to confer with him for a moment. This was, unfortunately, the only convenient place as it is the only location available that is protected by a Fidelius Charm."

"I understand completely. Don't worry, Professor, I know that if you think something is necessary, then it probably is. I have no objection to your using the premises when you need them." He continued watching Snape, but didn't move.

"Oh dear," sighed Dumbledore, "I fear we have an awkward situation. Is there perhaps somewhere where I might speak privately with Severus?"

"Don't worry about disturbing me; the conversation won't bother me at all."

"I was thinking perhaps somewhere out of the general common areas…"

"So you're telling me to get lost in my own house."

"I would not have put it quite so harshly."

"There's no sense offering you refreshments, is there?"

"That won't be necessary."

Black rose and sauntered out of the kitchen, Lupin accompanying him. Dumbledore gestured toward the empty chair. "Please sit down, Severus. I need to ask you about Hogwarts, and especially about Harry."

Snape sat down where Dumbledore indicated. Three days earlier he'd wanted to discuss this with Dumbledore. Now he wasn't sure.

"Umbridge first," Dumbledore prompted.

"She's officially headmistress now. Decree Twenty-eight. She has two major opponents: McGonagall – who won't give her the security codes to the grounds, and your office – which won't let her in. Both students and teachers are giving her a hard time, the students playing practical jokes, and the teachers holding an Italian postal strike."

Dumbledore had started chuckling at the mention of McGonagall's name. Now he laughed out loud. "You are going to have to explain that one to me, Severus. None of our teachers is Italian."

"The government workers of many countries are forbidden by law to strike. When the employees of the Italian postal service failed to negotiate what they considered a decent contract, which included updating their job descriptions, they began actually enforcing every postal law and regulation still on the books. Postal service ground to a halt in a matter of days since no one had ever bothered to revoke hundred-year-old regulations. Needless to say, they won."

"So my staff is doing only what Umbridge says they can do, and making her do all the rest?"

"That's it in a nutshell."

"And how is McGonagall holding up? And Hagrid? And Trelawney?"

"McGonagall loves a fight. She'll circle the wagons and…" Snape stopped at Dumbledore's quizzical look, then elaborated. "American slang. A reference to pioneer wagon trains when attacked by hostile Indians. You really do need to become familiar with other cultures, sir. Well, she'll dig trenches and settle in for the long war. Hagrid… I don't know what's happening with Hagrid. It's like he's beating himself up. I can't think of anything else that could cause such extensive damage. But you knew that already. It hasn't changed. Trelawney hides in her tower. She's safe. Umbridge has forgotten she exists."

"And Harry."

"Has still not learned occlumency."

"There. Something has happened. Tell me about it."

Snape looked at his hands, then at the table, the walls, the ceiling… everywhere but at Dumbledore. "There's been an incident. Do you recall you offered me the use of your pensieve?"

"Potter looked in it and saw one of your memories? That was an inappropriate action."

"No. It isn't just that. When it comes to that, I shouldn't have trusted in Potter's sense of decency. I should have made him step out of my office first and then locked the door on him. That was my own naïveté, my own stupidity. But the Dark Lord is actively trying to influence his dreams, is actively in contact with his brain every day. Not only that, I learned only after you 'left' that the Dark Lord has been able to look through Potter's eyes while Potter is awake. He saw you that day and knew you were angry about something. I don't care what Macnair thinks, I don't want to be tortured. I don't want to die. I have to stay out of Potter's surface thoughts and below the Dark Lord's radar. I told Potter never to come to my office again."

"I am deeply disturbed to hear that, Severus. It is vitally important that the boy learns to block Riddle's access to his mind. You really must resume the lessons. It is imperative."

"Do you mean that Potter's ability to use occlumency is more important than my life… than whatever the Dark Lord will do to me between now and the day I die? If you can look me in the eyes and tell me that is so, then I'll resume the lessons."

"You trust me that much?"

"I do."

"'If you can look into the seeds of time, and say which grain will grow and which will not, speak then unto me.' The problem is, I do not know which of my three boys will blossom in importance and become the chief player in this drama."

"Three boys?"

"Yes. Tom, Dick, and Harry." At the sight of Snape's raised eyebrows, Dumbledore smiled. "We do have your full name in our files, you know, though you might prefer 'Tom, Russ, and Harry.' Still, there are three, and I do not yet know which is the most important of them."

"So are you saying I shouldn't resume the lessons?"

"I am saying that I do not wish to lock you into a position that you feel you cannot escape from should the need arise."

"That's just a fancy way of saying you don't want to be responsible for the consequences of a decision you make."

"I suppose, in a way, that is a fair comment."

The two sat quietly for some minutes as Snape debated whether this was an appropriate time to bring up another matter that he'd been considering for some months.

"Sir, may I ask you a question? It is related to the matter at hand."

"That has a portentous sound. Very well, yes, you may."

"Whose idea and whose decision was it to make Peter Pettigrew the Secret Keeper for the house in Godric's Hollow?"

Dumbledore's surprise at this question was revealed only by the length of time it took him to respond. "The decision was James's."

"Only James's?"

"I believe so. Yes."

"Not Lily's. And whose idea was it?"

"I don't believe I should answer that question."

"That answers it. The person is still alive. That means it was Sirius Black's idea. Black tried to weasel out of a dangerous position by giving it to someone even weaker. Sterling character, that one."

"It was true that Sirius would have been suspected at once. There was some merit to the idea of giving the position to someone no one would suspect."

"Really? I'd say any one of the three friends would have been suspect. Why not go back to the original idea of making you the Secret Keeper? Even better, why not make James or Lily the Secret Keeper? Then the Secret Keeper would always be in the place protected by the charm."

"I cannot answer your question. I did not become aware of the switch until two years ago. What does this have to do with Harry's occlumency lessons?"

"I think James's arrogance killed Lily. I think he was so convinced that his own plans were flawless that he never made provisions for unexpected contingencies. I think he honestly believed that his foolhardiness and emotional intensity were more than a match for simple mind games, but that his own undisciplined mind was pouring out to the Dark Lord the exact location of his wife and child even as he died trying to protect them. I think that Potter is just like his father, and he will betray every one of his friends and colleagues to their dooms, never abandoning, even at the moment of his own death, the belief that he must have chosen the right path because his motives were sincere. I don't want to be one of the sacrificial victims."

"So you blame James for Lily's death."

"Among others."

"Am I on your list of suspects?"

"I don't believe I should answer that question."

"Ah. Now I must bring the conversation back to its beginning. Do you think it possible for you to resume Potter's occlumency lessons?"

"No. Enough damage has been done. My person and my position have already been placed in jeopardy, and I don't wish to make the odds any worse. It might be different if you could guarantee to me that Potter is essential while I am expendable, but you can't or won't do that. So far as I can tell, we have a stalemate."


	54. Chapter 54 – Wheels of Fortune

**Yes. That Is My Job: Wheels of Fortune**

Dumbledore sighed. "I am, of course, disappointed that you have reached this decision, but I shall respect it."

"It isn't as if you have much choice. What about the others? Potter has lethal information on them, too. Shouldn't they be warned?"

"Would it do any good? Is our cause served by making people unnecessarily cautious?"

"I'll remember you said that in case anyone asks. Now, how am I to get back to Hogwarts?"

Dumbledore sent a patronus to McGonagall, and Snape found the gate open on his arrival. He made his way wearily to his own room and sank onto the bed, not even bothering to undress. His conversation with Dumbledore had left him intensely depressed

_He has no idea what it's like to go to Croydon every week not knowing if I'm going to return. And he doesn't care. Last year, when I asked him to cast the Cruciatus Curse, I'm sure he was more concerned about his having to cause pain than about my having to feel it. If he thought it was necessary, would he throw me to the wolves? In a heartbeat. Would he throw Potter to the wolves... a totally different question. Am I jealous of Potter?_

It was a new idea, and one Snape didn't like. Did he, in fact, resent Potter's position in Dumbledore's regard? _Has Jacob stolen Isaac's blessing, and am I Esau? Am I angry because Dumbledore never kills the fatted calf for me, but welcomes prodigal Potter with open arms?_

Yet the Easter break seemed to pass without incident, and midway Snape made another routine visit to Croydon.

"Long time, no see," stage-whispered Phina as she vamped in the laboratory doorway.

"I was here last week."

"True, but I wasn't. The Wheel of Fortune sent Lucius up and Bella down, so you and I had to suffer. Did you suffer the lack of me? Really suffer?"

"Maybe. Is there a reward for saying 'yes?'"

"I thought tonight we might go somewhere of my choosing."

"Am I going to be mugged and left bleeding by the side of the road?"

"Actually, it's been a while since I've seduced anyone, and I'm a little rusty. I was hoping to get in a little training time."

"Where were you thinking of going?"

"I sublet a little flat in the West End. It's cozy. We'd have to apparate together, of course."

"Let me finish these potions. It'll take about half an hour."

It took forty-five minutes, and then Phina clasped Snape to apparate to a flat that was the entire third floor of a nineteenth century town house. Snape took in Phina's version of Art Deco decor as she lowered the lights, put on some mood music, and opened a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc.

Handing him a glass of the wine, Phina pulled Snape down onto a cherry-red loveseat with rounded back and arms. "Kiss me, dahling," she intoned in a neoclassical '30s drawl, and encircled his neck with her arms, still holding the wineglass.

Trying not to laugh, Snape did as he was told, and the first touch of their lips reminded him why he enjoyed her company so much. He managed to deftly remove the glass from her hand, and they kissed lingeringly, lost in the moment of intimacy. All was going excellently until Phina destroyed the night with four words.

Looking up at Snape with wide eyes, she asked, "Do you love me?"

Snape pushed himself to a sitting position on the edge of the loveseat. "What do you want?" he asked.

Phina stared at him. "I thought that was obvious."

"People who ask that question do so because they want something."

"Well about a hundred years ago I wanted you. Now I'm not so sure." Snape didn't look at her, and a moment later she added, "I guess the answer was 'no.' If you're not opposed to talking, I could make some coffee."

Phina got up and went to the kitchen where she ran water into an hourglass-shaped espresso maker and lit the stove. Snape followed her as far as the kitchen door. She looked over as he watched her. "Coffee only comes with conversation. No conversation, no coffee, you go back to wherever you want to go back to. _Capisci_?"

"I understand."

Mutual silence accentuated the bubbling of the coffee maker, then Phina poured two demitasses and they sat facing each other across the kitchen table. "So," she challenged, "is it the fact that I'm ugly and repulsive?"

"No! Gad, if there's anyone neither ugly nor repulsive, it's you. It's just that this was all going so… well, so… , and then you had to make it personal."

"It has a tendency to be personal. Sort of the nature of the beast."

"I don't mean… I mean – you were doing a job, and I was playing along, and it was… uncomplicated… lighthearted even… and we didn't have to think about… I don't even believe… Drat! I had this conversation just a few weeks ago."

"Really? With whom?"

"Dumbledore."

Phina locked her mouth shut and looked for a moment as if she was about to explode. Then she burst out laughing. "You and Albus Dumbledore! I can't even picture it – if I tried, I'd just die! Which of you…"

"I didn't mean that! You know perfectly well I didn't mean that! For crying out loud, Phina, stop laughing. I'm walking out now. You can just tell Bella you failed miserably and I don't care what excuse you give…"

"No… no…" she gasped, waving him back into the chair. "I'm sorry. You took me by surprise. I didn't… I don't… Oh, Lord!" When the giggling fit calmed down, Phina took a deep breath, placed both hands squarely on the table, and looked Snape in the eye. "I take it this was a philosophical discussion."

"Well, yes. Of course." Then Snape began to chuckle, too. "The problem is… Well, Dumbledore knows about you – not you specifically, but a… a woman. He could sense a presence in my life, and he asked if I loved… you. I have to tell you honestly, I don't believe there is such a thing. I think part of the population uses the word in order to manipulate another part of the population. 'Love' is a con game."

"You've never loved anyone?"

"Don't use that tone of voice. I've felt affection for people, and I've been jealous, and I've felt…" Snape paused, not used to any kind of admission of emotions. He knew he was blushing, and he knew that Phina could read this part of him like a book.

"Now we come to the heart of the matter. Semantics!"

"It isn't that simple!"

"Of course it is! You're afraid of the word 'love.' You're willing to admit to anything else, just not the L word. Well come on, Cursemaster! I hate you, I loathe you, I abominate you. Let's just have fun!"

The incredible thing was that Snape still wanted to debate the issue, but Phina was having none of it. She seized his wrist, dragged him out of the chair, and pulled him into an embrace. It was a couple of hours before Snape even began to wonder what time it was.

The time window was a narrow one, and Snape didn't make it. At 11:06 he arrived in Hogsmeade. Barred from the grounds, he was forced to send a patronus. At 11:08 he walked through the gate. McGonagall had ample reason to complain now. Complaining was, however, not the only thing on McGonagall's mind.

Only moments after arriving in his office, Snape answered a knock at his door. It was McGonagall in nightgown, tartan plaid robe, and hair net. "Who is she?" McGonagall demanded.

"Minerva, do you really think this is the time to…"

"Don't you dare try to wriggle out of this one! That patronus was practically… well, it was. There's not much will affect a patronus like that, and so I'm asking. Who is she?"

"Mata Hari."

"Not the slightest bit funny, young man. If you are jeopardizing the lives and safety of colleagues of mine for purely personal reasons, I'll…"

The accusation stung deeply. "No, no there's no one in danger. It isn't like that."

"You're dancing attendance on a Death Eater. You'll explain to me what it's like."

"She's just…"

"Well?"

"She's Bellatrix Lestrange's cousin, and… well… she's…"

"Assigned to lead you by the nose and diddle you into spilling everything you know about all of us."

"No! It has nothing to do with you."

"How do you know?"

"She's… well… she's…"

"You've said that before, laddie. Now explain to me why I shouldna be worrit."

"She doesn't really want to do what Bella tells her to. She's more independent, more…"

"And that's what she told you. How do ye know she's telling the truth?"

And there it was. Snape didn't know. He had no idea at all what Phina did when they weren't together, what she divulged to Bella, whether or not she was playing the same game with different men several times a week. Was he giving Phina secrets of the Order? He didn't think they'd ever discussed the Order when they were together, but what did they talk about? Snape wasn't sure. And therefore it might have been the Order.

"Minerva, I'm sorry. I've been… how do I explain?"

"Ye've been traipsing after a skirt, that's what ye've been doing. And at any other time I'd be saying good on ye. But now's no' the time, and this girl's no' the one. Does Dumbledore know?"

"Yes. He asked me if I loved her."

"Well, do ye?"

"I don't accept the concept. There's no such thing."

"'T is a good sign that in the throes of passion ye can still debate a philosophical point. She's no' got her claws into ye so far as ye cannit get out. Ye stay away from that girl, Severus. She's no good for you. And she's no good for me and the others either. Ye need to think of someone besides yourself from time to time."

McGonagall returned to her rooms, and Snape to his bed, but not to sleep. What McGonagall had said revolved in his mind endlessly all that night, as he weighed the relative merits of trusting someone like Phina.

There was no doubt that McGonagall was upset; she would never have reverted to a burr otherwise_. Can't she understand that I know Phina well enough to know that she wouldn't betray me? I've known her for months. She came to me for defense training. _Snape recalled the first lesson in the training room… but that wasn't right – the first time he'd seen her was with Bella. Being introduced by Bella… _But Bella didn't escape from Azkaban until January, so that was only the beginning of February, just over two month's ago! Have I only known Phina for two months?_

It was a distressing thought, for seeing Phina was fast becoming the most important thing about Croydon. Snape forced himself to reconstruct the relationship, but sometimes the sequence of events was fuzzy. I took her to the theater, then to dinner… no, she asked me to take her to dinner… was that before or after Bella caught us together? Slowly – slowly because he really didn't want to see it – slowly a pattern emerged.

_Whenever Bella hits a low point with the Dark Lord, Phina disappears for a week. Then when she comes back, the stakes get higher, the meetings become more intimate. It's as if every time Bella is insecure, Phina takes greater measures to move me into Bella's camp. Was she following orders tonight?_

But McGonagall was wrong if she thought Phina's goal was to learn about the Order. Phina was there because of Bella's rivalry with Malfoy. It was a purely internal matter, nothing to affect Hogwarts or Grimmauld Place at all. _Everyone at Croydon knows I spy for the Dark Lord at Hogwarts, yet Phina has never once asked about it._

Could that possibility arise? _What did we talk about tonight?_ Snape had to admit he didn't remember. Not that there was all that much talking. _Could I lower my guard and say something without realizing it? If that could happen, then McGonagall's right. I would be putting the others in danger._

The last week of Easter break went smoothly and quietly. There were no disruptions to spark Umbridge's anger, diligent students sought out professors for help studying for their OWL and NEWT exams, and Snape never once asked McGonagall for special permission to leave in the middle of the week, so by Wednesday she was speaking to him again.

"That woman is hinting that she'd like to observe all of my classes, as she did with Trelawney. Can you imagine the nerve of the creature! Has she nothing to do as headmistress that she can waste time with such tripe?"

"I take it you still haven't given her the 'keys' to the castle."

"And let her control all our comings and our goings? You'd better hope I don't laddie, or you're going to be between a rock and a hard place."

"Are you going to let her observe you?"

"If it comes to that, I have no choice. But she's making a major tactical error."

"Which is?"

"You're supposed to be clever. You figure it out."

Snape thought for a moment. "She's trying to pressure you into giving her the spells. But if you do, then she can dismiss you any time she likes. As long as you keep the spells secret, she has to keep you here at Hogwarts. She's treating you like she treated Trelawney before she sacked her, thereby encouraging you to withhold what she wants."

"There. You are clever. The problem is that the woman has no subtlety."

"Good thing for us."

Saturday came, the last free day before the returning students raised havoc in the Hall and classes resumed on Monday. Snape ate supper as usual and then made his routine trip to Croydon.

Phina was in the laboratory almost as soon as Snape arrived, sidling close and beginning to tease him with her fingers. Since Snape was trying to measure out the ingredients for a metal-dissolving potion and was about to pour acid, this was decidedly not the time.

"Stop that!" he snapped at her. "You shouldn't be here bothering me."

"Did you hear that, young lady?" drawled a voice from the doorway. "You shouldn't be here bothering him."

Phina stepped away quickly as Malfoy walked into the lab.

Phina stomped out of the laboratory, not attempting to hide her disappointment. Malfoy stepped aside to allow her to pass.

"You'd better watch out for that one," he said calmly to Snape. "She's a man-eater."

"Bella set her on me."

"She's trotted out the big guns, then. Miss Vaughn only hunts serious game."

"Do you know her?"

Malfoy smirked. "Well, I don't exactly 'know' her, if you take my meaning. She didn't frequent headquarters until Bella returned. The family depends on her more in financial deals and bla… persuasion."

"I see. I'll be careful. Was there something you wanted to discuss?"

"Just to inquire if you had any opportunity to observe Potter and find out if he's responding to the Dark Lord's projections."

"No, I haven't. Most of the students have been studying for exams and generally locking themselves in their houses. Not to complain or anything, but Draco is part of the problem."

"Really? How so?"

"The Inquisitorial Squad is a masterful idea – it has totally hoodwinked Umbridge – but the squad members are sometimes over enthusiastic. The students of the other houses, especially Gryffindor, tend to stay away from the common areas where they might be observed."

"I hadn't thought of that. I'll send word to Draco."

"Would it be appropriate to tell me if the Dark Lord has made further progress? If not…"

"Not a problem. He has, in fact, been able to catch more glimpses of things through Potter's eyes. This happens most often if Potter's upset about something. He seems, for example, to be having some disagreements with his friends. The Dark Lord would be interested in learning more details about this, which is the main reason I've come to talk to you. He still can't hear what's said, and he has no access to Potter's mind yet outside the direct visual connection. He was rather hoping you could provide context to help him expand the connection. It may prove to be as valuable as the dream link."

"Tell the Dark Lord I am ready to do as he wishes. I'll note down anything I observe."

"I know you have the Dark Lord's best interests at heart." Malfoy left the lab then, turning at the door to say, "Watch out for that girl."

Phina didn't return that night, Malfoy's attention having rendered any contact dangerous, thereby giving Snape time and opportunity to ponder their relationship and her motivation. He finished his work and apparated to Hogsmeade at precisely 11:00, presenting McGonagall with no reason to complain.

The next morning Snape and McGonagall spoke over breakfast.

"Was all calm in the south?"

"Dead and dull. Nothing to not report home to mother about."

"I'm pleased to hear it. I sympathize if this puts a damper on your social life."

"Unavoidable. You did give me a lot to think about."

"There's a good boy."

Later Snape tried to analyze why he was reluctant to tell McGonagall about the Dark Lord's attempts to see through Potter's eyes. His justification was that Dumbledore already knew. And there was also the chance that knowing would cause McGonagall to alter her behavior, thus making the Dark Lord suspicious. Snape rather thought, however, that the real reason was that he didn't want to confide in anyone but Dumbledore. Then he'll remember that I'm important, too.

Monday was the first day that Snape would come into contact with Potter since he'd pulled the boy out of the pensieve. _Who has he told? How many Gryffindors have been regaled with the image of me suspended upside down by Potter's father?_ It was a whole different problem from that of the Dark Lord seeing Lily.

It was also a whole different problem from the possibility of the Dark Lord watching him through Potter's eyes. _I don't want Potter to think about me more than he has to. Below the radar…_ During Monday morning potions, Snape acted as if Potter didn't exist. Potter did the same regarding Snape. Everything was going smoothly until Potter brought a sample of his potion to Snape's desk for evaluation.

Snape wasn't sure what it was – James arrogant grin and air of superiority or Sirius's strut and defiant tilt of the head – but Potter deposited the flask of potion on his desk, then turned away, and without conscious thought Snape's hand brushed forward and the flask lay broken on the floor. At the sound of shattered glass, Potter spun around.

"Whoops. Another zero, then, Potter," Snape said quietly. Off to one side he could hear Draco Malfoy laughing at Potter's discomfiture. The icing on the cake was that Granger, in an effort to be helpful, had cleaned out Potter's cauldron, and Potter had no more potion to turn in for the assignment. It was a satisfying moment.

As the afternoon wore on, however, the memory of the incident became less and less satisfying. _Childish! Foolhardy! Malfoy told me that the Dark Lord can see through Potter more easily if he's angry or upset. So what do I do? I make him angry. And why do I take the chance of both Potter and the Dark Lord focusing on me? A petty impulse. Severus, you're an idiot._

Monday afternoon double Potions had just ended, and Snape was beginning to set the room up for the following morning, when there was a sudden commotion in the corridor. Slytherin students were running for the entrance hall, and the air was charged with excitement. Wishing he had the same instinct for a fight or a prank that a fourteen-year-old had, Snape quickly locked the classroom door and joined the crowd.

Students were streaming down the stairs, some holding their noses or gagging, some trying to wipe slime off their clothes or out of their hair, others just moving with the flow of bodies. In their midst, pushing to get ahead before the entrance hall became too crowded with Hufflepuff and Slytherin students pouring out from their respective dungeons, were Fred and George Weasley.

_Aha! We know who's in the center of whatever the problem is!_

Fred and George didn't make it. Their path to the great doors and freedom was blocked by both students and teachers, some of whom had come from the Great Hall where supper was almost ready. The wall of bodies forced the two pranksters to turn at bay in the center of a ring of students, professors, and ghosts, Peeves hovering protectively above them. Umbridge, too, came charging down from the upper floors, out of breath but menacing.

"So!" crowed Umbridge at realizing the twins were trapped. "So… you think it amusing to turn a school corridor into a swamp, do you?"

Snape looked over at Fred and George in shocked admiration. He himself had cast some inventive curses, hexes, and jinxes in his day, but a swamp inside a building was a stroke of genius. Ordinarily he would be incensed at the rule breaking. Seeing as it was Umbridge's problem, however, he decided to keep his mouth shut and enjoy the scene.

Filch pushed his way down from the second floor, Potter right behind him, croaking something about approval for whipping. Umbridge gloated. "You two are about to learn what happens to wrongdoers in my school."

The Weasleys defied her, defied her in front of everyone, then raised their wands and cried in unison, _"Accio Brooms!_" The crash that echoed down the staircase reminded Snape that Umbridge had confiscated the broomsticks, but that made no difference. The brooms were loose and joining Fred and George.

Mounting the brooms, the twins informed the whole crowd that they were leaving Hogwarts and setting up a joke shop. "Special discounts to Hogwarts students who swear they're going to use our products to get rid of this old bat!"

As Umbridge screamed "STOP THEM!" the pair rose above the crowd. "Give her hell from us, Peeves!" was their parting shot, then returning the poltergeist's salute, they were gone.

The students were jumping up and down and cheering. Umbridge was livid and apoplectic. Snape was watching McGonagall, who was moving her lips silently. Fred and George Weasley were escaping from Hogwarts, and McGonagall had just opened the defenses to set them free.

It took an hour and a half to get the majority of the students into the Great Hall and settled for supper. As Snape was setting the Inquisitorial Squad to round up Slytherin students first, the mark on his arm began to itch. _Not now. Please not now. She'll be watching all of us like a hawk._ The summons didn't increase in intensity, however, so Snape was able to plan his departure.

"He sends for you quite a bit, doesn't he?" was McGonagall's comment when Snape made the request.

"This is the first non-routine trip since Dumbledore left, and that one was on my initiative."

"Well, if you weren't working for us, I'd be keeping a record of when he had these little crises. It might show a pattern."

"May I tell him you said so?"

"Will you make me sound fierce and menacing?"

"Like a tigress."

"There's a sweet lad. Leave at 10:45. Back at 11:30. Don't be late."

"But that's hardly enough time if he wants me to do something special."

"Tell him I'm getting suspicious."

xxxxxxxxxx

"You like to live dangerously," whispered Malfoy as he joined Snape in the interview room. "He isn't pleased about the delay."

"You did remind him that things aren't quite 'normal' at Hogwarts, right?"

The Dark Lord appeared. "You did not come when we summoned."

"Lord, forgive me, but the school was in an uproar, and departure wasn't possible."

"Tell us."

"Two students, children of Arthur Weasley, changed a wing of the fifth floor into a swamp, defied Umbridge in front of the whole school, destroyed her office door in order to retrieve their brooms, and fled Hogwarts. The school has not yet quieted down."

"How is it these children were able to escape, and you are not?"

Snape opened his mouth, closed it again, and swallowed. "They had the connivance of Professor McGonagall."

"We would not have expected it of her. You get no such cooperation."

"She is looking for patterns in my trips here. She wishes to link the times you summon me to identifiable events. Tonight I told her that I needed something from my home in Lancashire. She gave me half an hour, but I managed to persuade her to increase it to forty-five minutes."

"You did well. We do not wish her to become too suspicious. Now, tell us what Potter was doing at about four-thirty this afternoon."

"I don't know. No, wait. He was watching the disturbance caused by the Weasleys."

"You are sure that was all?"

"No, Lord. I was not near him. I saw him on the stairs just before the Weasleys left the school."

"Perhaps you can explain why at about that time I saw him in conversation with Sirius Black. It appeared to be a floo-powder connection."

"No, Lord, I can't." Pain nudged him then, and Snape searched the memory for a clue. "He was on the second floor. That's where Umbridge's office is. Maybe he…"

"Why her office and not some other hearth?"

"Hers is the only one not monitored by the Ministry. That was revealed when Fudge came to arrest Dumbledore, and McGonagall told the rest of us."

"So Potter took advantage of the disruption. Lucius, it would appear that your information was quite correct concerning Potter's ties. Unable to confide in Dumbledore, he turned to Sirius Black."

xxxxxxxxxx

In a normal year, the school would settle down after the Easter break, fifth and seventh year students now studying frantically for their OWL and NEWT tests, and the rest almost equally concerned about exams. This was, however, no normal year. The example of Fred and George had touched off an epidemic of dungbombs and stinksap so fierce that students were walking through the upper corridors with bubble charms protecting their heads. Never before had Snape been so grateful that his rooms were in the dungeons.

The worst hit of all was Umbridge. In addition to having to deal with the pranks, she could not get rid of the swamp in the fifth floor corridor, and neither Flitwick nor McGonagall would admit to being able to do so. Snape was relieved that he wasn't asked. Somehow a large number of the employees of the Ministry seemed to think that Professors were as compartmentalized as their subjects, and never suspected a Potions teacher of being an expert spell caster as well.

The next weekend was the last in April, and Snape once again apparated into Croydon. He was taken directly to the Dark Lord where Malfoy and Bella were already in conference. The air seemed charged, and Bella looked murderous.

"Stand before us, Severus," said the Dark Lord. "We wish you to reach into your memory once more for the benefit of these two servants."

Snape relaxed at the speaking of his name, a clear indication that whatever was happening, the Dark Lord was not angry with him. "Yes, Lord," he replied.

"Speak again the words of the prophecy which you overheard."

Ignoring the intake of Bella's breath, Snape recited, "The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches… Born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies…"

"Is this the whole prophecy?"

"No, Lord. The speaker was in a room on the other side of a door. I was interrupted and pulled away from the door, and so did not hear the entire prophecy."

"Who was in the room?"

"Professor Dumbledore and Professor Trelawney."

The Dark Lord's red eyes turned to fix on Bella. "You will speak again your advice to us."

"It's too dangerous to try to penetrate the Department of Mysteries. If our people are discovered, our secrecy is compromised. And in any case, only three people can take the sphere. I say we send our operatives against those who heard it and force the information from them."

"Severus?"

"We're speaking of three people who heard the prophecy. I'm one, but I didn't hear the whole thing. Another is Trelawney, but she remembers nothing of it, and in any case won't leave Hogwarts, and we can't enter to pull her out. The only other is Dumbledore, and I doubt he could be taken without exposing our whole operation, and even if it were possible, he could not be forced to talk."

"Do you see, Bella? Severus shares Lucius's view of this matter." The Dark Lord now turned to Malfoy. "You will speak again your advice to us."

"Entering the Department of Mysteries requires more patience and better preparation, but in the long run it is safer and less liable to be detected. Since the prophecy concerns Potter, he could be induced to enter the Department and take it. We could then take it from him."

"Severus?"

"It is the same problem as with Trelawney. Potter cannot leave, and we cannot get in."

"You can get in."

"Only with the permission of the headmaster or deputy headmistress. And I could not get out again without the same permission."

"Lord," said Malfoy, "my son Draco has told me there is another way to get Potter out."

Puzzled, Snape turned to stare at Malfoy, not understanding what he was talking about. "No, Severus," said the Dark Lord, "look at me now."

Eye contact firmly established with the Dark Lord, Snape listened as Malfoy explained. He knew he was being tested, and let some of his nervousness show.

"Two years ago, there was an incident in Hogsmeade. Potter didn't have permission from his guardians to go into the town, but he managed to make it anyway using some kind of invisibility charm. He attacked Draco. Draco knew it was Potter, however, because he saw Potter's head. He reported this to Professor Snape."

At Malfoy's first sentence, Snape remembered the incident and himself chastising Potter for taking chances with his life at a time when Sirius Black was loose. He allowed this memory to surface as he listened, letting the Dark Lord see it in its entirety before Malfoy finished.

"So, Lucius, it appears that once again your information is correct."

"Lord," Malfoy continued, "I again advise that we continue with the dream contacts, trying to make Potter desire to find what's in the Department of Mysteries. If that continues to be unsuccessful, we've lost nothing except a small amount of time. Then we can try to lure him out by other means."

"What other means, Lord?" asked Bella.

"Lucius has received information from a source that we do not wish known that the person most precious to Potter is your cousin, Sirius Black. We shall use this cousin of yours as bait."

"How do we find him, Lord? Sirius has been in hiding since he escaped from Azkaban."

"Tell Bella and Lucius, Severus. For whom does Sirius work now?"

"For Dumbledore."

"And where can he be found?"

"Lord, you know I can't say. I can't even think it."

"Forgive me, Lord, but if we can't get our hands on Sirius, what good is Lucius's plan to us?" Bella was sneering at Lucius in ill-hidden triumph.

Malfoy broke in. "Even without his person, we can still project an image. The image may be enough."

"Lord," cried Bella. "What if I can bring you the person of Sirius Black? Wouldn't that be better?"

"Then, Bellatrix, you would be most dear to us."

The session with the Dark Lord was a long one, though for most of the time Bella and Malfoy argued the same points again and again while Snape kept quiet. By the time they were released it was clear that the Dark Lord supported Malfoy. It was also clear that both Bella and Malfoy were upset that Snape hadn't taken sides more strongly, and that both believed he could be persuaded to.

Malfoy was first, as he walked with Snape up to the laboratory. "Thank you for agreeing with me that Bella's plan was foolish."

"I wasn't agreeing with you. I was stating my own opinion. It happened to coincide."

"Thank you, anyway. Bella can get a little crazy sometimes. She seems to think kidnapping and torturing half of England can be done without calling attention to ourselves. I keep advocating a more subtle approach, but Bella keeps insisting that her way is quicker."

"I'm the slow but steady type myself. But that's also a coincidence."

After Malfoy left, Bella arrived.

"You didn't play nicely this evening, puppy dog. Mommy's not happy."

"We've had this conversation before. I have one master here."

"And you want to serve that master to your best ability. So you should see that my way is best."

"Your way has a tendency to be reckless. Sometimes you go too far and your efforts become counterproductive."

"When has that happened. Name one occasion."

"The Longbottoms."

"That's ancient history. How about something more recent?"

"There isn't anything more recent. You've been out of Azkaban for less than four months, and you've been kept on a tight leash. It isn't like you've had the opportunity to get into a lot of trouble."

"You don't trust me, do you, puppy dog? After all I've done for you."

"Believe me, I remember everything you ever did for me. Or to me."

"And it will keep getting better. Phina sends her love."

"Now you're lying."

Bella pouted, then left, her eyes cold and calculating, leaving Snape with the feeling that she would like to see him on a platter with an apple in his mouth. _Steady, Severus. Stay on her good side. You don't want her for an enemy if her star starts to rise._

Phina didn't come that evening, though Snape hadn't really expected her to. He wasn't worried. If the pattern held true, the next weekend would be a very pleasant one. Right now he wanted some time to himself to decide how best to impart all this new information to Dumbledore.

At breakfast the next morning, Snape passed McGonagall on the way to his own seat, whispering as he did so, "I need to talk to Dumbledore." McGonagall replied at the end of breakfast, walking openly to Snape's chair.

"I have a job for you, Professor."

"On a Sunday?" Snape asked, pretending to be offended.

"There's a shipment of _Bombyx mori_ corpses due in today at Hogsmeade. The shipper can't guarantee the exact time since they're coming in from China. You ordered them, you receive them. Sometime between one and four o'clock this afternoon."

"But Professor! I have work…"

"You ordered them, you be there to receive them."

Umbridge scurried over a moment later. "_Bombyx mori_," she asked, "what's that?"

"Silkworms. They boil the cocoons to use the threads for silk. The boiled larvae are used in potions."

"Oh. I guess you have to be there."

"Of course. And I was going to use the afternoon for reviewing student files. Of all the rotten luck."

xxxxxxxxxx

"They're talking about kidnapping Black to lure Potter to the Department of Mysteries. I think you should tell Potter."

"Who will tell him? You? He would never believe you." Dumbledore peered at Snape over the top of his glasses. "None of the rest of us can enter Hogwarts."

"McGonagall can tell him."

"Let me be more explicit. I do not think it is wise to let Potter know. We know that he has not yet learned occlumency. We know that you, for whatever reason, will not instruct him further, though even that might not affect the outcome. We must suspect that soon, if not already, Riddle will access Potter's mind and learn these things from him. Potter must be kept in ignorance for all our sakes. I shall alert Sirius and the others. Going into Grimmauld Place may become dangerous for a few weeks."

After his conversation with Dumbledore, Snape also alerted the Inquisitorial Squad to keep their eyes on Potter's comings and goings. One could never be too sure.

The next Saturday was the first in May. It was important for two reasons, first because Snape expected to see Phina again, but earlier and also important, because Slytherin was playing its last Quidditch match of the season against Hufflepuff.

Since the beginning of April, the Slytherin team had been searching for substitutes. First Montague was put out of action by the toilet thing – an incident that left him confused for weeks – then Warrington broke out in hives that resembled breakfast flakes. The other team members were scrambling for replacements.

In the end it was close. Hufflepuff won by only a few points, and Snape cheerfully paid off his bet to Sprout. Only one game was left, Ravenclaw v. Gryffindor, and Slytherin still had a chance to win the cup.

And then there was Croydon. It was Saturday, it was May first, and Snape was looking forward to Phina walking into his laboratory. She did not disappoint.

"Hi there, short dark and sexy. Long time no see."

"And where have you been?"

"You mean we still have illusions? Let me dispel them. Last week you were radioactive. The Malfoy isotope has a half-life of…"

"You're not supposed to understand any of that."

"Because I work for Bella, I'm supposed to be stupid?"

They apparated to Phina's flat in the West End. Once again she opened and poured a bottle of wine. Once again she pulled Snape to her as they played the little kissing game. This time Snape, with the wisdom that comes of no longer being a novice, was able to anticipate some of her moves.

This time, however, the fact that Phina was out for big game could not be lost on anyone. To say that the first encounters of the evening were highly satisfactory was an understatement.

"I have to be back at Hogwarts before eleven."

"That gives us a few hours. Want me to show you something even more fun?"

"Let's wait on that. You may be trying to set a personal record, but I'm not."

She filled the glasses again, letting him watch her. "What are you feeling for me now?"

"Longing."

"At least it begins with an L. Didn't you ever love anything in your life? What about your parents?"

"What about them?"

"Your mother. You must have had some feeling for her."

"She was a strong woman and a creative witch. I depended on her and respected her. And I was a little frightened of her." _And I was closed off so completely sometimes even she couldn't read me, but you, dear Phina, will never hear the word 'occlumency' from me._

"And your father? Oh, sorry. He was a muggle, wasn't he?"

"Don't be embarrassed. I'm not. Besides, I'm beginning to suspect you're not a pureblood either."

"How dare you! I'm a member of the Black family! We're all purebloods."

"Not all. There are a few cousins I've heard of…"

"Wait now. What makes you think I'm not a pureblood?"

"I can't imagine any pureblood witch or wizard mentioning the half-life of radioactive isotopes. Most of them can't use a telephone. Do you know about Albert Einstein, too?"

"Is that a name? Seriously though, I think I just like things that are destructive. Radioactivity and atomic bombs and missiles with nuclear warheads."

She started tickling then, and the conversation about science was submerged in more important things. Later, they resumed talking.

"How about affection or tenderness? Or jealousy? Do you feel jealousy? Protectiveness?"

"No, you're too strong and… dominating. About everything. I admire the way you just reach out and grab what you want, and your enthusiasm"

"Then why don't you like cousin Bella? She's like that. She throws herself totally into everything she does. I'd think you'd want someone strong and decisive advising the Dark Lord. Not like that weak, waffling Malfoy."

"I knew we'd come around to Bella and Malfoy eventually. Strong and dominating isn't always wise."

"I'm just going to have to work harder with you, aren't I?"

"I'm looking forward to it."

Snape made it back to Hogwarts on time to enter without a problem. He found himself musing about the future and wondering if, after everything was over, there could still be a place in his life for Phina.

May brought a lessening of pranks and more serious study. Snape was very pleased with his seventh year Advanced Potions class. Every student was certain to achieve an Outstanding or an Exceeds Expectations on their NEWTs. Snape's classes had a reputation for scoring above average, even on the OWLs, and the sixth and seventh years were introduced to the fine art of modifying and improving potions, having the benefit of their professor's long experience doing both. This was one of the reasons Snape would only accept into those classes students who scored an Outstanding on their OWLs.

Which, along with memories of his evenings with Phina, was one of the things putting Snape into a relatively good mood. It was absolutely certain that he would not be seeing a large number of his least favorite students next year. Potter, Weasley, and Longbottom would be gone, as well as Crabbe, Goyle, and possibly even Malfoy, though that was less certain. Granger would certainly continue, but might be easier to work with in a group where she was more challenged and faced stiffer competition.

Snape continued to stay away from Potter as much as possible. He did not want to be at the forefront of Potter's mind on the day the Dark Lord was finally able to see Potter's thoughts as well as the scene before his eyes. Interestingly enough, Potter seemed to be doing better in his potions work, though nowhere near good enough to hope for an Outstanding on his OWL.

On the Saturday just before the middle of May, Snape was again called into the interview chamber. He entered in the middle of Bella's report.

"…was there. Completely gone."

"You are certain of the location."

"I've known it all my life."

"You have our authorization to assign observers to the place. Do not act without express permission. There are other things being planned of which you are not aware."

"Yes, Lord." Bella turned, nodded to Snape, and left.

"Potions master."

"Yes, Lord."

"We shall need new stocks of medicines and healing potions. Especially those for injuries caused by spells. You will start at once."

"Yes, Lord."

Snape checked first with the clinic to find out what was most lacking, then went to his laboratory and began laying out the necessary ingredients for about a dozen different potions. It was the part of his work he could take the most pride in – the part that healed rather than harming.

Phina looked in, but seemed already to know that they would have very little time together. "Will you be finished before eleven?" she asked.

"If all goes well, by ten."

"I wanted to ask you a favor."

"Depends on what it is."

"We started out with self-defense classes. I could use a refresher course."

"You have a desk job."

"Now why are you so sure of that? Just because I didn't go out into the field last time?"

"Admit it. The lessons were a ruse to get close to me."

"Right you are, Sherlock. And it worked."

"Now you're doing that half-blood thing again. When did you ever read Sherlock Holmes?"

"Oh, that's what it means! I just heard people say it. I never read anything. So, how about a refresher? We won't have time to go to my place."

They spent the last hour in the training room, reviewing the falls, the holds, and the defensive spells. Phina was still in excellent form, and initiated a game in which every time she blocked a spell, she got to steal a kiss. Snape was conscientious enough about his work to give her a hard spell to block from time to time. He didn't want her to get sloppy.

On arrival back at Hogwarts, Snape sent Dumbledore a patronus telling him that Bella and her Death Eaters were planning some surveillance and possible action that might center on Grimmauld Place. He advised extra caution for the next few weeks.

The third weekend in May, Malfoy came to the laboratory.

"Want some advice? Stay as clear of that woman as you can."

"Which woman are we talking about now?"

"That Lestrange woman. She's dangerous to everyone around her."

"Lestrange woman? Do I sense a shift… an emotional distancing? She is, after all, your sister-in-law."

"Cissa won't see her. They spoke once after the Azkaban breakout, and now they won't have anything to do with each other."

"I think I'll forbear comment."

"Sometimes I think she won't even obey… him. He's warned her not to act without orders, but she's straining at the leash, and we can't trust her to be sensible."

"I'll be careful."

Malfoy left, and Phina came in. "How late will you be tonight, Severus?"

"Another hour or so. Were you planning something?"

"That would give us a little time to pop over to my place. I was hoping to spend a while together."

They apparated to the West End around nine o'clock, but this time Phina put on music and they tried a little dancing, with considerable success. Phina was quieter and gentler than before, and for the first time Snape began to feel that this was indeed someone he wanted to protect. His gratitude for what she'd done for him was melting into a sense of tenderness, even affection, and it was no longer possible to imagine not seeing her every Saturday. They spent the last few minutes together in contented companionship, and then he apparated back to Hogsmeade.

The following Thursday, McGonagall received an urgent summons from Dumbledore. "We're leaving for London right away," she whispered to Snape at supper. "Something's happened."

Members of the Order guarded all the streets entering into Grimmauld Place. It was as if the small square was a fortress. Everyone who entered was watched carefully, so carefully that Snape was afraid the local muggles might call the police.

"Most of us," said Dumbledore when all had arrived, "already know what has happened. For those coming in from Hogwarts and the Ministry, we have had a little excitement here today. An attempt was made by a squad of Death Eaters to attack and kidnap Remus Lupin. We believe that the real goal was to lure Sirius Black out of this house so that they could capture him."

After waiting a moment for the babble of rising concern to calm down, Dumbledore continued. "Fortunately, we were forewarned of the possibility that this might happen, which is why all of you were cautioned to exercise extreme care in arriving and departing from this place. We had sentries stationed and were able to call in reinforcements before the Death Eaters could accomplish their purpose. For this advance notice we all owe thanks to Severus."

The others nodded, and Shacklebolt and Weasley stepped across the room to shake Snape's hand.

"Now," Dumbledore went on, "we must redouble our guard. We have escaped this first attempt unscathed. There may well be another. This is particularly true since apparently we inflicted some damage. At least two of their operatives fell during the fight, though as they were carried out by their colleagues, we have no way of knowing the full extent of the damage we caused. There was, however, blood on the pavement. This could well make them both more intent on striking us, and more careful in how they perform it."

At that moment, the mark began to burn. Severus's arm jerked at the sudden pain, causing the others to shift their attention to him.

"I thought that might happen," said Dumbledore quietly. "You had best go."

Croydon was in an uproar. Malfoy himself met Snape at the entrance. "You don't have to go to him, he doesn't want you. He's with Bella now, and he's furious. There's been a fight, entirely against orders. She'll be lucky if she makes it out of this one."

"Why was I sent for?"

"You need to go to the clinic. There've been injuries, bad ones, and the medics need more help. You're to see what potions they need and to assist in the healing. You are something of a healer, aren't you?"

Snape raced upstairs to the clinic, and was met at the door by one of the healers. "Good! You're here! We have one damage to a skull, still unconscious, and another severe blood loss. Can you get…"

Another healer came over. "We'll only need the medicine for the concussion – the blood loss patient just died."

With a nod of understanding, Snape was out the door and headed for the lab. Unconsciousness for this long meant almost certain neurological damage and required special regenerating potions. Luckily they probably had a lot of time. It was not the sort of injury that killed quickly, not like losing large amounts of blood.

Malfoy came up to the laboratory while Snape was working. "Are you all right? I just came from the clinic. This must be a rough night for you."

"People get injured. Healers heal them. It's a job."

"You scare me sometimes, you know."

Snape paused in the decanting of a nerve regenerator. "Why would I scare you?" he asked finally.

"You can be so deadly cool about things that would floor other people. Almost as if it didn't mean anything to you. Would you be this calm if something happened to me?"

"Maybe. Probably not. But then, I know you."

Malfoy was silent. Too silent. Snape stoppered the flask of potion with exquisite care and checked the others, already finished and waiting to be taken to the clinic. The lucidity of the moment was breathtaking, and he marveled at the sharpness of the colors and the clarity of the light, and the revelation that hovered between them in Malfoy's silence.

"I'm sorry, Severus. Didn't they tell you?"

"Why should they? They weren't aware that I knew her." Inside he was locking down, closing up, every door slamming shut.

"Then you did know."

"Not until this moment, no. What happened?"

"They're not sure. A cutting spell, but no one knows where it came from. She was in the front, doing all right, and then she started moving forward. It got her in the throat. Sliced the artery. She never had a chance. She may have been dead before they got her to the clinic."

"I need to get these medicines over there."

"Can I help?"

"Yes, if you would take those four. They're for the confusion cases. I'll get the rest."

Both men were quiet on the way to the clinic. There Malfoy drew one of the healers aside and whispered quickly. The woman nodded.

"Would you like to see her?" Malfoy asked. "I told them you were a friend."

They had cleaned up the blood and wrapped a cloth around her neck, so she looked quite peaceful, except that her skin was very pale and waxy looking. Serene. It was a good word. She looked serene.

Snape glanced over at the medics and waited until they noticed him. "Do you need any more potions this evening?"

"No, this will do very well. I think he's responding already. Thanks."

It wasn't eleven yet, still several hours to go. Come to think of it, Snape wasn't sure what time McGonagall would have the shields down for him. She might even be with Dumbledore. Snape wanted some time to think, but first there were one or two things…

"Lucius?"

"Yes, tell me what I can do."

"You said earlier that the action was against orders. What did you mean?"

"The Dark Lord told Bella to set a surveillance team, but not to move in unless she got the word from him. He didn't want other plans disrupted by badly timed action."

"So he didn't order it."

"No. This was all Bella's doing. She'll be 'discussing' it with him for a long time tonight."

"Who else was there?"

"A very motley crew. Amycus and Alecto, Fenrir, Gibbon, some people from the branch offices I don't know. About ten in all."

"The spell that hit her, was it enemy fire or friendly fire?"

Now Malfoy looked uncomfortable. "We don't know. Things were pretty confused at that point, and I've gotten conflicting reports. We may learn more after Bella's able to talk again."

"Let me know what you hear."

"I will."

Snape went back to the laboratory where he turned out the lights and sat by the windows, watching the muggle trains speeding past in the darkness. Just before eleven he apparated to Hogsmeade. McGonagall must have assumed the same as he did, for the shields went down at precisely eleven, and Snape went to his rooms without having to speak to anyone.

The next morning Snape didn't go to breakfast. Instead he paid an inordinate amount of attention to setting up his classroom for his Potions lessons. They were almost at the end of the term, only one week of classes to go, then a week of review, and then exams. The routine was a help, and he'd locked himself down so tightly that he wasn't thinking of anything else.

The morning went smoothly, and Snape was spending the lunch hour in his classroom as well, setting up for the afternoon lessons when McGonagall appeared in the doorway. Snape continued his work without looking at her.

"Are you going to eat at all?"

"I wasn't hungry."

"Dumbledore said to watch your eating habits. No food is a bad sign."

"Dumbledore should mind his own business. As should you."

"Either they're feeding you very well at the 'other place,' or something happened last night. And it is my business, and Dumbledore's. You're on staff here, remember."

"Maybe it has nothing to do with the 'other place.' Maybe it's a Hogwarts problem."

"So you admit there's a problem. Dumbledore was concerned about the fight yesterday. One of the 'problems' about your kind of work is that you know people on both sides. Do you know who was injured yesterday?"

"Yes."

"And?"

"It isn't important."

"Now you've got me worried. You need to go out tonight and talk to Dumbledore."

"No."

"Why not?"

"There's only one place where we can talk, and I'm not going there. Not now."

McGonagall watched him for another minute, then turned and left. Snape was relieved to see her go. Having her ask questions was forcing him to look at things he didn't want to look at.

The afternoon also went smoothly. Everything was blessedly uncomplicated routine. Snape stayed in the classroom clearing everything up, cleaning, straightening… Supper was half over when a silver shadow slipped under the door. For just an instant the ghostly phoenix hovered before Snape's face, and then Dumbledore's voice spoke in his brain.

_Something has happened. You may want to talk about it. I am in the Shack, and am quite prepared to wait here all night._

The phoenix vanished, leaving Snape with a decision, but not one that he had to make right away. He continued to straighten, arrange, put away, and clean for over an hour, while the image of Dumbledore in the Shrieking Shack brooded on the edge of his consciousness.

The long northern sunset was beginning to alter the light when Snape eased open the great front door of the castle and hurried across the lawn. Once on the path down the hill, he was sheltered by bushes. There he slowed his pace, still uncertain if this was what he wanted to do. The nearer he got to the Whomping Willow, the slower he walked.

A long stick sufficed to press the knot that froze the tree, then Snape ducked into the tunnel and paused. There was a sense of inevitability about his movements, however, and he was soon wending his way along the uneven stone floor, a Lumos spell lighting the passage.

The basement room was empty, but so still was the air in the Shack that the marks of the feet from the last time he'd been here were visible in the dust – the students, Lupin, Black, his own footprints, and the little rat feet of Peter Pettigrew. It seemed a century ago.

He climbed the staircase softly, making almost no sound. As his hand reached out to push open the door of the upper floor room, Dumbledore's voice spoke from the other side.

"Oh, excellent, Severus. I was hoping you would come."

Snape stepped into the room and looked around. The ancient bed with its hangings was still there, and Dumbledore had found or conjured a couple of armchairs and a small table which now held a tea service for two and a bottle of mead with the appropriate cups and glasses for both.

"Sit, if you feel like it, Severus," Dumbledore said, and gestured toward the empty chair.

"I think I'd prefer to stand."

"As you wish." There was an awkward silence. "I did rather hope you could fill in the gaps in our information about yesterday."

"That? You got eight of them. Only Bella and Fenrir escaped unscathed. The others were hit by confusion, stunning, and cutting spells. And one backwards spell that's driving the healers crazy."

Dumbledore chuckled. "It looks as if we did quite well. Odd thing, though. I do not recall that any of our people used a cutting spell."

"Maybe you just didn't see it. It was very effective."

"The Death Eater is badly injured?"

"The Death Eater is dead."

"Ah. I am sorry to hear that."

"Sorry to hear of the death of an enemy?"

"Sorry to hear of the death of any wizard. Or witch. It was a woman who died. A woman you knew."

"You didn't read that."

"Dear me, no. I am reading an obsidian wall. I do not want to get analytical where your private life is concerned, but only something really powerful could make you shut down like that. I might even hazard a guess as to who it was."

"Don't bother. I'm sure you're right, though I would argue that 'powerful' isn't the correct word."

"No? Would personal be a better word?"

"Perhaps. I'll have to think about it."

"What happened?"

"There was a surveillance ordered at Bella's request. She – her name was Delphina Vaughn, did I tell you? – she went out as part of the team. Bella got impatient and sent them into action without authorization. There was a skirmish. You know the rest."

"Riddle did not order the attack?"

"No. He's still preferring Malfoy's advice over Bella's."

"Poor Bella. She will not have spent a comfortable night." Dumbledore seemed genuinely saddened. "And you. This must have been difficult for you."

"Define difficult."

Dumbledore sat back, his fingers steepled in front of his glasses. "She was a colleague of yours. You will forgive me, Severus, but one of the things that has always disturbed me is that you did not enter this business as a double agent. These people were once your friends, your coworkers. You have never had the chance to be impersonal where they are concerned. Did you not assist in the engagement of Lucius Malfoy and Narcissa Black? You cannot pretend to be indifferent."

Snape turned away, suddenly fascinated by the simple workmanship of the solid paneled door.

"Severus…" Though Snape did not face him, Dumbledore continued. "You shared something with this… with Delphina. Do not deny it, you were… close to her. You must feel something. Please, consider what that something is, for her sake."

Snape didn't speak, so Dumbledore shifted the focus of his question.

"What was she like? I never met her. How would you describe her?"

The answer was a while coming. "Pleasant to be with. Never demanding. Never judging…"

Dumbledore didn't respond, and Snape was drawn to fill in the silence. "She was independent, intelligent… kind and gentle… understanding… silly sometimes…"

"Did she ask about us?"

"Not once. She was there to woo me away from Malfoy."

"You question her motives."

"There was no question about her motives. She was doing a job. The odd thing was that sometimes I got the feeling that even in spite of the job… she may actually have liked me. Especially the last time."

"Which was…"

"Last Saturday. It was like she was trying to show me something… what she was really like, or what she could be like… I'm not sure." Snape suddenly walked over to the table and poured himself a glass of the mead. "Could she have been saying goodbye?"

"Possibly, though that would require a high level of premonition."

They were silent again, and Snape tossed back what was left of his mead, pouring another glass which he sipped thoughtfully.

Dumbledore broke the silence. "What do you feel now?"

"Empty."

"Do not be angry… but what would you feel if you lowered some of those barriers?" Again the silence spread. "There, I apologize. I have gone too far."

When Snape still didn't respond, Dumbledore poured himself a cup of tea. He wasn't looking at Snape when he asked, "Who else among your colleagues in London will remember her fondly?"

"I don't know. No one that I can think of. I don't know anything about her immediate family. To Bella she was a tool, as least that was the impression I got. To Malfoy she was an enemy. The healers didn't even know her name, so I don't think she had much to do with the others."

"Then insofar as we know, you are the place where the memory of her true self resides. What, if you will pardon me, will you remember about her?"

"She was one of the best self defense pupils I ever had. It doesn't seem to have done her much good. We went to the theater once – 'Macbeth.' And to dinner." As Snape named the occasions, images floated up into his conscious mind of Phina's intent face as she watched Shakespeare's witches, and her laughter trying to block his view of the belly dancer. And the feel of her hands… "She had very gentle…" He turned to look through the curtains at the houses of the village, not wanting Dumbledore to see his face.

Dumbledore came to stand beside him, a hand resting lightly on Snape's shoulder. "It does not have to be all at once. Let the memories surface a little at a time, as you are ready for them. Sorrow is our best way of honoring the dead." They stood quietly for a few minutes. Then, "Will you try to find out why she died?"

"Does it matter? She was a soldier in a war. That's what happens in wars."

"What if you found that I had killed her?"

"You didn't. You'd never use that kind of spell. But it wouldn't matter. It isn't like a battle gives you a lot of time to make a decision."

"Then maybe you should find out. For your own peace of mind."

After awhile, Snape glanced over at Dumbledore. "I have another question. It's on a different subject, though."

Dumbledore looked down at Snape. "Very well. Ask."

"The defenses controlling access to this shack, are they part of the defenses that surround the grounds of the school?"

Now Dumbledore was silent for a moment. "I am not certain that I wish to answer this question," he said finally.

"They're not, are they? Look, I know I was the reason you put in these defenses. I got onto the grounds too easily back… then. But I have a real problem now. Before you left I had a backup way of getting out at need. If I couldn't ask you, I could ask McGonagall. Now you're gone and Umbridge keeps watching McGonagall. What happens if I'm summoned, really summoned, and I can't get out?"

"I see. That would indeed be a difficult position to be in. You would, of course, never reveal it to anyone else. Who knows of it? Me, you, Madam Pomfrey, Lupin, Black, Potter, Granger, Ron Weasley, Pettigrew I am afraid… Who can get in and out from this side? Me. Very well, Severus. I shall give you the codes. Do not use them except at great need. To open the shack to enter or leave, you say Patefacio tugurium. To close it again, you say Claudo tugurium."

"Thank you, Professor."

"Well, I suppose I should be off now. It is getting quite late, and we do all need our beauty sleep. You will take care of yourself, will you not, Severus?"

"Yes, sir. And thank you for that, too."

Climbing to the top of the hill, Snape turned south and searched the starry sky. It took only a moment to locate the constellation Delphinus, and for a while he contemplated the diamond formation of the dolphin's body and its tail of stars before entering the castle.

He started to cross the entrance hall to the dungeon stairs, but was stopped by McGonagall's voice calling from the Great Hall.

"There you are, Severus. Have you a moment?"

She was sitting at the foot of the Gryffindor table, and Snape was surprised to see that she'd saved a quantity of food from supper. Suddenly he was ravenously hungry, and immensely grateful for the late-night feast. He walked over to the table and sat facing her.

"Will you join me?"

"Well, unlike you laddie, I've actually been eating my regularly scheduled meals. But I'll have a bite and a sip of wine to keep you company. Go ahead now. Eat."

Snape did, and the food was delicious. Neither of the two talked for several minutes, but when Snape glanced up at McGonagall, she seemed quite pleased that her offering was being accepted with such relish.

"Have you given any thought to tomorrow, Severus?"

A piece of chicken stopped halfway to Snape's mouth, and he said with foreboding, "What happens tomorrow?"

"Final Quidditch match of the season. Us against Ravenclaw. Who d' ye favor?"

"You have a Keeper and two Beaters culled from the ranks of the Keystone Cops, and you want to know who I favor?"

"I take it your money's on Ravenclaw."

"Usual bet?"

"Usual bet."

The usual bet between them was a knut, but it was the principle of the thing. Snape and McGonagall wished each other a good night, and he went to his rooms. Before going to bed, however, Snape brought to mind the first time he'd seen Phina, the day Bella brought her to the lab and demanded defense training. Then he slept soundly for the rest of the night.

By long tradition, Snape sat with Flitwick during the match, while Sprout supported McGonagall. The fate of the Quidditch Cup hung in the balance, for if Ravenclaw won, the cup would return to Slytherin. The Slytherin stands vibrated with excitement, 'King Weasley' buttons glittering on their robes, ready to burst into song at the first sign of trouble for the Gryffindor Keeper.

And at first it went predictably well, Ravenclaw scoring an easy goal that Gryffindor was unable to block. Then, out of nowhere, something seemed to electrify Gryffindor's Keeper, another easy one was suddenly deflected from the ring, and Flitwick was dancing up and down on the bench screaming with frustration, "Feint right, you fool, right! He saw that coming a mile away! You miss another goal and your broomstick will be supplying BOAC with toothpicks!'

Resolving to discuss the history of British Airways at another time, Snape focused on the match. The Snitch flickered here and there, but was mostly in hiding. Bludgers were ahead of Beaters by a seven point margin, and while Ravenclaw easily kept Gryffindor from scoring, the game was now being played at the Gryffindor rings. Attack after Ravenclaw attack was set up and run down the pitch to be deflected by the Gryffindor Keeper.

The red and gold stands erupted in small outbursts of cheers that quickly merged into one gigantic roar, drowning Slytherin's well-rehearsed 'Weasley is our king' in a tidal wave of 'WEAS-LEY! WEAS-LEY! WEAS-LEY!' McGonagall rose to her feet, fists raised over her head, arms pumping to the rhythm of her house's chant while Sprout brandished a red and gold pennant above them. Snape watched the whole scene in awe. _Whoever would have thought a purely defensive game could be so exciting? Phina would love it._

Then, in a twinkling of speckled light, the Snitch was there. Blue and red Seekers spun towards it like hawks after the same rabbit, surging up and diving down in pursuit of the precious shimmering orb, fingers outstretched in desperate longing until… in a day of perfect triumph for the House of Weasley, the Gryffindor Seeker shot upwards, the Snitch held aloft in her hand. Gryffindor house exploded.

The players settled groundwards as the stands spilled Gryffindor and Hufflepuff students onto the grass, while Slytherin and Ravenclaw exhibited a more decorous behavior. McGonagall was gracious enough to advance halfway, then waited for Flitwick and Snape to approach her. "You owe me a knut," she said, after accepting Flitwick's congratulations.

"The show was well worth it," Snape replied as he handed over her winnings.

Supper was marred only by the general disappointment of the Slytherin students, sympathy with whom prevented Snape from sharing McGonagall's joy, by Umbridge's clear disapproval of the raucousness that followed the game, and by Snape's own anticipation of his impending trip to Croydon. That night he did not want to leave Hogwarts.

Croydon, however, was peaceful. Bella was nowhere around – recuperating, it was said, from her interviews with the Dark Lord. Malfoy was closeted with their master discussing ongoing plans. Snape spent a few hours in the clinic with the medics, evaluating the injured who were not responding well to treatment, and speculating on the spells used against them and the possible adjustments to the potions used to heal them.

And somewhere, on a level that was neither conscious nor subconscious, Snape kept expecting to see Phina, and was repeatedly disappointed when he remembered that he could not.


	55. Chapter 55 – What Is This Thing…

**Yes, That Is My Job: What Is This Thing…**

The following week, the last in May, was utterly routine except…

On Wednesday, after the last afternoon class but before supper, Snape slipped out to the Whomping Willow and through the tunnel to try the spells that Dumbledore had given him. To his satisfaction, they worked. He enjoyed a small libation at the Three Broomsticks before sneaking back into the Shack and returning to Hogwarts.

"You look content about something," McGonagall commented at supper.

"It is merely the look of independence, of freedom from fetters."

"You're quitting and going into private practice."

"No… but that's an excellent idea. 'Professor Snape's Private School for Perfectly Scandalous Pranks and Spells.' Think of what you could do with the logo 'P.S.P.S. for P.S.P. and S.'"

McGonagall grunted. "It depends on what vowel you put in."

"Spoilsport."

Classes ended, reviewing for exams would take up all of the next week, and on June 1 Snape again went to Croydon. Around nine o'clock, Bella came into the laboratory.

"What do you want?" Snape asked without looking at her.

"My, we are abrupt today. I won't waste your time. I want you to tell the Dark Lord that Malfoy's dream scheme won't work."

"Why should I do that, especially since I have no proof that it won't?"

"They've been working on it for months, and nothing's happened. I'd say that's a pretty fair indicator."

"They don't need me to tell them that."

"We need to act, before it's too late."

"Another piece of unplanned chaos to liven things up? I think the Dark Lord has had his fill for the moment."

"You miss her, don't you?"

Snape paused, because the slight trembling in his hands made it harder to measure the powdered horn. "What I miss or don't miss is none of your concern."

"Black killed her, you know. I can help you get revenge."

"Interesting thought, since there was more than one person there named Black."

Bella was across the space between them in three mad strides, knocking the jar of powder from Snape's hands to smash on the floor and seizing the fabric of his coat. "Who told you! Who told you! It was that rat Gibbon, wasn't it! I'll slit his…"

"Like you did Phina's? How very in character."

It was like dousing Bella with cold water. Carefully she released Snape's coat and brushed imaginary dust from his shoulder with a casual hand. "It's your fault anyway, puppy dog. You taught me the spell."

"No. No, I didn't teach you…"

"Sure you did. All those years ago when you were coaching the dueling classes…"

"Self defense."

"Well, that was one of them. The Digladior. I never got much chance to use it before."

"That's for close range hand-to-hand combat. You can't shoot that across an open space, it's not a thrown spell. You can't aim it. It scatters like birdshot."

"I wanted it to scatter. You hit more targets that way."

"Right. Your own people."

"She got in the way."

"Now it's her fault. My fault, her fault, never your fault is it, Bella? Disobey orders, misuse spells, kill your own…"

"Shut up, Snape!"

"Did you have a pleasant chat with the Dark Lord, Bella? Was he loving and kind to his favorite?"

Bella's wand was out, pointed at Snape's face. "You have a vicious streak in you, Potions Master. No wonder Phina couldn't stomach you. And all along I thought it was just because you were such a cold fish."

Snape looked into Bella's eyes, rather than at the wand. "Yet another act of unplanned chaos? The Dark Lord is going to want to 'talk' to you again about disposing of his potions maker without going through proper channels."

"Cold and impersonal. Poor Phina. The one time she managed to start something, I had to walk in and break it up. What a waste of talent. A warm, passionate person can grow tired of plays and restaurants and philosophical pronouncements, you know. But maybe that's all you were ever capable of."

"Not everyone enjoys your love of life, Bella."

Bella relaxed and put her wand away. "Don't pretend, puppy dog. I know you can lose your temper – I've witnessed it. It was one of the most impressive tantrums I've seen in my life. I had high hopes that night that you'd grown up to be a man. Pity."

"Classic queen-side attack. The Lady Macbeth gambit, I believe. It won't work Bella. One of the benefits of all those plays and philosophical pronouncements."

"You're going to sing to my tune."

"Shall I tell the Dark Lord you're trying to persuade me to follow you instead of him?"

"This isn't over." Bella swept from the room, her anger radiating around her.

Snape stood calmly in the laboratory in the wake of Bella's visit, his heart pounding, but not from fear of Bella. _Dear Bella. No subtlety at all. If she'd known the truth, she'd have used it, and to good effect. That she didn't use it means she doesn't know it. Should I tell Dumbledore?_

In the end, since it was no news of an urgent matter, Snape decided not to send to Dumbledore, but rather to wait until a more routine meeting. Instead he returned on schedule to Hogwarts, holding close the new-discovered knowledge that Phina had lied to Bella about him. The intimate evenings at Phina's flat were reported as theater outings and restaurant visits. That was what Bella 'd said, plays and restaurants, plural. The one physical encounter Phina had mentioned was the one Bella knew about anyway.

And Phina's death was an accident. An accident caused by poor judgment and unrestrained recklessness. Criminal negligence. _If I leaned toward self-sacrifice, I might support Bella as the surest and quickest way to destroy the Dark Lord, but a) I do not lean toward self-sacrifice, and b) while quick, the way would also be violent and bloody. Yet for some reason the Dark Lord does take Bella's advice seriously. One can only wonder why._

xxxxxxxxxx

The reviewing during the next week was intense. Although the first through fourth and sixth years were still finishing off regular classes, there were five years of review for the fifth years, and two years' worth for the seventh years. It was like this every year before the OWLs and NEWTs, and every year Snape hated it. He worked side by side with his students on a weekly basis and knew what they were capable of. The stress connected with exams never allowed a student's real abilities to shine through. If it were not for the irrational importance the outside world attached to them, the exams would be a waste of time.

The only really good thing about the week was that the common room was full of studying students, and no one was causing any trouble.

By Wednesday it became clear that McGonagall and Umbridge had entered a new stage in their battle of wills. McGonagall was summoned several times to Umbridge's office and 'casual' passersby reported argument so intense that they feared the two might come to blows, though the exact words were so distorted by the closed door that none was sure what the disagreement was about.

Snape had a pretty good idea, though. He was not completely surprised when McGonagall stopped by his chair at the end of supper.

"You, Professor, have submitted an order for fangs and claws that is far beyond anything needed by your classes. Please come up to my office at once to either correct what I presume is an error, or explain why I should let the order stand."

Snape followed her meekly up the stairs, knowing there would be no order. When the door was safely shut behind them, McGonagall first searched the office with an anti-spying spell, then whispered, "She wants the defense spells, and with the examiners coming in I can no longer justify not giving them to her. A couple of weeks ago you said you were independent and unfettered. Does that mean you have a way out?"

"I don't know if I should…"

"Listen, Severus. The main reason I've been keeping the spells away from her is to protect your comings and goings. I don't want her to catch you or block your movements. But now we have examiners coming and Dumbledore still isn't back. She's determined to let them in herself, and if I thought I was headmistress I would feel the same. She's getting an injunction from the Ministry of Magic. If I defy it, I can be dismissed."

"Dismissed? If you defy it, you can be arrested. Why didn't you tell me it was getting this serious? Dumbledore showed me two weeks ago how to get in through…"

"Don't you be telling me, now. I don't want any of that kind of information to be tricked out of me. The bottom line is that for the last two weeks you've had an emergency exit from this place, right?"

"Yes."

"Good. When she gives me the injunction, I'll turn over the spells."

Business seemed over, but Snape hesitated. "May I ask you a question?"

"Of course you may ask. I can't say as I'll answer."

"How do the owls get in?"

"You are a shrewd one. Albus explained it when I became deputy, though I must confess I'd never have thought to ask myself. There are two ways. Those coming in from the east could just fly low through the forest. There's no shield there. The centaurs would never permit even Albus to interfere with their territory, but they also guard that side very effectively. There are too many owls from too many families to train them all, however, so the shields have been calibrated to permit their passage."

"You mean you can adjust the shields to block everything except one kind of animal? Or maybe one particular person?"

"Don't you go getting any ideas. The shields are far too big to calibrate to just one individual. It has to be a whole species. I imagine a much smaller screen could be made to allow one person only to pass through."

"What about an owl animagus?"

"I suppose that would breach the defenses. Or ones so small that the shields don't filter them. I am not, however, going to debate with you how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. You can't get through. It's good you have the other way."

Thursday at lunch, Umbridge appeared more pleased than Snape had ever seen her. Clearly the injunction had arrived, had been served, and McGonagall had obeyed.

On Saturday, Snape left the castle after dinner and slipped down the hill to the Whomping Willow, the tunnel, the Shack, and Croydon. When he saw the messenger at the door, he headed directly for the stairs and the interview chamber. The Dark Lord sat calmly enthroned outside the circle of light usually used for interrogations while Malfoy and Bella stood in its center yelling at each other. It was odd to hear Malfoy's voice raised to such a volume, but the moment encapsulated Bella perfectly.

"…foolish, undisciplined behavior…"

"…keeping us locked in the same place, with no progress for…"

Both stopped when Snape entered and all three turned to the Dark Lord.

"Potions Master, do you have frequent occasion to see Sirius Black?"

"Not frequent, Lord, but occasionally."

"Since he returned from Azkaban, have you seen him angry, defiant, or in pain?"

"I saw him surprised and angry, but only for a moment, as I was knocked unconscious by a spell. Since then I have seen him rude and arrogant on several occasions."

"But not as I have described."

"No, Lord."

"Go then. We shall not need you further tonight."

As Snape climbed back up the stairs, a shorter, somewhat dumpy man scurried past him. _I haven't seen him in months. Why would the Dark Lord want to speak tonight to Peter Pettigrew?_

The examiners arrived Sunday evening during dinner. Umbridge arranged a small reception for them in the staffroom, since they had already dined and did not want to cause consternation among the fifth years by suddenly appearing in the Great Hall. When the teachers assembled in the staffroom, Umbridge started to make introductions, only to be interrupted by tiny, wizened little Professor Marchbanks.

"No need, Professor Umbridge, no need. We've been coming here for so many years now, it's beginning to seem like home. Minerva, I hope you are well. Much calmer this year than last, isn't it? School was all agog waiting for the third task. Hardly anyone could concentrate on their OWLs."

Snape waited his turn to greet the four examiners, and old Professor Tofty pulled him aside to ask about some potions work Snape had done for him years earlier. Then the teachers were given their assignments and all retired for the night.

No teacher was allowed to proctor the exam for his or her own subject, so Snape drew the OWLs for Ancient Runes, Arithmancy, and Muggle Studies. It was fairly easy duty this year since none of them were courses taken by the entire fifth year. Proctoring History of Magic, or Transfiguration could be a nightmare.

Croydon was tense again on Saturday. Snape found a pile of orders for medical potions and set to work on what was going to be a very late night of brewing. It was convenient that he could now get in through the Shack, and didn't have to worry about the eleven o'clock curfew.

Around ten o'clock the Dark Lord sent for him. It was a short meeting observed, as now seemed usual, by both Malfoy and Bella.

"Stand before us, Potions master, and look into our eyes."

Snape obeyed, not overly nervous since this had none of the feeling of being a test.

"Show us Sirius Black as he appears today."

Snape allowed images of Black's face to surface in his mind, trying as unobtrusively as possible to make them ones where Black was not angry. Snide, mocking, impatient, all were revealed. The Dark Lord seemed content.

"Now, let us hear his voice."

Again there was a certain selection on Snape's part to keep anger away from the images, so the Dark Lord heard the comment about what the cat dragged in, and inquiries as to Potter's classes, all of which were acceptable and pleasing.

"You may go."

The second week of OWLs continued to go smoothly. The only night of the week when the students were out of the common rooms was Wednesday, when the Astronomy Practical Exam started at eleven o'clock. Snape took advantage of the quiet and went to bed early.

Pounding on the door startled him awake well after midnight. It was Flitwick yelling, "Severus! Severus! Wake up! Quickly!"

Snape pulled on a robe and opened the door. "What…"

"Minerva… Pomfrey needs you… Now, come now… Oh, to think… To Minerva…"

"What's happened to Minerva? Is she sick?"

"Not sick… Stunned… Four – right in the chest… They were sacking Hagrid… She tried to stop them… Outside…"

Snape pushed Flitwick aside and raced for the entrance hall. Out the doors and down the hill he ran, noting that Pomfrey herself had only just arrived at McGonagall's side. Pomfrey knelt, then waved frantically at him, screaming in the warm June night, "She's not breathing! I can't get a pulse!"

There wasn't a second to lose. "How long ago?" Snape demanded as he ran up and dropped to his knees beside McGonagall's still body.

"Three, maybe four minutes, as near as I can tell."

Snape tilted McGonagall's head back, checked her throat, pinched her nose shut and bent to blow air into her mouth. When her lungs had expanded twice, he shifted to push rapidly on her chest about a dozen times, then breathed air into her lungs again. McGonagall shuddered suddenly and gasped in a breath on her own.

Pomfrey checked. "We've got her. Wait a few minutes while she stabilizes." She looked up at Snape, who was sitting back on his heels, head down, panting slightly. "There are some things wands and potions can't do. Tomorrow you're going to teach me that muggle trick."

Madam Pomfrey took over and began conjuring stretchers, for McGonagall was not the only one hurt. Several functionaries from the Ministry of Magic, called in by Umbridge as back-up, had been tossed around bodily by Hagrid. Two were still unconscious, while others had various minor injuries. Several of the seventh years were enlisted to help move the stretchers up the hill.

Inside the castle the rest of the staff, though terribly anxious about McGonagall, had stayed at their duty posts and herded the students back into the common rooms, keeping the corridors quiet.

In the entrance hall, Umbridge seized Snape's sleeve, forcing him to look at her. "Come to my office immediately. I want to talk to you."

"No," Madam Pomfrey said at once. "I need him in the hospital."

Snape brushed away Umbridge's hand. "In a medical emergency, Madam Pomfrey outranks you," he told Umbridge, then turned his back and followed Pomfrey up the stairs, leaving Umbridge to fume.

They laid McGonagall on one of the beds while Pomfrey checked the other two unconscious patients. Returning to McGonagall, she listened to her chest, then motioned Snape to McGonagall's side. "There's some kind of flutter. See what you can read."

Leaning forward, Snape gently opened McGonagall's eyes, ignoring the fact that Umbridge had entered the hospital and was watching them. He was interested to find that part of McGonagall's mind was shut down, and not from injury. He passed it by, as it did not pertain to his business as a healer's assistant. "Some damage to the sternum and ribcage at the point of impact," he said as he searched for information about the heart, "lung tissue… here's the heart. It seems… there's some unusual twitching in the muscles. It's small, but there… right side."

"Ventricular fibrillation. Get St. Mungo's. We'll have to move her." Madam Pomfrey drew her wand and began a low rhythmic chant as she moved the tip in a tiny circle around the area of McGonagall's heart.

Snape turned to Umbridge. "We're getting a medical team in from St. Mungo's Hospital to evacuate her to London. You're going to open the defenses for them."

"I'll do no such thing! You can't order me around."

"No? Watch me." Snape clamped his hand around Umbridge's upper arm and dragged her over to the hospital fireplace. Forcing her onto her knees beside him, he took a handful of floo powder, threw it into the fireplace and said, "St. Mungo's, Emergency Room." A nurse appeared in the green flames.

"Hogwarts school." Snape said. "We have a medical emergency. Patient is female, age seventy, struck in the chest with multiple stun spells…"

"Is this Professor McGonagall?" asked the suddenly anxious nurse.

"Yes. Temporary paralysis to the diaphragm muscles and cardiac arrest. Patient is breathing independently now, but exhibiting signs of ventricular fibrillation. There's a healer keeping the heart stable, but we need a medevac team."

Snape could hear the nurse speaking to others in the emergency room. "Floo transport and apparation are out of the question due to the patient's unstable condition. You'll take two healers and fly her back. Hogwarts," she was talking to Snape again. "We have a team ready to go. Are the defenses open?"

"One moment. I want you to explain to this desk clerk what happens to people who contribute to a death through unprovoked and malicious use of a potentially fatal spell." Snape clutched Umbridge's shoulders and pushed her face into the flame. Though not in direct communication himself, he could hear the nurse say, 'Voluntary manslaughter. One to five years in Azkaban, depending on the circumstances."

Pulling Umbridge back out, Snape told her quietly, "Lower the defenses."

"Yes, Dolores," said a voice behind them. Snape turned to see Professor Tofty standing near the door. "In case you are wondering, I was conducting an exam and witnessed the entire incident from the Astronomy Tower. Do as Professor Snape says."

Umbridge glowered, furious and unwilling, then reluctantly she pulled out her wand, muttering the spell so that the others couldn't hear.

"Just so we understand each other, if the medics run into a barrier now, it's murder," Snape warned her, then said to the nurse. "Hogwarts is open."

He scrambled quickly out of the way, dragging Umbridge back from the fireplace as the medevac team came through. They carried transport brooms and an aerial stretcher, quickly transferred McGonagall to it, and were gone.

"Now," said Umbridge to Snape as she closed the defenses once more, "Now you come to my office."

"How dare you interfere in my running of this school!" Umbridge hissed, whirling on Snape as soon as the door to her office was closed. Snape raised his eyebrows, but said nothing as Umbridge began to pace back and forth. "You have flouted my authority, disobeyed my orders, undermined my position in front of the rest of the staff… How dare you enter into a matter that was none of your business!"

"I suggest you tread with care," Snape finally replied. "Have you any idea what percentage of Britain's wizarding population has learned Transfiguration from Professor McGonagall? I wouldn't worry about your position if I were you. I'd worry about being lynched."

"Silence! You had no right to interfere!"

"I had every right. Madam Pomfrey sent for me as Potions Master and as her medical assistant which, incidentally, is part of my job. Which you would have been aware of if you were doing your job as headmistress."

"Rank, blatant insubordination!"

"Be thankful for it. If Pomfrey and I hadn't been there, there'd be a warrant out for your arrest right now. Your little game was witnessed by the entire fifth year class."

"How do you know that?"

"That's who Tofty was examining up on the Astronomy Tower. If he saw it, they all saw it. Probably before Tofty did. Teenagers have this sixth sense…"

"One more word out of you and I'll dismiss you from staff!"

Snape was silent.

"You're on probation. One step in the wrong direction, Professor, and you are out of Hogwarts and into Azkaban. Do I make myself clear?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"And your weekend jaunts are over. You're confined to the grounds until the end of term."

"Yes, ma'am."

That morning's OWL exam was in Muggle Studies, and Snape reasoned there was no sense trying to get any sleep before the test, so he headed first to his rooms to dress, then down to the Whomping Willow, deriving a certain satisfaction from disobeying Umbridge so soon after receiving her orders.

The Dark Lord chose not to be available at two in the morning, but Macnair was duty officer, so Snape left with him the information that McGonagall had been injured and sent to St. Mungo's. They both agreed that since it didn't directly impact any of the Dark Lord's plans, there was no reason to disturb him against his express wishes.

A few minutes later, Snape was walking back up the hill to the castle.

At breakfast, Snape filled the rest of the teachers in on McGonagall's status. By that time Pomfrey had gotten word that she was out of danger. The teachers agreed it was good that she'd gone to the hospital, both for the extra care and to get her away from Hogwarts and Umbridge.

The Muggle Studies exam went smoothly. Most of the school slept late because of the previous night's excitement, and those who had to be stirring for the test were quiet and subdued. When it was over, Snape returned to his own rooms, hoping to get some sleep before dinner. It was sure to be relatively quiet, since the entire fifth year class was taking their History of Magic OWL.

As he lay fully clothed on the bed, Snape found himself thinking of Phina, of that night in the laboratory when he'd fallen asleep while she massaged his back. He was tired now. His back and his head both ached, and it would feel so nice to have her fingers soothe away the tension and the pain. _Why does everyone I care about have to die?_

It was then that the true wonder of Phina occurred to him – she hadn't awakened his father's demon. She had teased him, mocked him, yelled at him, and defied him, but at no point had he felt the need to control her or to strike her. _Is that proof positive that 'love' didn't exist between us, or an indication that something fundamental has changed in my life?_ While revolving the question in his mind, Snape fell asleep.

He slept through the beginning of supper, and was again awakened by pounding on his office door. This time it was Draco Malfoy. "Professor? Professor, are you there? Professor Umbridge wants to see you, sir. It's important."

Snape stood up and walked to the door. "Quiet down, Malfoy. What does she want?"

"She's caught Potter and Granger in her office, Professor. Potter was climbing into the fireplace. It looks like he was trying to escape."

"Really?" Snape was trying to imagine why Potter would do such a thing. "What does Professor Umbridge expect of me?"

"I don't know, sir. She just told me to fetch you."

"Very well." Snape locked up the office with slow care, then strolled towards the entrance hall and the stairs. He might have to obey Umbridge, but he wasn't going to do it quickly. Draco stayed ahead of him, trying to encourage him to go faster. _Probably afraid he's missing something._ At the door to Umbridge's office, Draco was still ahead. He entered first, Snape not far behind.

"You wanted to see me, Headmistress?" he said as he walked through the doorway, taking in Potter, Granger, both Weasleys, Longbottom and, even more surprisingly, Lovegood. Potter stood before Umbridge's desk while the others were being restrained by a predictable assortment of students from Snape's own house.

"Ah, Professor Snape. Yes, I would like another bottle of Veritaserum, as quick as you can, please."

_Hoist on your own petard, you ugly witch!_ "You took my last bottle to interrogate Potter. Surely you did not use it all? I told you that three drops would be sufficient." Snape was rewarded by the telltale crimson that suffused Umbridge's face.

Her voice simpering, Umbridge coaxed, "You can make some more, can't you?"

"Certainly. It takes a full moon cycle to mature, so I should have it ready for you in around a month."

"A month? A month? But I need it this evening, Snape! I have just found Potter using my fire to communicate with a person or persons unknown!"

"Really?" Snape said, glancing over at Potter. _Tonight. It's tonight and either Malfoy's won and the Dark Lord's concocted a convincing illusion, or Bella's kidnapped Sirius Black._ "Well, it doesn't surprise me. Potter has never shown much inclination to follow school rules."

The boy stared back at him, Lily's eyes meeting his own with steady purpose. Snape saw an image, faint and blurred, of Black on his knees before the Dark Lord, defiant but in pain, and heard the familiar high laughter.

Umbridge was bleating into Snape's ear. "I wish to interrogate him! I wish you to provide me with a potion that will force him to tell me the truth!"

Snape divided his own mind, one side speaking to Umbridge while the other tried to project to Potter. "I have already told you that I have no further stocks of Veritaserum. Unless you wish to poison Potter – and I assure you I would have the greatest sympathy with you if you did – I cannot help you. The only trouble is that most venoms act too fast to give the victim much time for truth-telling…"

To Potter the message was: _I understand. I'll try to contact him_, but Potter wasn't receiving. Instead he was broadcasting words over and over: _Voldemort's got Sirius in the Department of Mysteries..._

Meanwhile, Umbridge was livid. "You are on probation! You are being deliberately unhelpful! I expected better, Lucius Malfoy always speaks most highly of you! Now get out of my office!"

_How dearly I would love to see your face on the day you learn that Malfoy has been playing you like a violin, to his tune, not yours._ Snape bowed a play actor's bow and turned to the door to leave. Then Potter nearly ruined everything.

"He's got Padfoot! He's got Padfoot at the place where it's hidden!"

Snape froze, his hand on the doorknob. The words were so obviously a code that he half expected a paralyzing spell to hit him in the back. Mercifully Umbridge was living up to her image of being a trifle thick.

"Padfoot? What is Padfoot? Where what is hidden? What does he mean, Snape?"

Snape looked around at Potter, projecting a message he was certain the boy was incapable of receiving: _You stupid idiot! If I make it out of this, I'm going to ask Dumbledore for permission to skin you alive and hang your pelt in the staffroom._

"I have no idea. Potter, when I want nonsense shouted at me I shall give you a Babbling Beverage. And Crabbe, loosen your hold a little, if Longbottom suffocates it will mean a lot of tedious paperwork, and I am afraid I shall have to mention it on your reference if ever you apply for a job."

Closing the door behind him, Snape took a deep breath, then hurried down the stairs to the entrance hall and out into the long, June afternoon that was fading into evening. Supper was half over, but food was the furthest thing from Snape's mind.

As soon as he was sheltered from view by the bushes along the path, Snape drew his wand and sent a patronus skimming south with the message _Potter has seen you in danger. Are you safe? Are you at home?_ The message was for Sirius Black, and if Black was in the hands of the Dark Lord in the Department of Mysteries, the Dark Lord would see the patronus and there would be no answer.

The wait seemed to go on forever, but it was really only a few minutes before the ghostly dog brought the reply. _I'm at home and well. Is Harry all right?_

Black deserved an answer. Again the fox traveled south. _He's in trouble for rule-breaking as usual, but otherwise fine. As soon as I can talk to him, I'll pass on your message. Do not send again except in need. Umbridge is watching us._

With that business taken care of, Snape walked back up to the castle and into the Great Hall. Some of the students had finished supper, so he sat at the foot of the Slytherin table to eat. That way he could keep an eye on movement in the entrance hall.

Thus it was that Snape saw the curious little parade – Granger, Potter, and Umbridge – as they left the castle and headed down the hill. He went outside to watch them, puzzling why they should be going to the Forbidden Forest. He didn't think there was too much to worry about – Umbridge would ensure that Potter never left the grounds, and that was what was important. So Snape waited.

Several minutes later there was a clatter and a rush of students out of the castle, traveling so hurriedly they didn't even notice Snape standing to one side of the entrance steps. It was the Weasleys, Longbottom, and Lovegood, and they were running for the forest.

Curiouser and curiouser. Then Snape remembered the Slytherin students and rushed up the stairs again.

Malfoy was worst hit, his face covered with bats. Bulstrode and Warrington were on the floor, stunned. The others were recovering from various Impediment and Disarming jinxes. Snape helped the students to the hospital wing, grateful that there were no more serious injuries. Then he went to the windows overlooking the forest to watch for the return of Umbridge and the students.

Long minutes ticked by and finally the sun, descending towards its setting, began to tinge the sky with crimson. Snape could wait no longer. Searching for the best way to communicate, patronuses being good only for short messages, he realized that Potter had chosen Umbridge's office because the fireplace there was not being monitored. He ran up the steps to the second floor and entered Umbridge's domain.

It was a strange feeling, not knowing if she would return and catch him as she'd caught Potter, but there was no help for it. Taking a handful of floo powder from the pot Umbridge kept by the hearth, Snape knelt and tossed it into the fireplace, saying, "Twelve Grimmauld Place."

What Snape saw was the kitchen. "Black!" he called. "Sirius Black! Lupin! Moody! Anybody!"

It was Black who answered. "Where's Harry?" he demanded without preamble.

"I'm not sure," Snape answered. "He and Granger led Umbridge into the Forbidden Forest a couple of hours ago. Several of his friends followed them in. They haven't come back yet."

"A couple of hours ago! And you've been sitting there doing nothing!"

"I've been tending to students they attacked, and I've been waiting for them to come back. They're with Umbridge, who can't afford to have anything happen to Potter. And the whole crew of them are pretty fair spell casters themselves. My main concern is that they don't go to London. They haven't got brooms, and they don't know how to apparate, so I think they're safe on that count."

"What's happening in London?"

"Potter saw a vision of you in the Department of Mysteries being tortured by the Dark Lord. I never had the chance to give him your message, so he doesn't know you're safe. I'm afraid he may try to go to London to help you. He has a tendency to do foolish things like that."

"Brave things, you mean. How do you know about this vision?"

"He projected it to me. I tried to project back that I would contact you, but I don't think he knows how to receive. Anyway, I'm going into the forest to look for them, and I wanted you to know what was happening. If he's found a way to go to London, someone should be sent to the Ministry to head him off."

"I'll go myself."

"That isn't wise. You're the bait. If the Dark Lord gets his hands on you, he'll be able to lure Potter anywhere he chooses. I'm going to try to reach Dumbledore now. Someone should stay at headquarters to let him know what's happening. The logical person is you."

"No. If Harry's in trouble, he needs my help. I'm going in. I'll tell everyone here what's happening, but I'm going in."

"That's only playing into the Dark Lord's hands. You of all people need to stay away."

"No! He's James's son! For Chris'sake, Severus, he's Lily's son! And he's the closest thing to my own son I'll ever have. Dammit, I love him!"

For the length of a heartbeat they stared at each other across the green flames, and all the years that stood between them came down to this one moment.

"Good luck," said Severus.

"Thank you," Sirius replied, and was gone.

The floo connection broken, Snape stood and left the office. Since he was going outside anyway, he waited until he was clear of the castle before he directed the patronus to Dumbledore. _Potter gone into forest. May be trying to reach London. Vision of Black held by V. Am going into forest to search now. Full details at number twelve._

Suddenly, in the gathering darkness, the forest seemed very large. _All I can do is follow their footprints and hope that I find them safe and sound._ As he slipped into the shadow of the trees and lit a Lumos spell, Snape found himself remembering every evil story he'd ever heard about the dangers of the Forbidden Forest. There was no help for it, he had to search. And because of the connection between Potter and the Dark Lord, he had to search alone.

He only hoped that he would find Umbridge and the students well, and be able to return with them to the castle.

What little daylight was left faded, and the dark forest grew darker. Snape had trouble following the path of the students, even though earlier it had seemed as if a herd of buffalo had trampled the undergrowth. He had never gone so deep into the trees before.

Then, suddenly, there was a crash of movement and of powerful bodies around him. Snape froze.

The beings were centaurs. They snorted and pawed the ground, feinting towards him and then pulling back. "You walk where you should not walk, human," one great black one neighed at him.

Snape stood, petrified. He'd watched the palomino, Firenze, enter Hogwarts with Dumbledore, but had never gone close to or spoken with him. These great creatures were enormous, towering over him, their powerful hooves cutting into the turf like knives. Snape wanted no hoof aimed at his head.

"I mean no harm," he said, "and I crave your pardon for coming where I have no right, but I seek our children, young ones led into your land by another human, shorter than I and female."

"The plump mare," snorted the black centaur. "Do you seek her as well?"

Snape thought fast, trying to remember everything he'd ever read about horses in muggle books and magazines. "No, she's an outsider. She came to us trying to take over the herd, and attacked our lead mare. She's stolen the foals, three colts and three fillies."

A chestnut stallion advanced. "What do you wish?"

"To find the foals and return them to the herd. Or at least to know they're safe."

"And your lead mare?"

"Was badly injured, but lives. We are caring for her as best we may."

"Will you take the plump mare as well?"

"If you require it, I will, but none of us wish her to return to the herd."

Stamping hooves shook the earth, and neighing pierced Snape's eardrums. The centaurs moved away, leaving only two to watch him. Snape waited, trying to look submissive, not certain how horses did it.

The chestnut advanced on him again. "Your foals are gone. They found the wingéd ones and mounted them. They have gone south. The mare is with us – you may speak with her, but not take her. There is a moving mountain in the forest, a danger to all sentient creatures, thus you will be silent as you travel with us."

"I will obey the herd guardians of this place."

The centaurs led Snape deeper into the forest while he pondered the information they'd given him. The students had found the 'wingéd ones,' which must mean the thestrals. From northern Scotland to London was a few hours' flight by broom or thestral, so there was a very good chance that Black and the other members of the Order would be at the Ministry well before Potter and the students. That was very good news.

What was not good news was the information about the 'moving mountain.' Snape had no idea what that could be, and as the centaurs seemed to fear it, he hoped fervently that he would not encounter it.

Deep into the forest they went until they reached a large clearing. Neighs and trumpetings reverberated through the trees as the guards greeted the herd. Other centaurs, mares and foals, lunged at him, pulling up just before hitting him. Snape stood very still, forcing himself not to run in panic.

Umbridge cowered in an open space on one side of the clearing, her hair disheveled and her robes torn. Young centaurs pranced around her, dodging in from time to time to nip at her or snatch and pull her hair. The fillies especially seemed to enjoy this game. Umbridge groveled in terror liked a whipped cur, no trace of her former arrogance left.

"Professor," Snape called as he approached her.

"Snape!" she screamed. "Oh, gad, Snape, get me out of here!"

The chestnut intervened. "You said this mare tried to take control of the herd. Do you follow her, or do you follow your herd leader?"

Snape glanced over at Umbridge, who was now hanging on every word. "I follow our herd leader," he said, and Umbridge moaned.

"This is good. Tell your lead mare that we have her rival. As this is no danger to our own herd, we have not harmed her. We will keep her here until your herd leader is well again and sends for this rebel to chastise her. You will return to your herd now, and you will return alone."

Umbridge pleaded and begged, but Snape had no choice. Not that he really wanted one. "I'll tell McGonagall where you are," he called to Umbridge, and let the centaurs escort him back to Hogwarts.

Midnight came and went, and there was still no word of any kind from London. Snape paced his office like a caged thing, desperate for news. Had Potter arrived in London? Were Black and the other members of the Order able to stop him? Had Dumbledore received his message? And, worst of all thoughts, did the Dark Lord have the prophecy?

Then, in the wee hours of the morning, the mark on Snape's arm seared with a terrible pain, more terrible than the day a year before when the Dark Lord had returned. So intense was the summons that Snape almost forgot where he was and started to apparate from his office, stopping just in time to keep from throwing himself against the shields.

_Shack. I have to get to the Shack. I have to go to London_. There was no room for any other thought, and the summons drove Snape down from the castle to the Willow, where he fumbled desperately for the knot, then ran stumbling and tripping through the tunnel to the Shack. A frantic Patefacio tugurium and he was free, apparating at once to Croydon.

Croydon was a madhouse, Death Eaters scurrying like rats, dragging boxes and crates hurriedly packed from rooms that were being gutted. Snape paid no attention, diving for the stairs in panic and racing to the interview chamber, where he threw himself prostrate before the Dark Lord, realizing only then that Bella was already there, lying beside him, moaning in pain.

"You will stand, Potions Master, and you will look at us."

Snape got trembling to his feet and let the Dark Lord search his eyes.

"What do you know of this night?"

"Only that you have summoned me in anger, and the night brought evil to our cause."

"They have failed us, these servants. Failed us and left us with dust. Potter came, but their incompetence has lost the prophecy forever, shattered to pieces in the bowels of the Ministry. And this same incompetence brought our enemies, Dumbledore's Order and even Dumbledore, so that we ourself was forced to reveal our presence to retrieve the smallest crumb from the ashes of so great a debacle."

The Dark Lord pointed a long thin finger at Bella, and she writhed and screamed on the floor.

"Whom have we lost, Potions Master? Who goes tonight to Azkaban?"

"Lord, I do not know. I was not admitted to the planning."

Pain wrapped Snape in fire as the Dark Lord reached out to punish him. "Do not shield yourself in excuses. Defeat for one is defeat for all. Faithless slave," he said to Bella, "tell your fellow servant whom we have lost."

"Malfoy," she gasped, "Macnair… my husband Lestrange and his brother… Rookwood… Dolohov… Avery… Mulciber… Crabbe… Nott… Jugson…"

Snape listened, horrified, as Bella named every first and second rank Death Eater in Britain except for herself. Then the Dark Lord crooked his finger and she screamed again.

"And how many did Dumbledore lose?"

"One, only one…"

"And who will replace those we have lost?" Bella screamed once more, but the Dark Lord no longer paid attention to her. Instead he turned his crimson gaze on the apprehensive Snape. "Who stands above you, Potions Master? Who is there left whose rank outmatches yours?"

It was an answer that terrified Snape, a fate he would have given anything to avoid. "No one, Lord," he replied, and his voice was a hoarse croak.

"So, highest ranking of our advisors, advise us now."

"Lord, why do your servants strip this place as if for departure?"

"It was set up by Malfoy, and he is its secret keeper. We do not trust his strength of will in Azkaban, even though dementors no longer staff it. All the guardians of our branches have been taken."

"Where will we go?"

"It is for you to advise us. Give us an opinion, Potions Master."

"Birmingham, Lord. It's large enough for our whole organization to get lost in, yet far from any of our former centers. But we can't go there now, we have no building to use. Let our people take as much as they can and scatter. When we have a place, you can summon them again."

"Organize it."

"But Lord, I'm expected to be at Hogwarts."

"You have lieutenants."

"No, Lord. My work until now has been solitary. No one follows me."

There was a pause that Snape didn't know how to interpret. When he spoke again, the Dark Lord's voice had changed, lost some of its anger. "You neither follow nor have followers. Who protects you? Who watches your back?"

"I don't go into the field. Why would I need protection, Lord?"

"You are naive." Another pause, and footsteps were heard outside the door. An odd couple came in and knelt before the Dark Lord, short dumpy Peter Pettigrew and a big brutish Death Eater that Snape recognized as Nigel Yaxley.

The Dark Lord pointed again to Bella, and she rose to her knees beside the other two, perspiration beading her face. "This is what I have to give you, Severus. Between them a sorry record of failure, though each has also had some insignificant successes and all long to demonstrate their loyalty. You three will go with Severus now. You will listen to him, advise him to the best of your ability, and follow his instructions. If there is any dispute of the smallest kind, I will accept only Severus's report of what happened. You understand."

"Yes, Lord," the three chorused.

"Severus, I give you access to Malfoy's office. You will stay here until these servants know enough to continue without you. Then you may return to Hogwarts. What you tell Dumbledore I leave to your discretion."

Then the Dark Lord was gone.

As Snape's three new lieutenants rose slowly from their knees, Snape turned to Bella. Somewhat apologetically he asked, "Where is Malfoy's office?"

The spare, austere office was a surprising contrast to the rich luxury of the Malfoy home. Neat and orderly, it reflected the part of Malfoy's personality that was seen most at Croydon, away from family or the political concerns of the Ministry. Snape went at once to the files.

One cabinet contained personnel files, which Snape closed immediately after a brief glance told him what they were. The other contained purely administrative material, blueprints of the building, organizational charts, supply orders, lists of contacts… Snape was amused at Bella's reaction to the mass of meticulously ordered files. It was clear she'd never arranged her own department in any organized way.

"Here. This one is a floor plan of all our departments here, and here's a list of those in charge of the day to day operations in each. Yaxley, do you still have access to Cardiff?"

"No, sir. A new spell was performed when Nott took over."

"Drat. That should have been one of your assignments, to go there and shut down the operation. What about Glasgow; that was Rabastan's. No? Lestrange, you never visited him there? What about Lincoln, Manchester, and Norwich?"

There was no answer. _This is impossible. Five branch offices, and no one in London can enter them. And their secret keepers are all in Azkaban. Why don't I just let the Ministry get the secrets from them?_ But that was not an option. The Dark Lord would accept no more loss of personnel or assets, and would punish the one who failed him now, possibly with death. For now, Snape worked for the Dark Lord to the best of his ability.

Snape began a thorough search of every file in the cabinet. He was rewarded almost at once with lists of safe houses all over Britain, from Cornwall and Kent to the Isle of Skye. Pulling the file out and tossing it on the desk, he said, "Go through that. Those are the locations we're dispersing to." Then he saw the narrow folder that was titled simply 'notes.'

Inside were five small pieces of note paper, folded in thirds and sealed with paper wafers. On the back of each was written a name: Cardiff – Glasgow – Lincoln – Manchester – Norwich. Malfoy thought of everything.

_Something so valuable and yet so useless. Only one person can look at each note, and then it's gone. And that one person can't be me because I can't go out to the branches now. And it has to be now._ Quietly he handed three of the papers to Yaxley, and two to Bella.

"After we review what needs to be done, Yaxley you go to Norwich, Lincoln, and Cardiff – Lestrange to Manchester and Glasgow – and do the same there. Pettigrew will coordinate the evacuation here."

They spent hours going over the details of packing, and which departments had to be near each other to continue operations, and which branches would use what safe houses, and how communications would be set up to minimize exposure. Then Snape's lieutenants separated, each to his or her assignments. Snape himself went to the Dark Lord with a detailed report of all they had discussed and would do.

It was late afternoon before Snape returned, exhausted, to Hogwarts. In all the time at Croydon, he had not once looked in to observe the packing of his own laboratory. He didn't have the heart.

Students were congregating in small groups around the lawn and in the entrance hall talking animatedly. At first Snape wondered about it, then he remembered it was Friday afternoon and they were free for the weekend. Then he remembered the fifth years had been taking OWLs and they would just have finished with their last exams. Proctoring OWLs seemed ages in the past but it had really been, what? yesterday morning? Part of Snape's brain was telling him he needed to inform McGonagall of something, and another part was saying that it was impossible, though Snape was not sure why. He was too tired to try to find out anything more, having had a total of six hours sleep in the last two and a half days. He made his way quietly to his rooms and lay down, attempting to clear his mind so he could think rationally.

Just as he was drifting off to sleep, a gentle rapping at the door roused him. Dragging himself from the bed, his head now throbbing, Snape opened the door. Dumbledore stood there, smiling benignly.

"Ah, Severus, you have no idea how relieved I was to hear that you had come back in apparent good health. When I returned this morning and found you had left during the night I was concerned, truly concerned. May I come in?"

"Certainly, Headmaster. I'm sorry." Snape stepped aside as Dumbledore entered. He was trying to remember why Dumbledore wasn't supposed to be there, but…

"Are you all right? You look terribly ill. Here, sit down. Let me get you something." Dumbledore conjured coffee and a plate of sandwiches, insisting that Snape eat and drink before asking or answering any questions. The food helped, and Snape began to feel that his brain was working again.

"There. That's better. You're looking more like your old self already. Do you need to see Pomfrey? Did Riddle give you a bad time last night?"

"Bad time? No, I don't think so." Then it started coming back to him. "Something went terribly wrong last night, and we lost the whole upper echelon. Everybody. Except Bella – he brought Bella back. They're all gone. To Azkaban. That's why he put me in charge."

Dumbledore's silence was the silence of a man watching as his ball nears the cup at the end of a ninety-foot putt. "In charge?" he prompted after a moment.

"All the secret keepers are gone. We have to close down the branches… headquarters… and disperse all over Britain. I've been coordinating that. I… Bella works for me now."

"Do you know all the places where your people are dispersing to? Where your next headquarters will be?"

"Yes, but…" Snape stopped and stared at Dumbledore in horror. "You can't. You can't take them out. He'll know it's me. He'll kill me. He'll do worse than kill me. Only three of us know – him, Bella, and me. You can't do this to me!" Snape rose to his feet as he spoke looking around him for a way out of the room, out of the whole situation.

"Easy Severus. Easy. I see you are distraught from the events of the last couple of days. I assure you I shall do nothing that would increase the danger you are in. Sit. Sit down. Good. Now, I have a question I must ask you, nothing about Riddle or your headquarters, so do collect yourself, please."

Snape took several deep breaths and nodded.

"Excellent. Now, do you know where Professor Umbridge is? Harry says he last saw her in the forest, in the company of several of the centaurs."

"Umbridge… Yes, she's still with them. They consider her a renegade for challenging the lead mare, and they're holding her until McGonagall returns."

"Ah. I should be able to handle that."

"Professor? What happened last night? The Dark Lord's people have been taken to Azkaban, and Bella said one of… our people was 'lost.' He didn't give more details, and I couldn't ask him or Bella."

"I thought you knew. Harry and his friends went to the Department of Mysteries and were trapped by Death Eaters. There was a fight in which the students performed very well, then members of the Order arrived. We suffered injuries, but… Sirius Black was killed. The prophecy was destroyed. Riddle will never hear it."

"Killed? Sirius Black was killed?"

"I am afraid so."

"He… I… He should have stayed at Grimmauld Place. It was the logical thing to do. I told him…"

"Yes, I know. Lupin told me you'd talked to him and suggested he stay away from the Ministry."

"He wouldn't listen. He had to help Potter."

"That is correct. No one could dissuade him."

Snape sat for awhile, looking at his hands. "Who killed him?"

"Bella Lestrange."

"I see." They were silent for a few moments. "Headmaster, do you need me for anything else? I am really very tired."

"That is all right, Severus. You get some sleep. I have a couple of things I have to do now, in any case. We can talk again tomorrow."

Dumbledore left, and Snape returned to his bedroom.

xxxxxxxxxx

_He looked into the window at the little dog. 'I want it, Mum,' he said, but his mother cuffed him. 'They make you weak,' she said. 'Anyone who's ever owned one became weak.' Toby came out then with the puppy in his arms. 'Every boy needs one, 'Leen,' he said. 'You just got to beat 'em now and again.' Eileen struggled to keep the dog away, even though Hagrid was fighting against her, and in the end Eileen won. Toby gave the dog to Sirius._

_He had to get to the fifth floor because Umbridge moved his Potions class to the fifth floor on account of the OWLs. The staircases kept shifting, though, and he knew he was hours late. There was a boat to take him across the swamp, rowed by Filch, but halfway across he realized it was really Lily. 'You were supposed to bring me a puppy,' she said, so he told her Sirius had it. 'Well if you can't give it to me, maybe he can give it to Harry,' she replied._

_The boat landed, and he had to get out because his arm hurt. There was a metal detector at the door into headquarters, searching for the dogs that everyone was trying to bring in. He didn't have a dog, so he got through all right, but they stopped Sirius and sent him to Azkaban because of the dog._

_He was standing in front of Imperial College. 'You can't get in without a dog,' they told him. He was desperate, because Phina was already inside, cradling a little black puppy dog in her arms. 'It's easy,' she called to him, 'just relax and open your mouth a little and let it happen.' Just then Sirius came up, and he was holding a dog, too. Sirius gave the dog to Potter, then walked into the college and kissed Phina on the forehead. Toby closed the doors. 'You're not qualified,' was the last thing he said._

Snape lay staring up at where the ceiling would be if it were light enough to see the ceiling. _It must be after midnight. Maybe around two in the morning._ He was most intensely aware of his bitter disappointment, as fresh now as the day he first realized he would never enter Imperial College. Then snippets of the dream came back to him, and he tried to assign a rational explanation to the image of Phina and Sirius entering a scientific college when neither knew the least thing about real science.

That was when Snape remembered that Sirius Black was dead – he had a vague recollection that it was Dumbledore who'd told him this. Black was dead. He should be happy, but he wasn't. Instead he felt empty. He closed his eyes and conjured the image of Black's face, so raw with passion and violence. So much like Bella's face, yet so different.

No, he wasn't happy that Black was dead. He didn't feel anything. Just empty. The feeling you get when someone tells you about a car that crashed into a ditch without the driver having a chance to step on the brake. That feeling. Powerless. Empty.

Bella. It was her fault. She'd killed Phina by accident, and now Snape was certain she'd killed Black on purpose. Her own cousin. Not that blood meant anything to Bella, not unless it was flowing across the pavement.

Reckoning that he'd had somewhere close to eight hours' sleep, and no longer tired, Snape rose and dressed, then slipped along silent corridors to the entrance hall and thence outside. He was heading for the steeper paths that fringed the cliff face and led down to the lake shore. The newly crescent moon was gone now, leaving the world starlit and treacherous, but Snape's night vision was good, and he knew the way well.

Lily's rock was there, an unchanging beacon in a turbulent world. Snape settled on the grass beside it, as he'd done so many times, and watched the stars.

_Did I love you, Lily? Sirius saw love as his willingness to face danger for your son. Maybe, back then when the world was young, and you were still alive, I saw danger in the same way. Even last year, when I left this place with the future veiled and uncertain, I still felt a little of the magic of danger – as if I could touch you again when the stakes were high enough. The magic's gone now. I guess as we get older, pain and fear become more real. The only rock I have to cling to now is duty, and sometimes that seems weak and brittle. It would help if I knew I loved you. I suppose if you have to ask the question, the answer is no._

_So in the end, Sirius was the one, of all of us, the most blessed. He met his fate with clear, open eyes, untroubled by doubt. He knew why he died, and he knew it was worthwhile. Was that how you died? Clear eyed, untroubled by doubt? I have so many doubts, and my vision is blurred._

Dawn came early to the northern sky, for the solstice had crept up on them while Snape sorted through files in Malfoy's office a scant twenty-four hours earlier. Meditation is for the night hours, for solitude and the company of the stars. With daylight come labor and duty.

Snape rose and brushed grass blades and sand from his robes. Then he walked quietly up the steep path to the castle, almost ready for whatever the day would bring.

One of Snape's first tasks was to invite into his office the children of the Death Eaters who had been taken to Azkaban. Draco Malfoy and Vincent Crabbe were predictably accompanied by Gregory Goyle, while Theodore Nott stood a little apart from them. All of them were aware of what had happened, and Snape felt a little guilty about not speaking with them the previous afternoon, as soon as he returned from Croydon.

"Don't worry too much about your fathers," Snape assured them. With these four he didn't have to hide his dual life. They already knew. "The Dark Lord has indicated to me that Azkaban has lost its dementors. I'm not privy to the details, but they seem to have abandoned the Ministry and returned to him."

Nott began to tremble with relief, and Goyle put a hand on Crabbe's shoulder. Malfoy remained unmoving, though the tight lines of his face relaxed a little.

"What you do now," Snape continued, "is stay here. This is the most secure place until we find out how the Ministry is reacting to what happened. The whole organization is… busy – you will understand that I can't give you details – and the rest of your families will be able to attend to their duties better if they know you're safe."

"Can't we help?" insisted Malfoy. "Can't we do something?"

"No. It's been the Dark Lord's wish since last June that we remain under cover. That order is still in effect. The best way you can obey it is to act normally and give our enemies no opening to attack us until we're ready. Do you understand?"

They nodded. It was the first time that Snape had spoken to them directly of the Dark Lord, and even Malfoy seemed impressed and willing to follow orders.

Breakfast was like entering a different world. The Great Hall was in an uproar, a condition caused by the end of exams, the approaching end of the school year, the removal of Umbridge, and the triumphant return of Dumbledore, who once again presided over the meal from his seat at the high table. As soon as Snape entered the Hall, Dumbledore beckoned him over.

"Thank you for your information yesterday. You will be pleased – well, maybe not pleased, but at least interested – to know that Dolores Umbridge is safe with Madam Pomfrey. It will be some time before she is in any condition to bother us further."

"That is good news, Headmaster. What about Hagrid?"

"He should be back later today. He'll have some explaining to do. Did the centaurs mention to you that there was a strange presence in the forest?"

"They did. A moving mountain, or something like that. What's it got to do with Hagrid?"

"His brother, or rather half-brother, it would appear. Hagrid has been trying to civilize him."

"I see. We have a giant on the grounds. You wouldn't be planning to put a nesting pair of dragons here as well, would you?"

"It is a thought, Severus."

Snape apparated to Croydon early in the afternoon. Most of the offices had been cleared out, and the movement in the corridors seemed more orderly than the day before, probably because everyone now knew that they had somewhere to go.

After clearing the next step with the Dark Lord, Snape began the process of signing out the different departments, first getting from each a complete inventory of what they were taking and then giving instructions on how they should maintain cover, and how they would be contacted when it was time.

By evening Bella and Yaxley were back. The last of the departments was checking out, and the skeleton demolition crew was removing partitions and returning the old building to its previous state. The only things that hadn't been taken out were Malfoy's files and the crates and boxes in the laboratory.

The four of them, Snape, Bella, Pettigrew, and Yaxley, appeared for the last time before the Dark Lord in that interview chamber. Snape presented the Dark Lord with the lists of safe destinations, who staffed them, and with what supplies.

"You have done well. Now find us a new center. We shall contact you to learn of your progress."

"Lord, how may we contact you at need?"

"You may not. What we shall do now is not for you to share. You will go to safe places, perform your tasks, and wait for our call."

"Lord," squeaked Pettigrew, "I have no place to go."

"Severus, you will provide a hiding place for Wormtail. Wormtail, you will assist Severus in any way he requires of you."

"Yes, Lord," both replied.

The Dark Lord was gone, and Snape was saddled with Pettigrew. Together they made their way out to the front entrance. "Wait here," Snape said, and went upstairs without waiting for a response.

One of the demolition crew followed Snape into the laboratory. "We've held off on this room until you approved it," he said. "We didn't want to damage anything."

"Thank you. I'll only be a moment. Do you think you might wait outside until I call you?"

The workman nodded and left, though Snape had the suspicion that he was deeply curious.

What happened next had been carefully prepared that morning by himself and Professor Flitwick. First, the boxes containing the bottles and jars of chemicals and potions ingredients were set to one side. They would remain as they were. It was the boxes of cauldrons and of glassware, of beakers and test tubes, that had to be reduced. That, and most of the equipment. The bulk, rather than the weight, was the problem.

Snape opened the first box of beakers and began using a shrinking spell of Flitwick's. The first beaker kept its size and was lined with a thin layer of special padding. Another beaker was reduced just enough to fit inside the first, and also lined. Successively smaller beakers nested into the first ones until he had seven condensed into the space of one. Then Snape began another nesting group. In this way, he reduced fourteen boxes of various containers down to two. Each box was seven times heavier, but not inordinately heavy.

The mistake many wizards made was to try to make things too small. The concentration of weight over a tiny amount of area tended to crash through floors and demolish staircases. By limiting the scale of reduction, and concentrating especially on boxes of empty vessels that contained mostly air, Snape was able to condense thirty-five cases into eleven. These he bound together and moved downstairs with a levitation spell.

"You can take out the lab now," he told the workman as he left.

Downstairs Snape deposited the cases next to Pettigrew. "Watch these," he ordered, and went next to Malfoy's old office. This was a totally different problem, since it was almost impossible to reduce a mass of paper to any appreciable extent and still have it light enough to transport.

Instead, Snape shredded the paper into boxes. It took up less space, and became illegible in the process. Later the individual sheets could be reconstituted with another spell. It was a combination that Flitwick was particularly proud of. Snape left the file cabinets for the demolition crew.

Rejoining Pettigrew, Snape directed the moving of seventeen boxes out of headquarters and apparated with the first seven to his home in Lancashire. Then he returned to Croydon, where he first checked the progress of the demolition, then joined Pettigrew to apparate together with the remaining ten boxes.

Although returned to its original state, headquarters remained invisible to the general public, since its secret keeper was imprisoned in Azkaban and could not undo the Fidelius Charm.

Once home, there was the problem of Pettigrew. Snape deposited him in the front room, then moved all the boxes to the storeroom next to his own bedroom. He then locked the room with powerful charms. Pettigrew, having spent most of the last fifteen years as a rat in a schoolboy's pocket, was generally proficient in elementary spells, but deficient in advanced ones. Snape was still taking no chances.

Returning downstairs, Snape faced Pettigrew. It was the closest contact the two had ever had in their lives. "I do hope you realize how I feel about this situation."

Pettigrew nodded, swiping his nose with a finger, for all the world like a giant rat cleaning its whiskers. "You don't want me. I'm intruding."

"Just so we understand each other. The hardest part will be the first week, since I have to be at Hogwarts. After that it'll get easier. One, you never leave this house except in my company. There are things about this muggle community you don't know, and a false step could ruin us. Two, you don't go upstairs. I find you've been snooping around in my home, and I'll take you down to the Royal Artillery practice range, have you blown to smithereens, and tell the Dark Lord it was an accident. Got it?"

Snape conjured a cot. "This is your bed. If you prefer, you can use the sofa. There's an extensive library that you have full permission to read. It might do you good. Food will be in the kitchen. I'll try to get back once a day to see that everything's going smoothly. This situation will last for one week. Think you can handle it?"

Pettigrew nodded again, somehow contriving to look more like a rat than ever. Trying to remember that this was not Pettigrew's fault, Snape apparated back to Hogwarts.

The next day was Sunday and, after having slept in, eaten a leisurely breakfast, spent an inordinate amount of time playing cribbage with Flitwick, and retired just before lunch to his office, Snape was once again headed for the Great Hall. The luxury of having two uninterrupted meals in a row was almost too much to bear.

It was also too much to hope for. Stepping out of the dungeons into the entrance hall, Snape was presented with the tableau of Potter, wand drawn, threatening Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle, all of them wandless, though Malfoy's hand was near his robes.

_Does this boy never stop?_ "Potter!" Snape yelled, freezing all four. "What are you doing, Potter?"

The answer was blatantly defiant. "I'm trying to decide what curse to use on Malfoy, sir."

_The boy's had a rough week. Treat it like a normal infraction of the rules…_ "Put that wand away at once. Ten points from Gryff… Ah, I see there are no longer any points left in the Gryffindor hourglass to take away. In that case, Potter, we will simply have to…"

"Add some more?" McGonagall stood in the doorway.

Potter was forgotten at the sound of the well-loved voice. Snape moved forward to take her hand. "Professor McGonagall! Out of St. Mungo's, I see!"

"Yes, Professor Snape, I'm quite as good as new." She then thrust forward her carpetbag and cape. "You two – Crabbe – Goyle – here. Take these up to my office for me."

Having deftly removed two of the students, McGonagall turned to Snape, laughter just barely playing at the corners of her mouth. "Right then. Well, I think Potter and his friends ought to have fifty points apiece for alerting the world to the return of… You-Know-Who! What say you, Professor Snape?"

"What?" It merely countered Umbridge's depredations, but Snape protested for form's sake. "Oh – well – I suppose…"

"So that's fifty each for Potter, the two Weasleys, Longbottom, and Miss Granger."

Snape raised his eyebrows in mock disbelief.

"Oh – and fifty for Miss Lovegood, I suppose," said McGonagall. "Now, you wanted to take ten from Mr. Potter, I think, Professor Snape – so there we are…" The colored baubles moved from section to section of the house hourglasses. "Well, Potter, Malfoy, I think you ought to be outside on a glorious day like this." And with that the confrontation was over, Potter heading out the front door, and Malfoy back to the Slytherin common room.

"How are you, you old tigress you?" asked Snape as the students vanished from the entrance hall. "Is St. Mungo's still standing."

"It was when I departed. I thought I might leave it there, just in case I scraped a knee or got a splinter from a student's wand."

Snape offered McGonagall his arm, and together they went in to lunch.

The year ended, as it always did, with the feast at the end of the week. Snape, who had visited Spinner's End faithfully every day, was thoughtful enough to take some of the food back to Pettigrew so that he could celebrate, too. Beyond that, Snape had no idea what he was going to do with the man while waiting for the Dark Lord's summons. Unless, of course, he found a way to quiz Pettigrew about the events leading up to the disaster at Godric's hollow.

The morning after the feast, the students boarded the Hogwarts Express and returned to King's Cross Station. The teachers, breathing great sighs of relief, straightened their rooms, locked their doors, and went home for the all too brief holiday. This time their departure was tinged by worry about what the future would bring, with the confirmation that He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named was once again on the loose, but freedom from school was freedom from school, and little could spoil the holiday atmosphere.

Snape expected no vacation. First and foremost, he was now living with Peter Pettigrew, a damper on any occasion. Then, he was expecting the Dark Lord's summons at any time, and had to work to find a new headquarters building before that happened. Finally, Dumbledore had asked him to be on twenty-four hour call. The headmaster implied that he would be searching for something dangerous, and he depended on Snape to be ready to assist him.

So the vacation that was no vacation started, with the Dark Lord in hiding, and Snape more powerful and at the same time more vulnerable than he'd ever been in his life. He was not looking forward to the next school year.


	56. Chapter 56 – Narrowing Options

**Too Much for Granted: Narrowing Options**

_Sunday, June 30, 1996 (the day before the full moon)_

Severus Snape sat comfortably in his own room in his own home sipping a cup of tea and poring over the stacks of personnel files he'd brought from Death Eater headquarters in Croydon. At first he was fascinated by the wealth of detail – personal histories, family members, habits, skills and observed talents, and current assignment. Then he became even more intrigued by what wasn't there, or rather who wasn't there.

There was no file on Lucius Malfoy. Neither was there a file on Bella Lestrange or, for that matter, on Snape himself. No first or second rank Death Eater, and few in the third rank, had a file. As near as he could tell, it was a question of access to the Dark Lord. Those who spoke directly to the Dark Lord retained their privacy. The rank and file were under the microscope.

A few, a very few, did not list a current assignment. The whereabouts of Fenrir Greyback, for example, was curiously unknown. The same for the Carrows, Gibbon, and Rowle. Several possible causes for this anomaly occurred to Snape, but his favorite theory was that they were on some sort of special assignment for the Dark Lord

Noise from downstairs brought Snape back to his immediate surroundings and to the hour. Poor Peter Pettigrew was about to learn that his holiday was over, and that the time for work had arrived. The most important commission that the Dark Lord had given Snape was the location of a new headquarters building, and he was due in Birmingham that morning to meet with Bella Lestrange and Nigel Yaxley on that very matter.

Descending the narrow staircase that replaced the original and opened through a moveable bookcase directly into the sitting room, Snape looked around for Pettigrew. The clatter of dishes led him into the kitchen in the rear of the house. Pettigrew looked up somewhat apologetically as Snape walked in.

"Breakfast is almost ready," he said. "I just have to get this thing working."

"I told you it doesn't work. There's no gas supplied to the house. No gas, no electricity… You have to cook it on the grate. Or use magic."

Pettigrew's talents as a cook made it easy to remember that he'd spent twelve years as a rat living in a student's pocket. Snape found a Victorian toast holder, placed a piece of bread in it and handed it to Pettigrew.

"Hold this near the coals, not too close or you'll burn it, and keep turning it until both sides are evenly toasted." Snape himself took a frying pan and set it heating on the grate to fry eggs. It was definitely not Hogwarts fare, but Snape usually didn't mind. Sharing it with Pettigrew was a bit of a burden, however, since Pettigrew tended to either grovel or whine about everything.

"I'm grateful that you're so knowledgeable about these muggle technologies. Toast in wire baskets, I wouldn't have guessed."

Snape shook his head, choosing not to reply. Instead he commented on the day's work. "We're going to meet Lestrange and Yaxley this morning. We have a headquarters to find. How much do you know about buying real estate?"

Not much, it appeared, so Snape tried to give Pettigrew a crash course on square footage, load-bearing walls, electrical wiring, and plumbing, but it was a lost cause. "Just be sure I get to see it before you sign a contract for anything," he said finally.

It was time. Leaving the small house for the area yard in the rear, Snape and Pettigrew looked around, then apparated to the side of the nursery in car park nine at Aston University. There Bella and Yaxley met them a few minutes later.

"Why here?" Bella asked, looking around.

"A place very few people are likely to be at midmorning on the last Sunday in June," replied Snape. "We didn't want to apparate into a crowd."

They found a coffee shop not far away, where Snape took out a map and a list of wards and street addresses.

"What we're looking for is an older building in one of the less prosperous wards where fewer people will pay attention to us. There's a lot of the old brick terraced housing left. The optimum would be an entire terrace. We could gut the interior and make one large office area, while it would still look like individual dwellings from the street. You can work together as a group, or you can split up and look individually. No strong-arm tactics, though. Subtle."

"What do you mean, 'you?' Aren't you coming with us?" Bella asked, her eyes narrowing suspiciously.

"I have other work to do."

"How many masters do you serve?"

Yaxley and Pettigrew were suddenly still, watching Snape and Bella carefully, not about to take sides.

"Do you doubt my loyalty?" Snape asked quietly

"Maybe someone should."

"I'll tell the Dark Lord you question his judgment. I'm not the one who requested this position."

Bella was silent. The other two began to breathe again. Then Bella spoke up once more. "How do we know you aren't trying to manipulate us into moving where we can be attacked?"

Snape shut down, cold and dangerous. "If we weren't surrounded by muggles, I'd take you out right now. Say the word, and you and I can apparate to the Grampians for a little duel."

It was Bella who backed down. "I just meant that you're an unknown. We don't know how far we should follow you because you haven't proven yourself yet."

"Then let me reassure you. If I wanted to manipulate the location of headquarters, I wouldn't be leaving you here to do the choosing. I'd be selecting it myself. But I'm assuming you'll have found a place in the next few days, so I have to be organizing the moving in of equipment and personnel so the Dark Lord doesn't have to be kept waiting. Would you rather be doing that while I'm looking for the building?"

Bella shook her head, and the challenge was beaten back. After circling possibly fruitful locations on the map, Snape apparated back to his home.

That evening Pettigrew was tired and whining about the tribulations of the day. "…and she kept insisting that we could cast Imperius curses and force the estate agents to sell at a discount, and she wanted to turn a couple of tenants into cockroaches. If we have to work with her, we'll never find a new location."

"You can always work around her. It's a matter of negating her influence. You've done it before."

Pettigrew stared at Snape. "When did I ever…?"

"Oh, not with Lestrange. With her cousin Sirius. You had everyone believing for twelve years that he blew you up, not the other way around. You even fooled Dumbledore. Surely someone who could fool Dumbledore could handle Bella Lestrange."

"Well, maybe. That was a rather good setup."

"I've always wanted to ask – how did you do it?"

"It was really simple. Sirius didn't have the explosion spell, I did. Since I knew when it would go off, I could transform and get out at the right moment. I just had to cut off a finger and leave it there for everyone to believe I was dead. The biggest problem was the timing."

"I see. Ingenious."

The next day passed much the same, with Snape joining the other three from time to time to check out buildings that had some promise. That evening they found the perfect location, in a ward somewhat east of the city center. The next day they bought it.

The row of houses was in poor condition, its brick still obscured by more than half a century of coal smoke that all the intervening clean air acts couldn't wash away. The company that owned it was delighted to get such a high offer for the dilapidated buildings, since some meddling do-gooder had requested the property be given historical landmark status, and until the years of paperwork were gotten through it couldn't be sold to a modern developer.

Only two of the units were occupied – poor working families that were equally delighted to have their leases bought out for enough money to allow them to move somewhere better, something arranged that very day. Moving was handled by a local Death Eater crew that didn't have to disturb the neighborhood with things like vans. The rest of the units were in such poor condition that they'd been boarded up. The appropriate distribution of carefully selected mind spells and honest to goodness real muggle money allowed all the formalities of vacating and purchasing to be accomplished at once, since somehow everyone was under the impression that the deal had been in progress for weeks instead of being worked out in one day. The muggles were left with the memory that everything had proceeded quite normally.

Bella had to be banned from the negotiations, however, since she insisted on using words like squalor and hovel, and was generally not inclined to be diplomatic.

_Wednesday, July 3, 1996_

Snape was summoned the following morning to the Dark Lord. The place was a northern heath, vacant of everything for miles around except stone walls and sheep.

"You have found us a home."

"Yes, Lord. We await only your permission to perform the secrecy spells."

"You will not do so. We shall come ourself to attend to the spell. We shall be our own secret keeper."

"Yes, Lord. When that is done, we can begin the renovations." Snape paused. "Lord, if I may be bold…"

"Speak."

"Lord, the location takes up a significant amount of space, and there will be considerable movement in and out. I've been working on modifications to the spell that will allow an outer shell to remain visible at the lowest level of consciousness. People will know something is there but never have any reason to notice it." Snape took a folded piece of parchment from his robes. "If my Lord would condescend to…"

The Dark Lord received the parchment. "We will look at it," he said.

Bella had refused to set foot inside until the renovation was complete, so Snape, Yaxley, and Pettigrew cleaned things up in preparation for the Dark Lord. They couldn't begin any demolition or rebuilding until the property was shielded from notice by neighboring eyes.

An advance guard apparated in to the 'new' headquarters building that evening to secure the place for the Dark Lord's arrival. Snape was a little surprised to see who accompanied the Dark Lord – Gibbon, Greyback, Amycus, Alecto, and Rowle. Snape was curious as to when they'd returned from wherever they'd been, but he was not to have his curiosity satisfied, since he and his two lieutenants were ordered out. They were not to observe either the arrival of the Dark Lord, or the spell that was performed.

It was quite late, and the area was quiet and sleeping, when suddenly the headquarters building disappeared. There was a sense of some kind of wall that concealed the end of the block – if pressed, Snape would have called it boardings around a construction site – but nothing that would allow entry. Gibbon appeared out of nowhere with a bundle of small, folded note papers, handing one each to Snape, Yaxley, and Pettigrew, and giving the rest of the bundle into Snape's keeping.

"Here's a list of the people you give them to. There's one each. One of them doesn't get a note, or the wrong person gets a note, and heads will roll. The Dark Lord has to approve everyone who gets access. No stray passes lying around. He wants to move in by noon tomorrow."

Snape nodded in understanding. They'd have to work all night. Gibbon disapparated. Snape and his lieutenants apparated to Snape's home where he gave them safe house locations of everyone on the Dark Lord's list with instructions to have them meet on the street outside headquarters in half an hour to start the rebuilding. Then Snape returned to Birmingham with blueprints. Opening and reading his own note, he watched as the building reformed, then he entered and began setting up for his work crews.

_Thursday, July 4, 1996_

By eleven o'clock the next morning, the work was done. The interior of the entire terrace had been gutted, except for the upper floor itself. Snape had been a little nervous about the load-bearing pillars and beams that replaced the walls, but careful monitoring had insured that they were properly placed. An underground area had been added as well, the excavated dirt being disposed of by sprinkling it over the Lake District and Snowdonia National Park.

Much of the underground area was taken up by an arena that could be used for conferences, demonstrations, combat training, or punishment. The interview chamber was on the other end of the building, connected to the entrance by a staircase. There were also several holding pens and cells. The ground floor was offices. Field Operations had the largest space, while smaller rooms were designated for Recruitment, Disinformation, Intelligence, Accounting, and so forth. The supplies that were used on a daily basis were also stored there, and there was a reference library.

The upper floor contained more storerooms, the clinic, a cafeteria (since the Dark Lord preferred his servants to eat and socialize on the premises rather than among the general population), and Snape's laboratory. Two of the original bedrooms were retained next to the cafeteria as small dormitories for Death Eaters who had to stay at headquarters longer than a day.

The Dark Lord arrived at noon, and entered for the first and only time through the front door. Snape, Yaxley, and Pettigrew gave him a tour of the premises, after which he retired to the interview chamber, where he would oversee the arrangement of his own personal space.

Shortly thereafter, Snape was summoned to the interview chamber. In the center was a small table, on which was a box filled with the folded pieces of note paper. Each note had the name of a Death Eater written on it.

"You have done well. Malfoy always praised your organizational skills, with some justification it appears. You will now start bringing our people and supplies in. You will be called again later in the afternoon. Act quickly. We begin operations as soon as possible."

Orders went out together with the individual notes, and soon Death Eaters were apparating in with boxes, crates, and furniture. The back area yards were designated as service entry points to keep the mass movement off the street. As each Death Eater arrived, he or she was told the office they were assigned to. Bella came in the middle of all the movement and was shown her new Field Operations office. She was less critical than Snape had dared hope for.

At two o'clock, Snape, Bella, Yaxley, and Pettigrew were in the interview chamber.

"Our first target is the Ministry of Magic. Tonight."

"Lord," said Snape, "we are not yet at full strength. Wouldn't it be wiser to wait?"

"Silence. What you offer would be good advice at another time, but for now you are too cautious. Listen… The Ministry served us well for a year, keeping our presence hidden while we regrouped. Now they think to weaken us by making our presence as public as they can. We shall teach them that they cannot control us this way. We shall control the Ministry, and if they resist, we shall make this confrontation so public that the Ministry will be overwhelmed by it. Tonight the Minister of Magic will be ordered to resign his position in my favor. He will, of course, refuse. Then we shall broadcast our presence in such a way that the whole of Britain, wizard and muggle alike, will tremble in fear of us. Fudge will be toppled, as will each of his successors, until the Ministry falls into our hands like ripe fruit."

"Lord," said Bella, "my department is ready to do your bidding."

"You will not be called on. The operation is already under way, and its coordination rests with another."

"Is it wise, Lord, to entrust too much to one pair of hands?"

"You are anxious, Bella, to redeem yourself. This is commendable, but the time is not yet ripe. Let others prove themselves; your opportunity will come later. Severus, you know what we shall need. Coordinate with the clinic, and be certain that all eventualities have been planned for. You may go."

In the corridor, Bella turned to confront Snape. "You think your star is going to eclipse mine, don't you? Well don't get too comfortable up there. I'm already climbing back, and my credentials are better than yours."

Snape didn't think it was necessary to inform Bella that he was not the one coordinating whatever it was. He checked the progress of the restaffing of headquarters, then apparated home and started ferrying in his lab equipment and Malfoy's files, which he stored in the laboratory.

Lancashire seemed a good place from which to send Dumbledore a patronus, it being out of the way and not watched, and on one of his trips Snape took a moment to do so. This was the first time he had conjured a patronus since contacting Sirius Black about Potter's vision, and when he went out onto the moors, he thought what he was doing would be fairly routine. It was not.

The incantation _"Expecto Patronum!"_ this time produced no silvery fox, but a delicate, prancing doe. Snape stared at it, dumbfounded. _Where did that come from? What's happening to me if I can't even be consistent with a patronus?_ The question of why the fox had metamorphosed into a doe was quickly shut behind a mental door, for there was a more urgent problem to deal with – that of getting word to Dumbledore. For some reason, Snape was reluctant to let the headmaster know of the change in his patronus.

In the end, though, there was no other course. Snape owned no owl, and there was no way he could communicate by floo network, for even had Pettigrew not been in his home, the house was not connected. Luckily the patronus carried his voice, which Dumbledore would recognize. Again conjuring the patronus, Snape sent the doe speeding northward. 'Ministry being blackmailed. Highly public attack planned. No information yet on what, where, or when.'

That accomplished, Snape returned to the job of moving his equipment to Birmingham. At the end of the day, he apparated to his home and the unpleasant prospect of spending another evening with Pettigrew. Just before that last trip, however, he took a moment to review the day's surprise. _Do I know anyone with a deer patronus?_ he thought. _Potter has a stag. Could that mean that his father's patronus was also a stag?_

The thoughts were quickly locked away again. It was best not to pursue that line of logic. Not if he still wanted to be able to maintain an impenetrable facade before the Dark Lord.

_Friday, July 5, 1996_

The next day around the lunch hour, Snape left setting up his laboratory to grab a bite to eat in the cafeteria. It was fairly full, but there were still a few small tables that were empty. Snape, preferring to eat alone anyway, chose one in a corner where few would see him. He was there when Greyback came in with Gibbon.

"Ah-ooo!" howled Greyback. "Set 'em up and let me knock 'em back. I felt it today! If you told me yesterday a bunch of steel girders and concrete pylons would hit my gut like tearing out a throat, I'd of thought you was crazy, but watching those cars hit the water… Blood rush!"

Gibbon tossed a couple of galleons to the servers. "Something a lot stronger than tea for everyone! We struck a blow for the Dark Lord today that they'll hear all over Britain. Let's see the Ministry hush this one up!"

People had left their tables and were crowding around the two, eager for information. Through the babble of voices punctuated by Greyback's howls, Snape realized they were talking about a catastrophe, a bridge that collapsed and spilled muggle cars into the river below. "Where?" he asked, and other voices picked up the question. "Where?"

"Brockdale! Broke apart like a house of cards! We'll teach those muggles to fear us!"

Snape toasted the success with the others, but left as soon as he could without being obvious. Leaving through the service entrance, he slipped out of the area yard and down the block to send a patronus. 'Death Eaters claim to have brought down Brockdale Bridge. Do you have any news of bridge collapse? Do not reply, it could be dangerous.' Then he slipped back into headquarters.

The evening news was full of the Brockdale disaster. No one, from engineers to government officials, could explain how a bridge barely ten years old could suddenly part in the middle as if a giant had snapped it in two. Snape bought an evening newspaper and took it home with him to Lancashire.

"Do you think Fudge will step down?" Pettigrew asked as he glanced over Snape's paper. "Who would be Minister then?"

"I don't know. I doubt they'll ask Dumbledore again – he wouldn't take the post anyway. The only one I can thing of is Bones, head of Law Enforcement. I doubt the Dark Lord would like the trade. She'd be a lot harder to work with or around than Fudge."

It turned out the Dark Lord wouldn't have to face that prospect. The very next day, Amelia Bones was found murdered in her own home. The discovery was made by muggle police, and the rumor at headquarters was that the Dark Lord's squad had told them of the killing to ensure that it hit the muggle news before the Ministry could move to stop the story.

Dumbledore's patronus greeted Snape outside his home. 'Come this evening. We need to talk.' Snape told Pettigrew he was going out, not particularly liking the little man's curious stare. There was nothing Pettigrew could discover in the house while he was gone, but Snape didn't like having his movements monitored.

xxxxxxxxxx

"You've heard of the Bones murder?"

"It and the Brockdale Bridge are the talk of headquarters. There's a feeling of euphoria permeating the whole building."

Dumbledore poured the mead and handed a glass to Snape. "I have something for you to do. You have to arrange another murder."

Snape choked on the mead. When he stopped coughing, he said, "Why would you think I'd agree to something like that?"

"Hear me out. Things are changing fast. I have some tasks to perform that will be dangerous, even life threatening. The Order cannot afford to lose its secret keeper – it would place everyone in grave danger. I have to perform a spell to switch secret keepers."

"That wouldn't be safe either," Snape said. "Any other person would be vulnerable to attack and be forced to divulge the secret."

"Not if Riddle was convinced that the person was already dead."

"I see. This murder would be a cover story to protect the new secret keeper. Has someone already been chosen?"

"Yes. Emmeline Vance."

_Sunday, July 7, 1996_

Rain lashed the street outside Snape's home as he and Pettigrew prepared to apparate to Birmingham. It was no brief summer squall, but a driving downpour whose force would have been more appropriate in some southerly latitude.

Birmingham was being pounded by the same storm, only further south from Lancashire the wind was stronger. The two wizards hurried into headquarters where they found Bella and Yaxley waiting. All four had an interview that morning, and as they turned to the stairs leading down, Snape caught a glimpse of Bella raising her eyebrows in question, but not to him. To Pettigrew? It was one more thing to worry about.

"You see around you the labor of our servants," the Dark Lord informed them with some pride. "No action by the Ministry could conceal a work that spreads its force over all of England."

"Lord, where did it strike first?" Snape asked.

"Cornwall and Devon, where its effects are enhanced by some friends our servants brought with them from far northern lands. Friends our good servant Macnair enlisted to our cause. Our excellent servant Macnair, before the poor judgment of others took him from us."

"If my Lord will permit," Snape began diffidently, "I have acquired some information about that… incident."

"What information? Speak."

"The name of the enemy who witnessed the arrival of Potter and his friends at the Ministry of Magic, and who alerted the Order and Dumbledore to the presence of our people."

The Dark Lord looked coldly at Bella, Yaxley, and Pettigrew. "You will leave us, and wait to be called again." When they had left the room, he said to Snape, "Continue."

"Her name is Emmeline Vance, a witch who's basically a common errand runner for the Order. A person of little importance until she witnessed the arrival at the Ministry."

"She shall be punished for interfering. You may…"

"Lord, forgive me. May I speak?"

"You are not wont to be so forward. Speak then."

"It is your will that terror spread through Britain, among wizard and muggle alike, but after the execution of Amelia Bones, the Ministry might be more prepared than ever to hush something up. You have the opportunity to make this so public that the Ministry will be helpless to respond."

"You intrigue us. How?"

"Dumbledore is trying to establish contacts with the muggle government. Early tomorrow morning, Vance will be apparating into St. James Park near Birdcage Walk to meet with someone from the Home Office in Queen Anne's Gate. That's right by the Treasury, the Foreign Office, and Number Ten Downing Street. A public attack there, a bombing perhaps, would be impossible to conceal."

"Do you know the time of this meeting?"

"Very early, about five o'clock, before there are many people on the street to see her come in. There would be some, of course – London streets are never empty – so if they challenge her, everyone would know who it was. Everyone who matters, of course."

"Does your laboratory contain explosives?"

"I can prepare them this afternoon."

"Do so. Mention this to no one. Secrecy is of the utmost importance."

"Yes, Lord."

Snape was allowed to leave the Dark Lord's presence and return to the setting up of his laboratory. Around noon, he went to the cafeteria for a bite to eat and a moment's relaxation. He'd just taken his first sip of tea and was about to start on a chicken salad sandwich when the room was rocked by what felt like an explosion.

All around, Death Eaters leapt to their feet, crying out to each other, "What was that? What happened?" Snape was already across the room and heading down the stairs, knowing where his own place was in an emergency. On the way he ran into the messenger who was looking for him.

"He wants you, sir. He wants you now. You'd better hurry. He's furious."

"Furious at me?"

"No, sir. It happened shortly after Mrs. Malfoy was admitted."

Snape raced to the interview room where he was admitted to the terrible spectacle of both Bella and Narcissa being punished by a Dark Lord more wrathful than Snape had ever seen him. The sound of Narcissa's screams cut him deeply, and Snape needed all his strength to appear indifferent to her suffering.

Dropping to his knees at the edge of the circle of light that delineated the punishment area, Snape said, "Lord, you have sent for me." He, too, was hit instantly with a Cruciatus curse, and collapsed on the floor in pain. Luckily his was warning rather than punishment, and the curse was lifted almost immediately. Breathing heavily, Snape struggled back onto his knees.

"You will tell us," the Dark Lord shrieked in rage, "of the destruction of our property at Hogwarts! And you will answer for your failure to impart this information to us earlier! Speak at once, or join these two wretches!"

The images of the diary that Dumbledore suspected of being a horcrux lay buried deep in the recesses of Snape's brain and did not surface. "Lord," he gasped, "I know of no property of yours that was destroyed at the school. I never…" Pain hit again, and Snape was forced to stop.

"You know nothing of the opening of the Chamber of Secrets? Nothing of a enchanted object that completed this great work?" The Dark Lord's ire was so great that froth speckled his lips, and spat his words into the quivering air of the interview chamber.

"Lord, I understood there was a book, a sort of a journal, that was used, but that it was yours… It bore the name of a student…"

"And was it destroyed?"

"Yes, Lord."

"By whom?"

"By the Potter boy."

"How!"

"With the fang of a basilisk."

"Such would have indeed destroyed it." A wave of the Dark Lord's wand released the two women, who lay whimpering on the floor. "We are aware at whose door to place blame in this matter. You may go now, Severus. What follows here does not concern you. Yet."

Snape rose and hurriedly returned to his laboratory, all thought of tea and chicken salad erased from his mind.

Later, Snape was again summoned into the Dark Lord's presence. "Tell us of young Malfoy," was the command.

"He is both loyal and eager to prove himself," Snape responded. "That is how his parents have raised him."

The Dark Lord turned to contemplate Snape, the red eyes and slitted nostrils more serpentine than ever in the dimness of the interview chamber. Snape wondered briefly if bright light hurt the Dark Lord's eyes, for though he used it for the display of punishment and large meetings, individual consultations tended to be in semidarkness.

"Do you seek to shield those who betray us?" The question was a menacing hiss.

Snape dropped at once to his knees. "I know of no betrayal, Lord. Poor judgment, perhaps, in an overzealous attempt to serve your memory, but nothing…"

"You would do well to be more careful of your own position."

Snape was silent.

"We will assign the boy a task to demonstrate the dedication of his family to us. The task is to be accomplished at Hogwarts. The failure of the boy is the failure of the family. If you are right, he will be eager to prove himself. Yet payment must be exacted for the injury they have caused us. It will be amusing."

In the pause that followed, Snape ventured, "What must I do, Lord?"

"You are our eyes and ears at Hogwarts. Be aware that the boy will have a mission to fulfill. Do not stand in his way. Go so far as to remove obstacles if necessary," The red eyes narrowed to black slits. "He cannot succeed. Our great enemies do not fall so easily." The Dark Lord turned his back on Snape and moved away. "Still," he mused, "there is the possibility of luck which we cannot discount… You are dismissed, Severus."

Rising quickly, Snape left the interview chamber. He wanted to contact Dumbledore at once, but restrained himself. Whatever Draco had been given to do, would be done at Hogwarts. It was only the beginning of July. They had time. On his return to Lancashire that evening, Snape sent a patronus northward.

The following morning, shortly after five, a tall, older woman wearing a green cape was driven by a group of ruffians into Guards Road near Birdcage Walk. The early traffic screeched to a halt as the men surrounded her, taunting her. One of them yelled, "You'll never cross the Dark Lord again, Vance!" and then an explosion sent everyone scurrying for cover. When the dust settled, there was blood everywhere, a hole in the roadway, and the burning remnants of the green cape. The attackers were gone. Surprisingly, the force of the explosion had been narrow, and there were no other injuries.

_Tuesday, July 9, 1996_

The muggle government was under siege, not by the Dark Lord but by the muggle press. Four sensational stories in a row, culminating in a brutal attack around the corner from Number Ten with no suspects despite its having taken place in full view of commuters and security guards, were rocking the nation. Reporters vied with one another over the top spot in the headlines – new revelations about the construction of the Brockdale Bridge, calls for environmental commissions to revisit the repercussions of global warming, or speculations as to Emmeline Vance's terrorist connections.

The wizarding world was in an uproar as well, with _The Daily Prophet_ putting out extra editions on the tragedies and trying to tie every traffic accident in Britain to Death Eater activity. Pressure was mounting on the Ministry of Magic like a tidal wave, and on Tuesday, Cornelius Fudge resigned as Minister of Magic. His successor was Rufus Scrimgeour, Head of the Aurors and a subordinate of Amelia Bones until her murder. It was the death of Bones that had suddenly thrust Scrimgeour into the limelight.

Birmingham was electrified with a sense of importance and purpose. It was clear now that the yearlong wait was going to culminate in the triumph of the Dark Lord, and departments began to engage in a friendly competition to provide him with the next creative action against the stability and order of Britain.

Snape was hit with requisitions from all sides for Polyjuice Potion ("I don't care what your department head told you – it takes a month to make"), Veritaserum (ditto) and a wide variety of poisons and explosives. Starting Monday morning, he was in the laboratory for thirty-six hours straight just setting up the cauldrons and getting the brews started. Not until Tuesday evening was he able to apparate back to Lancashire in the hopes of getting a few hours rest.

He'd barely arrived outside his front door, however, when he was accosted by a glimmering little silver cloud – Dumbledore's phoenix. _'Come at once. I need you' _was all it said. Since Dumbledore had promised he would not send a patronus to Birmingham, Snape had no way of knowing how long it had been waiting for him, or how urgent the matter was. Just as he apparated, he happened to glance at the window of his house. Pettigrew was peeking through the curtains.

Dumbledore sat collapsed in his office, his head resting on the desk, arms stretched in front of him, still conscious but sinking fast. Snape turned toward the door at once. "I'll get Madam Pomfrey," he said.

"No, Severus. Not Poppy. Should not be involved… You. You can treat it… hand."

Dumbledore's right hand was smoking, smoldering, the stench of burning flesh searing Snape's nostrils. The scorching was clearly moving into the wrist, slowly and inexorably, like a steady flow of lava, the black crust concealing but not blocking the progress of the fire within. Snape immediately began a low chant over Dumbledore's hand and arm, swelling the tissues in the still sound flesh to block the progress of the fiery poison. Then he rose, uncertain what he was dealing with, but able to focus first on the symptoms.

"Lower the shields," Snape said. "I'm apparating to my office." Once there, he began pulling jars and bottles from the shelves, returning to Dumbledore with an armload of equipment and ingredients,

_Burning, like charring, rather than poison or an acid burn. And the necrosis is progressive, so it's virulent._ He put a small cup of potion to Dumbledore's lips, "This first one will induce your body to produce more blood." Another tiny cup followed. "Don't be alarmed. This will slow your heart. If the circulation is retarded a bit it may slow the process of consumption and give us more time."

Dumbledore was drifting into a comatose state, something that Snape desired. Pulling back the headmaster's sleeve, Snape made an incision around the lower arm, just above the wrist, cauterizing capillaries as he went. Here the flesh was still good, and Snape wanted to keep it that way. If it meant cutting off Dumbledore's hand, he would do it, though he hoped he wouldn't have to go that far.

Quickly, carefully, Snape began by clamping the vein, so that clean blood could go into the hand, but infected blood would not be taken into the healthy tissue. Then he started cutting away diseased tissue, making sure that no tiny trace of necrosis remained above his incision. He was relieved to see that the bone looked normal. The spell attacked flesh only. That meant that it might be contained if it was deprived of new flesh to attack.

Even as he worked to stem the corruption, Snape realized that Dumbledore could not have been waiting for him long. The speed with which the damage from the curse progressed was such that if Snape had not arrived when he did, it would have been impossible to save the headmaster. Now at least – now that the damage had been blocked, however temporarily – Snape had time to discover what he was dealing with. On Dumbledore's desk lay a golden ring with a heavy black stone, broken and disfigured, and the sword of Godric Gryffindor.

Snape approached the ring with intense curiosity. It was clearly the cursed item that had so badly injured Dumbledore, though whether the damage to it indicated that the curse was gone or not remained to be seen. He began a series of complex spells to determine what curse had enchanted the ring, and whether or not it remained.

In terms of medical skill, there was never any question but that Madam Pomfrey was by far a better healer than Snape was, but there were three things about Snape that Pomfrey prized as invaluable tools. The first was his modest but health-oriented legilimens ability. The second was his knowledge of muggle techniques. The third was his expertise in dark arts. Seldom were the talents of healing and dark arts combined in one person, but Snape combined them. Understanding lent efficacy to his spells and guided Pomfrey in hers.

Snape had never before seen the curse that empowered the ring, but he recognized its genetic trace. The dark arts were constantly evolving and shifting but, like organic evolution, each new development was the offspring of something that preceded it. This particular spell, powerful as it was, was the lineal descendant of a medieval scorching spell originally intended to render books unreadable. It had been adapted to flesh and enhanced over the centuries.

So now, knowing the composition of the spell, Snape began a frantic combination of different soothing and cooling medications, of purifying agents and restoratives. After what seemed hours, but was in fact a much shorter time, he could tell that the strength of the curse was no longer spreading. What remained of skin and flesh, rather than burning, was cooling and drying, withered and black, but now at least stable.

Snape took a needle and pierced the vein on the uninjured side of the clamp, then examined the blood he withdrew. It appeared whole and good. A similar sample from the damaged tissue was not good. The curse still operated, and though for the moment it was confined to the hand, it would eventually break forth again. The good news was that the ring had released its curse once for all and could now be handled safely by anyone.

Easing the clamp off Dumbledore's vein and making sure circulation was steady, Snape then set to medicating the open area with ointments that promoted healing and the regeneration of tissue. The hand would remain withered and black for the rest of Dumbledore's life. Unfortunately, though Dumbledore's body was, for the moment, essentially healthy, Snape feared that the 'rest' of Dumbledore's life would not be long.

When the hand and arm were finally bandaged, Snape tipped a goblet of thick golden potion down Dumbledore's throat. After a moment the headmaster stirred. He blinked at Snape a couple of times, then smiled.

If it was meant to be a disarming smile, it didn't work. "Why did you put on that ring?" Snape demanded. "It carries a curse. Surely you realized that. Why even touch it?"

"I… was a fool. Sorely tempted…"

"Tempted by what?" It was insupportable. A few hours wait to have the ring tested and Dumbledore could have worn it with impunity. As it was, he'd jeopardized everything for… Snape didn't know what for. "It's a miracle you managed to return here! That ring… carried a curse of extraordinary power!"

Dumbledore smiled again, an embarrassed smile that asked for forgiveness, which Snape was not prepared to grant. "To contain it is all we can hope for!" Snape practically screamed in his frustration and fury. "I've trapped the curse in one hand for the time being…"

"You have done very well, Severus."

Dumbledore was looking into Snape's eyes, and Snape allowed the contact. _Don't pat me on the head and patronize me! If I hadn't arrived when I did, you'd be dead by now! You're still going to die, you know!_

"How long do you think I have?"

"I can't tell. Maybe a year. There's no halting such a spell forever. It's the sort of curse that strengthens over time."

"I am fortunate that I have you, Severus. But really, this makes matters much more straightforward. I refer, of course, to the plan Riddle is revolving around me. His plan to have poor Draco murder me."

Snape sat in the chair on the other side of Dumbledore's desk, facing the headmaster. He was dumbfounded. As far as he was concerned, Dumbledore's recklessness had rendered Draco's task moot. A glimmering of the headmaster's meaning was beginning to form in his brain.

Since Dumbledore now made it very clear with a shake of his head and a raised hand that he would not discuss his transgressions with the ring any further, Snape let the topic shift. "I don't think the Dark Lord expects Draco to succeed. This is punishment for Lucius's 'failures.' Slow torture for Draco's parents while they watch him fail and pay the price for their mistakes."

"A death sentence for both Draco and me," Dumbledore observed. "And you're the natural one to complete the job once Draco fails, no?"

The Dark Lord had not said so, nor had Snape left the interview chamber with that thought, but now Dumbledore's suggestion had, as it often did, planted a seed in Snape's brain. "That could be the Dark Lord's plan," he said.

"Riddle foresees a moment when he no longer needs a spy at Hogwarts."

It was hard to tell if this was a question or a statement. Snape looked into Dumbledore's eyes, and a previously unthought thought surfaced in his mind. "He hopes to take over soon at Hogwarts, I believe."

"If he does, you must promise to do all in your power to protect the students." At Snape's nod, Dumbledore continued. "Good. First, you must discover Draco's plans. He will be frightened and therefore dangerous. Guide him. He trusts you."

"Less now than before, I fear. He may blame me for taking his father's place."

"Still, we must try. He may accidentally strike at others while aiming at me. In the end, of course, there is only one possibility of saving him from Riddle's anger."

"You're going to let him kill you?"

"Of course not. I am going to let you kill me."

Over and above the quantity of arguments Snape wanted to muster against this insane idea there rose a deep and powerful anger that Dumbledore could have the arrogance and sense of domination over him to even suggest this plan. Snape's resentment spilled out in sarcasm. "Would you like me to do it now? Or would you like a few moments to compose an epitaph?"

Dumbledore smiled. "I can wait. I am certain we shall know when the time comes. It will, at any rate, be within the year." He contemplated his black, withered hand.

The words appeased none of Snape's anger. Dumbledore was still presuming too much, asking too much. "If that's the case, why not let Draco do it and gain favor with the Dark Lord?"

"No," Dumbledore shook his head sadly. "The boy's soul is still whole. I do not wish it ripped apart because of me."

"I see you have no such concern for my soul."

"Severus, we are talking about a difference in intent. Draco will be trying to murder me as Riddle's agent. You will be freeing me from pain and slow death. If, as we think likely, Riddle plans to attack Hogwarts soon, it may also be from possible torment and humiliation. Both Greyback and Bella like to play with their food before they eat it."

Their eyes met, Snape locking down automatically. He nodded as if in agreement, and Dumbledore took it as such, but the headmaster seemed to have seen something that disturbed him, for his countenance became sad. "Thank you, Severus. But tell me now, how have you felt about recent events?"

"Felt?" Snape asked, puzzled. "There's been nothing to feel."

"Surely the news about Amelia and Rufus must have touched you somewhere."

Dumbledore's words hit a wall. From the moment Snape had learned of the death of Amelia Bones, he had locked away every memory of the judge who had treated him with kindness and fairness during his trail as a Death Eater fifteen years earlier. There was no point in wallowing in sentiment. In Snape's position, such thoughts and feelings were dangerous. "I assure you, Headmaster," he said, rising now as if to leave, "there has been nothing to touch. Now, I really must return home. It's getting late."

"There were other things I wished to speak with you about," Dumbledore said, motioning for Snape to sit again. "The sudden alteration in the form of your patronus, for example. It did take me somewhat by surprise."

"I have no idea how or why that happened."

"You know of no one who has that patronus?"

"No. But then I haven't had the opportunity to see… Why do you think it reflects the patronus of someone else?"

"No reason." Dumbledore coughed slightly. "Do you think I might have some water?"

Snape stood and filled a glass from a pitcher in the office. He watched Dumbledore for a while, then said, "If I may ask, what were you…?"

"No, you may not. The fewer details you know, the better. Suffice it to say that we removed Emmeline from outside interference in time."

"Then you've already performed the new Fidelius spell?"

The silence stretched out. Then Dumbledore said, "Let me ask you a question. Did it ever occur to you to inform me of the whereabouts of your new headquarters before Riddle performed the Fidelius Charm there?"

Snape opened his mouth, closed it again, looked into the fireplace and then at his hands, then said, "It wouldn't have done any good. You couldn't have remembered."

"Not the exact location, no. But at least the general area. Even the city would have been helpful."

"You don't trust me."

"A man I have just summoned to my side in the last extremity to save me from imminent death. Severus, how can you think I do not trust you?"

"You don't want me to know…"

"It is just that in the last year I have become aware of a side of you I always subconsciously – well, consciously too – knew existed, but never had to take into account before. It appears that when you are focusing on a task that requires organization or analysis, well frankly Severus, you become so absorbed in the performance of the task that you tend to forget – let us be honest here – you tend to forget which side you are on."

"I know which side I'm on, sir."

"Yes, when faced with the direct choice. But really, if it had been Riddle who summoned you to care for a cursed hand, would your actions have been any different?"

"No, but that's not a fair example."

"Isn't it? This summer you were given a complex organizational task, on a far grander scale than you were given when you first came here to teach at the age of what? twenty-one? I would say that you devoted every ounce of your energy to the task, probably forgetting to eat or sleep, until it was accomplished – in about half the time that a normal person could reasonably have been expected to do the same thing. Your single-mindedness is astounding. It is that which inclines me to believe that you should know only what you have to know. Who knows what task Riddle may give you next?"

"You don't trust me."

"Not in everything, no. Only in what is most important."

It was late when Snape finally returned home. Apparating into the front yard, he was once again aware that Pettigrew was watching from behind a curtain.

_I would do the same in his position, though I guarantee I would be more subtle about it. But he's playing me off against Bella. I can't let him get away with that._

On Wednesday, when Snape and Pettigrew apparated to Birmingham, Bella was standing near the entrance looking her old self again. She once again raised her eyebrows, and then went upstairs toward the cafeteria. After a moment, Pettigrew followed. _They don't even try to hide it. It's a bit like being hit with a sledgehammer._ Snape asked for a meeting with the Dark Lord.

"You have a request."

"Yes, Lord. Now that we have a headquarters building, would it be possible to allow Pettigrew to live here? That way he would always be where he could serve you."

"You will explain why you do not wish Wormtail to stay in your home."

"Lord, he is immensely irritating. He whines and complains and tries to ingratiate himself, and he has no conversational skills. I believe he's prying into my private affairs. He snores. And the house is very small."

The Dark Lord chuckled. It was a strange sound. "Yet I still wish him to assist you in one or two matters. Nonetheless, it would not be good for him to have free access to your home after you return full-time to Hogwarts. At the beginning of August, he will leave you."

"Thank you, Lord."

As Snape walked into the cafeteria, Pettigrew rose and left. Bella beckoned Snape over to the empty seat. A server brought more tea.

"Join me, please. We never have a chance just to chat."

"You're doing a lot of chatting this morning."

"I'm only just beginning to realize how much I missed during all those years in Azkaban. I've been so busy the last six months, I forgot that other people had fourteen years worth of living while I was gone. I mean, puppy dog, that's two-fifths of your whole life."

"And you've retained your math skills all this time."

"So sweet. So kind. Do you know what I learned this morning? I learned that rats have eyes, ears, and memories. Isn't that fun? And that rats who go to school with young wizards attend classes in their pockets. And run around at night."

"How fascinating for you, Bella. A rat's eye view of Hogwarts. You could sell tickets."

"I hear you and McGonagall bet on Quidditch matches. And you taught Flitwick some card game with a board and pegs. And you played jokes on a puffed-up idiot named Lockhart."

"Are you reaching a point, or do you just like to live vicariously through me?"

"How do you do it, puppy dog? How do you change your skin so easily? How do you live and work with those people, year after year, and then turn your back on them as if they're nothing more than strangers to you? Or do you?"

"Are you questioning my loyalty? Maybe we should take this conversation to the Dark Lord right now." Snape started to rise, but Bella put a hand on his arm.

"Don't run away. Is it true that the Dark Lord had to punish you last year for using occlumency against him?"

"If I had used occlumency against the Dark Lord, I wouldn't be sitting here talking to you right now."

"Then he did punish you."

"Didn't Macnair give you all the particulars?"

"Macnair didn't share all his tender moments with me, no. Do you miss her, puppy dog? No, I guess you wouldn't. I've learned other things, sad things. No wife, no children, no family… no special friends… I kidded you about being a monk back in January, but it turns out it was no more than the truth. You're like a machine. No skin to change. How easily would you sell me out?"

"Dearest Bella… I live for the day when the Dark Lord gives me that order. Now if you will excuse me. I think I've played pincushion quite enough for one morning."

Snape went immediately to his laboratory to work. There would be plenty of time later to discuss this matter with Pettigrew.

About half an hour later, Snape went to Accounting with a requisition for more supplies. It was a simple, routine matter, except that as he was returning to his laboratory, he ran into Pettigrew coming up from the subterranean area where the interview chamber was. Pettigrew avoided Snape's gaze and scurried down a corridor out of sight.

That evening, back at home, Snape hustled Pettigrew into the kitchen and shoved him into one of the chairs. "Sit down, Wormtail. We're going to have a little chat. You've been spying on me, haven't you, Wormtail. Telling tales out of school. You need to be taught not to do that, Wormtail."

"But… but the Dark Lord… he summoned…"

"I'm not talking about the Dark Lord. I'm talking about Lestrange. What have you told her? I hope nothing more interesting than the decor of the sitting room."

"She… wanted to know where you went."

"And you told her Birmingham like a good little rat, didn't you?" Snape was staring down into Pettigrew's eyes, and saw his mind suddenly shift to Hogwarts at the question. _No discipline here at all. The demonstration mind for Legilimency 101._

"Of course. Of course. Where else would you go?" Pettigrew was shaking now.

"You need to be taught not to meddle in my affairs. What are you afraid of, Wormtail?"

Pettigrew's mind flashed the picture, crisp and clear. Snape let a smile twist his mouth. "I heard your former master had the same little problem. So did one of my dorm mates back in first year. You remember the late lamented Evan Rosier. A positive phobia. Pity he had so much trouble with them."

Snape pulled Pettigrew to his feet and marched him through the sitting room, up the stairs, and into the usually locked front bedroom. "This was my parents' room. It's yours for the rest of your stay. Normally I would consider you unfit to pass the doorway, but I don't want to mess things up downstairs. And if anyone would appreciate the situation, it would be my father."

He bound Pettigrew to the bed and intoned _"Petrificus Imperfectus,"_ allowing small movements, but preventing Pettigrew from leaving the bed or even turning over. Just as he closed and locked the door, Snape pointed his wand at the ceiling. _"Arachnes,"_ he said calmly, then "Good night, Wormtail. Pleasant dreams. Your wakeup call will be at five."

The spiders were small and harmless, some of them web spinners and some burrowers. The burrowers had a fondness for nestling under clothing. The spinners found Pettigrew's nose and ears perfect anchor points for their threads.

Thursday, July 11, 1996

It was a very much subdued Pettigrew who apparated to Birmingham with Snape the following day. Snape kept him near, stirring potions in the laboratory. At noon they went together to the cafeteria for lunch. Glancing down the staircase towards the main entrance, Snape was not surprised to see Narcissa and Draco Malfoy follow Bella through the door. They took the stairs to the right and down to the interview chamber.

Until two days before, Snape hadn't seen Narcissa in years, and then it was hardly the same Narcissa. Looking down at her now, he was reminded of the first grand dinner party he'd ever seen, peeking through the railings at the color and wealth that swirled below him, and how enchanted he'd been by the Snow Queen, the only gentle person in the whole household. _And was it you, sweet lady, who located my grandmother for the Death Eaters, visiting Nana's house with a request for potions so that they'd know where to set the attack?_

Angry with himself for his sudden suspicious bitterness, angry with Pettigrew and Bella for putting him in this position, Snape guided Pettigrew to a table and ordered a light lunch. They ate in silence. Snape hoped to see Narcissa on her way out, but was disappointed.

It was late when the two were finally able to apparate back to Snape's home. Wanting to relax a bit, Snape ordered Pettigrew to his new quarters upstairs, while he himself settled in the sitting room with a cup of tea to read. Around midnight he was surprised to hear a knock on the front door.

Crossing the room and opening the door just a crack, Snape found himself face to face with the shining radiance of Narcissa Malfoy, the shorter, darker Bellatrix a pace behind. "Narcissa! What a pleasant surprise!"

"Severus," she murmured, her voice tense, "May I speak to you? It's urgent."

"But of course." He opened the door wider to allow both of them inside.

Bella swept past Snape with only the most cursory of greetings, so clearly this was Narcissa's visit. Bella must have come under protest, or out of fear. He waved the two women to the sofa. Narcissa accepted his hospitality; Bella stood behind her sister like a bodyguard. Snape returned to the armchair where he'd been reading, Bella's attitude reminding him of his own in Sirius Black's house.

"So, what can I do for you?"

"We… we are alone, aren't we?" Both women were watching him, and so strong was Narcissa's anxiety that Snape could pick it up without trying. Bella's hostility radiated like a nuclear meltdown.

"Yes, of course. Well, Wormtail's here, but we're not counting vermin, are we?" With a lazy flick of his wand, Snape opened the stair panel behind which he knew Pettigrew was hiding. The one he watched was Bella. _She doesn't want him here either. This isn't about me._ "As you have clearly realized, Wormtail, we have guests." Pettigrew started to greet the women, but Snape cut him off. "Wormtail will get us drinks if you'd like them, and then he will return to his bedroom."

"I am not your servant!"

"Really? I was under the impression that the Dark Lord placed you here to assist me."

Pettigrew tried to protest, and ended up bringing glasses and a bottle of wine, then retreating to the stairs. Snape poured, then raised his own glass in a toast to the Dark Lord. Bella was caught, forced to accept his hospitality and drink his wine. He refilled the glasses.

"Severus," Narcissa blurted out, "I'm sorry to come here like this, but I had to see you. I think you are the only one who can help me…"

Sensing rather than hearing Pettigrew's presence, Snape cast a percussive spell that sent him scurrying back upstairs. "My apologies. He has lately taken to listening at doors. I don't know what he means by it…" He was rewarded by the reddening of Bella's throat and face. "You were saying, Narcissa?"

"Severus, I know I ought not to be here, I have been told to say nothing to anyone, but…"

Bella interrupted abruptly, "Then you ought to hold your tongue! Particularly in present company!"

Snape realized he was closing down as if preparing for a fight. Whatever drove Narcissa Malfoy to his home after midnight, it frightened Bella Lestrange. There wasn't much that frightened Bella – she wasn't perceptive enough. _I think I'm going to find out what this afternoon's interview was about without even trying._

"Present company? And what am I to understand by that, Bellatrix?"

"That I don't trust you, Snape, as you very well know!" At Bella's words, Narcissa covered her face with her hands and began to sob.

The blatant, unqualified statement was a surprise, especially given the shift in their relative status over the last month. Either Bella was suddenly more confident, or she feared what Narcissa would say more than she feared a fight with Snape for the Dark Lord's favor. Bella's challenge allowed a brief moment of eye contact, during which Snape wished he was a more gifted legilimens. _No, not so confident. This is for Narcissa._ He affected calm, leaning back in the chair.

"Narcissa, I think we ought to hear what Bellatrix is bursting to say; it will save tedious interruptions. Well, continue, Bellatrix. Why is it that you do not trust me?"

"A hundred reasons!" Bella's glass slammed down on the table as she moved to confront Snape. "Where to start! Where were you when the Dark Lord fell? Why did you never make any attempt to find him when he vanished? What have you been doing all these years that you've lived in Dumbledore's pocket? Why did you stop the Dark Lord procuring the Philosopher's Stone? Why did you not return at once when the Dark Lord was reborn? Where were you a few weeks ago when we battled to retrieve the prophecy for the Dark Lord? And why, Snape, is Harry Potter still alive, when you have had him at your mercy for five years?"

_My, you have been busy in the last six months. Those questions didn't originate in Azkaban. The first two you'd ask of any Death Eater, but who told you about the Philosopher's Stone, Pettigrew, or the Dark Lord himself? And how many other Death Eaters are asking the same questions behind my back?_

Narcissa was unreadable, her eyes still covered by her hands. Bella broadcast defiance, anger, and suspicion. Whatever Snape answered would travel all through headquarters before noon. He settled more comfortably in the armchair and allowed a sarcastic smile to play around his mouth.

"Before I answer you… Do you really think that the Dark Lord has not asked me each and every one of those questions? And do you really think that, had I not been able to give satisfactory answers, I would be sitting here talking to you?"

"I know he believes you, but…" Uncertainty flickered in Bella's eyes. _Good. Pettigrew hasn't told her everything – he may not realize it's important. Now if I can keep her off balance and him scared…_

"You think he is mistaken? Or that I have somehow hoodwinked him? Fooled the Dark Lord, the greatest wizard, the most accomplished legilimens the world has ever seen?"

Bella was retreating now – Snape could see it in her eyes – unprepared for the accusation that she herself was showing disloyalty. He began to recite the carefully prepared justifications he'd shown to the Dark Lord a year earlier, the night of his return to the Death Eaters, how he'd remained at his post gathering information.

"You ask why I did not attempt to find him when he vanished. For the same reason that Avery, Yaxley, the Carrows, Greyback, Lucius and may other did not attempt to find him…" Avery was to remind Bella that those who rose high could also fall through errors of judgment. The middle group now stood near the Dark Lord. To attack Snape was to attack them. And Lucius's name was for Narcissa, to remind her that what was good for Bella was not always good for her. Point by point, he went through Bella's list.

"But what use have you been? What useful information have we had from you?" Bella demanded.

_Got you, Bella. Now we undermine Narcissa's faith in you._ "My information has been conveyed directly to the Dark Lord. If he chooses not to share it with you…"

"He shares everything with me! He calls me his most loyal, his most faithful…"

_That's what Barty Crouch said. To how many has the Dark Lord said the same thing? He also called you a faithless servant, if I recall._ "Does he? Does he still, after the fiasco at the Ministry?"

"That was not my fault! The Dark Lord has, in the past, entrusted me with his most precious… if Lucius hadn't…"

Finally, Narcissa removed her hands from her face. "Don't you dare blame my husband!"

'_In the past' is a telling phrase. It means 'not now.' And I have separated Narcissa from you._ Snape was conciliatory, "There is no point apportioning blame. What is done, is done."

They sparred over his role with the Order of the Phoenix, then Bella turned to the issue of Potter.

"Have you discussed this matter with the Dark Lord?" Snape asked

"He… lately we… I am asking you, Snape!"

Another admission that Bella was not so high in the Dark Lord's favor as she pretended. Snape glanced at Narcissa, still glaring furiously at her sister. He then spoke of his disdain for Potter and the deep trust of Dumbledore – a bit of a fabrication, but Bella didn't need to know of Dumbledore's doubts. In the silence that followed, Snape turned to Narcissa.

"Now… you came to ask me for help?"

Narcissa's eyes welled with tears. "Yes, Severus. I think you are the only one who can help me, I have nowhere else to turn. Lucius is in jail and… the Dark Lord has forbidden me to speak of it. He wishes none to know of the plan. It is very… secret. But…"

Narcissa closed her eyes. Frustrated, Snape had to back down, wishing again that his legilimency skills were better. "If he has forbidden it, you ought not to speak. The Dark Lord's word is law."

It wasn't the response the sisters were expecting. Narcissa gasped in dismay, while Bella looked immensely pleased. "There!" she told Narcissa. "Even Snape says so. You were told not to talk, so hold your silence!"

Now, more than ever, Snape wanted to be sure of what drove Narcissa to his house in the dead of night – what he could do to help her that no one else could, not even Bella. So far as he knew, he had only one advantage in influence over the others – Hogwarts. The only connection she had with the school was Draco. This had to be about Draco's task, a chance to find out if Dumbledore's surmise was correct.

Snape rose and went to the window where his gaze was hidden from both sisters. He'd never had any indication that either one could read him, but he was taking no chances. Dumbledore had demanded a service of Snape, but only because of Draco's task. If the task was other than what Dumbledore suspected, the requested service did not have to be performed. The one way to get more information now was to play along, to divulge that the Dark Lord had confided in him.

_If the Dark Lord hears of this… but I see no other way. Not if I'm to learn anything._ Lowering the curtain, Snape turned back to the sisters. It was a great risk, but Snape wagered that he knew enough about Bella's impetuousness and Cissa's sentimentality to know that this encounter was a family matter, and neither of them would breathe a word of it to anyone, not even the Dark Lord.

Taking a deep breath he said, "It so happens that I know of the plan. I am one of the few the Dark Lord has told. Nevertheless, had I not been in on the secret, Narcissa, you would have been guilty of great treachery to the Dark Lord." _That should suffice to keep both of you quiet._

Narcissa sighed with relief. "I thought you must know about it! He trusts you so, Severus…"

Bella was not so easy to convince. "You know about the plan? _You_ know?"

Ignoring the insulting tone of voice, Snape replied, "Certainly. But what help do you require, Narcissa? If you are imagining I can persuade the Dark Lord to change his mind, I am afraid there is no hope, none at all."

Narcissa began to weep. "Severus… my son… my only son." The childless Bella had no qualms about mentioning honor and duty, and Draco's eagerness to prove himself, while Narcissa thought only of his youth and of the danger. And of the fearful probability that Draco's death was a punishment for Lucius.

Snape remembered Draco's eager, desperate face in June as he as pleaded, "Can't we help? Can't we do something?" _Why would the Dark Lord single out Malfoy for such punishment when Bella was there, too? I'd bet anything her vicious temper was more responsible for the disaster than Malfoy's poor planning… Unless Bella lied to the Dark Lord about her role, and now feels guilty for the repercussions Narcissa must face… _Then Snape recalled the Dark Lord's anger over the fate of the diary.

Narcissa's eyes showed only her terrible fear for her son. Unable to read deeper, Snape looked away, trying to decide the best course of action. To stall for time he said, "If Draco succeeds he will be honored above all others."

"But he won't succeed! How can he, when the Dark Lord himself…" Narcissa froze, realizing the enormity of her words. Snape shifted his gaze from woman to woman, knowing the apprehension on Bella's face was reflected in his own. They were talking treason.

Narcissa was babbling, "I only meant… nobody has yet… Severus, please… You are… always… Draco's favorite… Lucius's friend… the Dark Lord's favorite… speak to him… persuade him…"

Forcing himself to be calm and cold, Snape replied, "The Dark Lord will not be persuaded, and I am not stupid enough to attempt it… Yes, the Dark Lord is angry, Narcissa, very angry indeed."

"Then I am right… he wants him to be killed trying!" Narcissa flung herself at him, begging, pleading that he remove this cup from Draco, convince the Dark Lord, take the task onto himself… The power of her grief washed through Snape, and though he tried to talk to her reasonably, he was being overcome by memories – of Narcissa, distraught at the thought of being separated from Lucius, so joyful on the muggle underground because she was meeting him – of the baby in Snape's own arms, the tiny baby with the perfect fingernails – of Draco, raised in the Dark Lord's service, the heir to a dying world of blood status and privilege, so proud of being a Seeker, frantically trying to claw his way out from under the shadow of Harry Potter…

Narcissa collapsed, sobbing, "My only son… my only son…" while Bella screeched, "If I had sons…"

Silently cursing his own weakness, Snape dragged Narcissa to her feet and guided her to the sofa. He poured her another glass of wine, thinking all the while of the smile that would cross Dumbledore's face at the knowledge that Draco's mother was reinforcing Dumbledore's request. "Narcissa, that's enough. Drink this. Listen to me. It might be possible… for me to help Draco."

She held her breath, as if suspended between despair and joy. "Severus… oh, Severus… you would help him? Would you look after him, see he comes to no harm?"

"I can try." It was the only honest promise he could make.

Then she was on her knees to him, kissing his hand. "If you are there to protect him… Severus, will you swear it? Will you make the Unbreakable Vow?"

Snape stared down at her, not certain how he had reached this moment. His brain was screaming danger, but it battled against Narcissa's radiant hope. _I can't do this. I can't bind myself to this. I have other promises to keep – not just to Dumbledore… to Lily…_

Bella's wild laughter broke through. "Aren't you listening, Narcissa? Oh, he'll try, I'm sure… The usual empty words, the usual slithering out of action… oh, on the Dark Lord's orders, of course!"

It was like cold water thrown in his face. Snape was suddenly keenly aware of the importance of learning exactly what Draco's task was. _If I refuse the Vow and prove Bella right, I'll never again be in a position where Narcissa will confide in me. My only link to the Dark Lord's real plans for Draco – and Hogwarts – will be broken. I doubt I can find out tonight – they think I already know. But if Draco knows I'm sworn to protect him, I may be able to find out from him… I'm his head of house. Protecting him is no more than I would do anyway._

His eyes never wavering from Narcissa's, Snape said, "Certainly. I shall make the Unbreakable Vow. Perhaps your sister will consent to be our Bonder."

They knelt facing each other, right hands joined. Bella stood gaping, as if she couldn't believe this was happening. "You will need your wand, Bellatrix. And you will need to move a little closer." Speechless, Bella obeyed.

Narcissa began the ritual. "Will you, Severus, watch over my son, Draco, as he attempts to fulfill the Dark Lord's wishes?"

"I will." The first red link of the binding chain spurted from Bella's wand.

"And will you, to the best of your ability, protect him from harm?"

"I will." Another fiery link formed around their hands.

"And should it prove necessary…" The first alarm went off in Snape's brain. The chasm was opening in front of him. "…if it seems Draco will fail…" He wanted to pull away, knowing before she said it what would be asked of him. Wanted to, but didn't. "…will you carry out the deed that the Dark Lord has ordered Draco to perform?"

The choice was clear – ignorance and safety, or knowledge and the possibility of death. _But only if it's a task I can't perform. It may well be Dumbledore is wrong and I can do this thing. Oh, McGonagall, if you knew the wager I was making tonight!_ The world was bright, the colors sharp and clear, and the Snow Queen's face glowed in the candlelight. Life burned more fiercely in the shadow of death, when you risked everything on one roll of the dice…

"I will," said Snape, and Bella sealed the vow with a third ribbon of fire. In the recesses of Snape's mind, Dumbledore face appeared, and he was laughing.

xxxxxxxxxx

Dumbledore listened in silence to Snape's account of the event. When it was done, he shook his head sadly. "I would have wished that it had not reached so irrevocable a point. I cannot afford to lose you. Still, you were there, and no one is in a better position to evaluate the situation than you are."

"And here I thought you would be pleased." The irony in Snape's tone carried a note of humor. "If you're right about the task, you know, then Narcissa's practically guaranteed that you'll get your wish. If it was just you… but when it's a choice between your life and mine, you don't stand a chance."

"If I am right. But that raises another concern, Severus. What if I am wrong and Draco's mission involves something that I do not wish you to do? Was there no clue at all to confirm what this task is?"

"Plenty of clues, but none that give us definite answers. It has something to do with Hogwarts. That's the only place Draco and I have in common. Narcissa said nothing about going anywhere else. Then it's something the Dark Lord has tried to do and failed. That narrows it down considerably. And yet it's something that a sixteen-year-old boy thinks he can accomplish. Bella was clear, Draco's excited by the prospect, and Narcissa confirmed it. Granted Draco thinks he can do almost anything at first hearing. It's only later that his feet start getting cold. But it can't be an utter impossibility." Snape paused. "I did have one thought."

"Which was?"

"His task might be to kidnap Potter. Draco would most definitely enjoy the prospect of that one. And it's something the Dark Lord was ultimately unsuccessful at."

"It may be to kill him. Something else Riddle failed to do. The amount of protection surrounding Harry could explain Narcissa's fear for her son's life. But what would you do in that case if Draco fails?"

"I'm not going to speculate on 'what ifs.' Everything depends on the precise nature of the task. The first thing I'll do, when I have time, is borrow that pensieve of yours again."

"Why Severus, whatever for?"

"To study the Vow. An Unbreakable Vow means exactly what the words say it means, no more and no less. What one party is thinking is irrelevant. If it isn't spoken, it isn't part of the Vow. If it is spoken, it is part. At one point Narcissa said, 'to the best of your ability.' Now there's a loophole a mile wide. I need to know that Vow inside out and backwards."

Dumbledore smiled. "That's my Severus. No raging against fate, no wallowing in self-pity. Just work the problem."

Snape grimaced. "I wish you wouldn't use works like 'wallow' when you're talking about me. There's a certain distastefulness…"

"Harry will be reasonably safe soon." Dumbledore continued. "That was arranged before this all happened. Which reminds me. There is another matter that you need to be aware of. I am in the process of recruiting and hiring a teacher to fill a vacant position. I hope to have accomplished it by tomorrow – no, it is nearly sunrise – by tonight."

"The Dark Arts professor? I already knew about that; it isn't news."

"Alas, no, Severus. I have a Dark Arts professor. It seems that what I am lacking is an instructor in Potions." Dumbledore's brow furrowed in concern. "Is something wrong, Severus? I thought you would be pleased."

Snape looked down at his hands. In any other year he would have been pleased, but now there was a dreadful sense of finality to the news, coming as it did with the increase in the Dark Lord's power, the Unbreakable Vow, and the certainty of Dumbledore's death through the action of the curse in any case. He looked up at Dumbledore with something close to a smile, rueful and ironic. "I guess that means I'm not going to last out the year either."

"I prefer to think that we shall finally break the jinx."

"The funny part is that a little over an hour ago I was telling Bella that one of the proofs of my loyalty to the Dark Lord was that you didn't quite trust me enough to give me the job. What am I going to tell her now?"

"You will have to be creative, I suppose."

"Who are you going to get for Potions?"

"For some time I have been toying with the idea of bringing Professor Slughorn out of retirement… Why Severus, do you not like Professor Slughorn?"

"You want the whole list?"

"Just the highlights."

"You're serious." Snape started numbering points on his fingers. "He never did anything about the hazing in Slytherin house. He never once acknowledged the quality of my Potions work…"

"He told me Lily was one of his best pupils."

"We used to study together. She was very good."

"But you helped her rather than the other way around."

Snape didn't respond, continuing instead with his list. "He never defended us to you or McGonagall when Gryffindor attacked us. He ignored everyone who was neither rich nor popular. He left a mess in his classroom and office. He left practically no stocks on the shelves, and no information about the curriculum…"

"In other words, he effectively destroyed your life."

"Now you're making fun of me."

"Would it be better if Slughorn did not use your office and private room? He would probably like the Dark Arts office. It is warmer and gets more light. I think I would prefer you away from the general population anyway, and it is closer to Slytherin house."

"That would be very nice, Headmaster. Thank you."

Dumbledore paused before speaking again. "There are one or two other points. I do not wish to alarm Horace by taking him into our confidence regarding Riddle, but his position at Hogwarts will be rather like Sibyll Trelawney's. That I wish to have you in Dark Arts assists me in this."

Snape waited for the rest, but it was not forthcoming. "So I'm to look out for him, but not know why. It's that old trust thing."

The comment was ignored. "The other point is that I may be calling on your expertise in dark magic again as I did on Tuesday. Should something occur involving curses or evil enchantments, there must be no confusion among the staff. The one in charge of the matter is the Dark Arts professor. They will have to rely on you."

The next couple of weeks were actually rather pleasant. The Dark Lord's squad continued its raids, though on a less spectacular scale, but that didn't directly affect Snape's life. Bella retreated from her attacks, adopting a policy of ignoring him altogether. Pettigrew stopped spying and tried to avoid Snape as much as possible. Snape was already organizing the Dark Arts curriculum, and was looking forward to returning to Hogwarts. Each of the key areas of concern in his life was locked into a separate compartment in his brain, and when he was focusing on the upcoming school year, no thought of Draco or of Death Eaters disturbed Snape's concentration.

Near the end of July, Dumbledore asked him to come to Hogwarts again.

"There have been two kidnappings, Severus. Do you know anything about them?"

The news was a surprise. "No. I'm not Field Operations. They don't discuss their business outside the department. Who was it?"

"Ollivander and Fortescue. Fortescue may have been taken from his shop. The place looks as if there had been a fight. Ollivander has simply vanished. No Dark Mark was placed over Diagon Alley, so it looks like kidnapping. I should like to know why."

"Ollivander for the wands, perhaps. I can't think of anything special about Fortescue. Except… My very first assignment, years ago, was to identify likely recruits among the students shopping in Diagon Alley. I pretended I was looking for tutoring work and used to spend a lot of time around the ice cream parlor. Did you know Fortescue was quite the expert on medieval history?"

"Indeed? I did not know. That is most interesting. I may need you to do some research for me."

"What sort of research, sir?"

Instead of answering, Dumbledore asked a question. "Did your parents tell you children's stories when you were a boy?"

"Do you mean like 'Cinderella' and 'The Ugly Duckling?' Storytelling was not something my father would have wanted for me."

"I was thinking more of the stories from your mother's side of the family. Beedle the Bard, for example."

"Never heard of him."

"Indeed? That may actually work in our favor, Severus. You will have no preconceptions." And that was all Dumbledore would say at that time.


	57. Chapter 57 – Multiplying Dangers

**Too Much for Granted: Multiplying Dangers**

_Thursday, August 1, 1996 (two days after the full moon)_

What kind of research? was a question that would have to wait until later. For the time being, Snape was hectically busy preparing a full stock of potions – as many as the shelves would hold in the clinic, the laboratory, and field operations – against the time when he could not be at headquarters every day. Then, most suddenly, it was the first of August. Pettigrew went back to Birmingham on a continuous basis, and Snape locked his home in Lancashire to take up more or less permanent residence at Hogwarts for yet another school year.

"Ohio!" called a voice behind him as Snape apparated into the edge of Hogsmeade. It was a most familiar gruff voice. "Strasstree! Aloha! Dog! and… well, I can't pronounce it anyway. Tell me the languages or go to Azkaban."

"Good morning, Moody. Nothing like tradition, is there? Is this a little like 'Do not pass GO, do not collect two hundred dollars?"

"No idea what you're talking about. I have a bet that you can tell me the languages."

"They're greetings. Ohiyo is Japanese. I presume you mean Zdravstui, which is Russian. Aloha is Hawaiian, and Dag, if memory serves, is Dutch. Do you win the bet or lose it, and I thought you had no vacancies in Azkaban."

"We're chock-a-block in Azkaban, but tradition's got to be observed. And you just won me a pocketful of galleons. Hang on… the last one was Boaker Tove. D' you know that one?"

"Hebrew," said Snape, and Moody waved as he disapparated.

Breakfast was under way in the Great Hall, and Slughorn was already there next to Dumbledore. A wave of Dumbledore's hand brought Snape over. "Horace is delighted to have the Dark Arts office and living quarters. He would like to take over the classroom today. Would that be a problem?"

Snape hesitated. _Of course there's a problem. That's my space. I need time to vacate._ But he couldn't say that to Dumbledore with Slughorn sitting there. "No problem at all, Headmaster. I need to clear out a couple of personal things, but that won't delay the move."

"Excellent. The Dark Arts room is just waiting for you to move in."

Snape left breakfast a few minutes before everyone else and went directly to the Potions classroom. He'd been there fifteen years, and a certain amount of private files, supplies, and equipment had made their way into the room. He could hear the rest of the group break up in the Great Hall – there was little time to waste.

"_Peculiaris!"_ Snape said with a wave of his wand, making everything that belonged to him invisible to other eyes. It theoretically made everything that belonged to another person invisible to him, but Snape was not concerned about this aspect of the spell. He'd been in this room for fifteen years. Everything in it was either common school property or his personal belongings. Now he could remove what was his own at leisure, without disturbing Slughorn or allowing him to see it.

xxxxxxxxxx

"And here is the list of supplies that were in the room at the end of the last term, and a preliminary list of things I thought I would order at the beginning of this year. This folder has an inventory of all the equipment that I'm transferring to you, and…"

"Snape, you have got to be the most meticulous Potions master it's ever been my fortune, good or bad, to run across. For the work you're saving me, I thank you."

Snape nodded in response to Slughorn's comment, choosing to treat it, despite the tone, as praise. _It's a good thing you know nothing about modern psychology because if you'd used the word 'anal,' I swear I'd have struck you._

"I still have one or two things in the room, so if you'd wait until tomorrow to change the locks, I'd appreciate it."

"Not a problem, not a problem. Just let me know when you're finished…"

It only took Snape a few trips, while Slughorn was closeted with Dumbledore, to remove all his private possessions from the room. He then removed the Peculiaris spell. The classroom was now entirely Slughorn's, and none of his own responsibility.

And then, without warning, Slughorn was gone.

"Do not worry, Severus. He will be back with us at the beginning of September. He has some things to attend to, and wishes to ride up with the students on the train. You, after all, are acquainted with them all except for the first years. He knows none of them yet."

"What about the eyes?"

"Eyes?"

"Newt eyes… spider eyes… the potions ingredients. They're coming in later this month and have to be…"

"Oh. Well, I am sure that you could handle it… in the spirit of collegiality…"

"Son of a witch!" Snape exploded in fury. "Now he expects me to do his job as well as my own! I swear I'm leaving the eyes out on the lawn to putrefy! I am not taking on his duties so that he can network with the rich and potentially famous!"

"Now, now, Severus. We are talking about school property and school money. I am certain that your basic professionalism…"

"Will be totally eclipsed by my mean-spirited pettiness. Store your own eyes."

In the end, of course, Snape received, inventoried and stored all the potions ingredients that arrived that month for Horace Slughorn. _And he's getting a bill for it, too._

During the month Snape also made several trips to Birmingham where, no longer chained to his laboratory, he was able to catch up on gossip. There he heard details of the last moments of Igor Karkaroff ('Boring, really. Had the gracelessness to commit suicide. They put up the Dark Mark anyway.'), the attack on Emmeline Vance ('Ran out into the middle of traffic like a sheep. Better for the squad. More publicity.'), and the surprise induction of Draco Malfoy into the ranks of the Death Eaters ('Just honorary I'm told. The boy has to prove himself first.')

All of this was shared with Dumbledore, who was chiefly concerned about Malfoy.

"Nobody's said anything about a task," Snape said over a glass of mead in Dumbledore's office. "I really think only the immediate family knows. My personal feeling is still that it has to do with kidnapping Potter, after which the Dark Lord will kill him. That's what he failed to do last year."

"It does seem nearly as likely as my idea. We shall have to keep a close eye on Harry, and not let him be put into a vulnerable position. Just in case."

_Sunday, September 1, 1996 (two days before the last quarter moon)_

Then it was the first of September, and the whole staff was prepared for the arrival of the Express. Tables were laid, decorations set up, the house-elves were outdoing themselves, and the teachers were anxiously awaiting the first of the carriages. Snape was looking forward to the moment when Slughorn would start taking care of his own work.

At first the confusion and chaos of the arrival seemed perfectly routine. The heads of houses were out on the lawn shepherding their charges into the Great Hall, and everything was proceeding normally. Then McGonagall cornered Snape. "The others are here, but Harry's missing."

"What?"

"The Weasleys, Granger, Longbottom… they're all here. Potter's missing."

"That's odd. Do the others seem worried or upset?"

"That's the strangest part. They don't seem to care."

Another line of carriages disgorged its passengers. Slughorn was there, and elbowed his way majestically into the Hall. Snape looked quickly around, counting sixth year students. "Malfoy isn't here either. We should tell Dumbledore."

Just then another carriage pulled up on the lawn, and Malfoy stepped out, seeming quite pleased with himself. McGonagall had to meet the first years, so Snape pulled Sprout aside and whispered, "Tell Dumbledore Potter hasn't arrived yet." Then the lawn suddenly cleared of students and professors as everyone entered the castle for the feast.

Snape stayed outside, hesitating in the cool night air. Just as he was about to go in and advise Dumbledore to initiate a search, a sleek silver patronus approached him from the north. It was a patronus Snape didn't recognize, a little like Lupin's but distinct. Then Tonks's voice spoke in his brain. "Come on down to the gate, luv. I got Harry."

Relieved, Snape went into the Great Hall to tell Dumbledore that Potter was safe. Then, picking up a lantern from the entrance hall, he hurried down the hill to the gate. The defenses were less stringent than usual because of the carriages coming onto the grounds, and he was able to open the gates without special permission from Dumbledore. Neither Potter nor Tonks tried to hide their disappointment at seeing him. Potter had blood on his face, but his attitude was one of defiance and outright hatred, as if Snape was responsible for the situation. Tonks offered no explanation, nor did she seem concerned about the blood.

"Well, well, well," Snape said, "Nice of you to turn up, Potter, although you have evidently decided that the wearing of school robes would detract from your appearance."

"I couldn't change, I didn't have my…"

Potter was lying. Students changed into robes long before the train pulled into Hogsmeade and their luggage was taken. Besides, he was holding his invisibility cloak. Something else had happened that Potter was concealing – he'd probably been where he ought not to have been. Snape looked past him at Tonks, whose hostile demeanor was undisguised.

"There is no need to wait, Nymphadora. Potter is quite… safe in my hands."

"I meant Hagrid to get the message," she replied flatly.

_You send a nonspecific patronus to the castle, then because I happen to be the one to receive it, you insult me to my face in front of a student._ Suddenly the meaning of the strange patronus became clear. _I wonder what kind of tales Lupin is telling you – specially tailored to cultivate your sympathy, of course._ Snape began locking the gates again.

"Hagrid was late for the start-of-term feast, just like Potter here, so I took it instead. And incidentally, I was interested to see your new patronus. I think you were better off with the old one. The new one looks weak."

Snape started back up the hill as Potter took his leave of Tonks. The boy was projecting – positively radiating hatred. Snape tried to ignore it, but he was baffled why Potter and Tonks would both act as if he had somehow caused whatever had happened. His own dislike of Potter intensified, and he started to prod, hoping that Potter would lose control and blurt out an explanation.

"Fifty points from Gryffindor for lateness, I think. And, let me see, another twenty for your muggle attire. You know, I don't believe any house has ever been in negative figures this early in the term: We haven't even started pudding. You might have set a record, Potter. I suppose you wanted to make an entrance, did you? And with no flying car available you decided that bursting into the Great Hall halfway through the feast ought to create a dramatic effect."

Potter didn't rise to the bait. They arrived at the castle and paused outside the Great Hall. Potter made a movement towards his cloak, but Snape stopped him. "No cloak. You can walk in so that everyone sees you, which is what you wanted, I'm sure."

Instantly, Potter turned and marched across the Hall to the far side where the Gryffindor table was. Snape watched him, then went up to the staff table to find that the main meal had not yet been cleared away, and that he was at least able to get something to eat. At the Slytherin table, Malfoy was telling some kind of story involving hitting himself in the nose. _Is Malfoy the reason Potter was late? Does this have something to do with Malfoy's task? But if that's so, why does Malfoy think it so funny that Potter's here?_

Dumbledore had risen and was giving his usual opening term speech. The school reacted in surprise to the news that Slughorn would teach Potions, and with greater shock to the information that Snape himself would teach Dark Arts. Potter, obnoxious little toad that he was, even screamed out "No!" at the top of his lungs at the announcement. _And if it had been any other student, or any other professor for that matter, the offender would be immediately taken from the Hall and placed on detention, but I notice neither Dumbledore nor McGonagall seems to regard his behavior as anything but perfectly acceptable._

The sense of injustice that had sprung to life during Snape's encounter with Tonks and Potter was now expanding into bitterness directed against nearly everyone in the hall. The students' tables buzzed with chatter that Snape knew was about him, and that Dumbledore did nothing to stop, merely waiting patiently until it died down of its own accord. After an admonition to be vigilant and report anything suspicious, and to respect the curfew, Dumbledore sent the students to their dormitories.

With the other heads of houses, Snape spent some time in the Hall getting the students to move. When they'd finally cleared everyone out, and the crowd in the entrance hall was noticeably thinning, Snape heard Dumbledore call his name.

"Yes, Headmaster," he replied, hoping this would not take long. He was suddenly very tired.

Dumbledore steered him back into the Hall where it was more private. "I hope there is nothing causing discord among us," he said calmly. "I understand that you and Nymphadora exchanged words."

"I was under the impression that words were a normal part of a conversation."

"You know what I mean. Did you say something that Nymphadora might have found hurtful?"

"Before or after she told me I had no business being there?"

"Ah," said Dumbledore quietly. "I see there is more here than I at first suspected."

"And while she was complaining about my behavior, did she happen to explain what delayed Potter on the train?"

"No. I was rather hoping you could tell me that."

"Neither Potter nor Tonks felt that any explanation was due to me. They both acted as if my presence was somehow insulting to both of them. I should have left the gate locked."

"Now Severus… They have both been through a rather stressful time. Nymphadora was injured in the fight at the Ministry. She's been in St. Mungo's. And Harry… well, we older folks often do not realize how hard it must be on a person as young as Harry to lose someone so close to him… Severus?"

Snape was staring down at his hands, fascinated by the fact that the tips of his fingers were trembling beyond his control. It was a moment before he realized that Dumbledore had stopped talking. "I'm sorry, Headmaster. You were saying?"

"No, Severus. I am the one who is sorry. That was unforgivably thoughtless of me. You contain your feelings so well that I sometimes forget… You must have been about the same age, younger… and of course the last year…" Dumbledore studied Snape's face for a moment. "Have you found your loophole?"

"Sir? I thought we were talking about Potter and Tonks."

"Stress sometimes breaks out in the most unpredictable directions… You will pardon me for referring to something personal… but you do have quite a bit to preoccupy you at the moment."

"It had something to do with Malfoy."

"Harry's late arrival?"

"He had his invisibility cloak, and Malfoy was sharing something with his friends about damage to a nose. Potter had blood on his face. Malfoy knows why Potter was late, but Potter doesn't want to accuse Malfoy of anything. That means Potter was where he shouldn't have been, and he got caught. Tonks must have found him."

"That would seem logical. Now, tell me about loopholes."

Snape sat on the edge of the Slytherin table. "There are three parts to the Vow. The first is that I watch over Draco as he attempts to fulfill the Dark Lord's wishes. It's meaningless, since no other action was requested besides watching. The second part, to protect him from harm, contains the phrase 'to the best of your ability' which means that if I try to protect him, but don't succeed because of the circumstances, the Vow has been fulfilled. It's the last part that's tricky. The phrase 'should it prove necessary' was extended to include 'if it seems Draco will fail.' Seems to whom, to me or to Draco? And what's the time frame? If none was specified in the task, it might seem to me that he could succeed during the next ten years. There's even the possibility that no Vow was actually taken on the third part since it referred to a specific task that only one of the parties was able to visualize. Though I don't think I want to risk my life on that being the case."

"So there might be loopholes, but none so certain that we can assume they are there."

"Exactly."

"You will have to find out exactly what it is Draco is supposed to do."

"That will depend to a great extent on Draco."

"I have taken up too much of your time, Severus. You need to get some sleep. I shall try, as much as possible, to reduce the sources of stress."

It was, all things considered, a better end to the day than Snape had been expecting. The bitterness he'd felt against Dumbledore had now abated, and he felt again that he had someone to talk to. Closing off the conversation from his conscious mind, Snape reviewed the following day's plans. For the first time, he was going to be teaching something other than Potions, at least to Hogwarts students. _In some ways, it may be similar to the defense lessons I give the Death Eaters._ The irony of that thought contained a certain symmetry that Snape found pleasing. He slept well that night.

The next day's second lesson was with the sixth year NEWT level students. The classes at this level tended to be smaller, and there was more of a mix of the houses. Snape had found at once that the first floor Dark Arts room made him uncomfortable, and he'd changed it.

First and foremost, he did not like the excessive light. After fifteen years teaching in the dungeon Potions room, the tall windows made Snape feel vulnerable, exposed to danger. In addition, he could not teach sitting at a desk or podium – he had to move around. If he was standing next to the windows, the students wouldn't be able to see his face. He'd be a backlit silhouette. Curtains now covered those windows, and the students' desks were lit by chandeliers.

The other major change was to rid the room of every trace of Dolores Umbridge. Gone were the lace and the flower arrangements, to be replaced by classic prints and woodcuts of different aspects of the Dark Arts, both as teaching aids and as a reminder to the students that what they were studying was of vital importance in a suddenly dangerous world.

Snape, in fact, had three major priorities for the year, the first being the need to impart to the students how dangerous their opponent was and how important to learn to defend themselves. The second was to show them the attraction of the Dark Arts, for no one followed them with the intention of becoming a slave. No, the Dark Arts seduced, entranced, and lured their victims into a quicksand from which it was nearly impossible to escape. It was impossible to battle them effectively unless you understood the attraction. The third priority was to show them the need to cooperate, to band together. One person alone was almost certain to be defeated.

Just before the beginning of class, Snape opened the door and allowed the students assembled outside to enter, a little surprised at how many there were. When they'd settled down, which happened rather quickly, he began.

"I have not asked you to take out your books. I wish to speak to you, and I want your fullest attention. You have had five teachers in this subject so far, I believe. Naturally, these teachers will all have had their own methods and priorities. Given this confusion, I am surprised so many of you scraped an OWL in this subject. I shall be even more surprised if all of you manage to keep up with the NEWT work, which will be much more advanced.

"The Dark Arts are many, varied, ever-changing, and eternal. Fighting them is like fighting a many-headed monster, which, each time a neck is severed, sprouts a head even fiercer and cleverer than before. You are fighting that which is unfixed, mutating, indestructible…" _Very much like the classical Hydra, which even the hero Hercules was unable to battle alone, but we shall cover that later._

As he spoke, Snape moved around the class, pointing out illustrations of the effects of certain dark spells and answering questions. It was his first task, however, to introduce the subject of nonverbal spells. McGonagall and Flitwick would both build on what he taught, but the initial lesson was usual dealt with in Dark Arts. "What is the advantage of a nonverbal spell?" Snape asked the class.

Granger's hand shot immediately into the air. The rest of the class sat like lumps, conditioned over the past five years into laziness, knowing that the compulsive Granger would do all their work for them. _I'm going to start calling on students who don't raise their hands, just to keep everyone on their toes. Maybe beginning tomorrow._

Granger typically gave a memorized textbook answer, which Snape expanded on. "Not all wizards can do this, of course; it is a question of concentration and mind power which some lack." Waves of raw emotion hit Snape as they had the evening before, and he glanced over at Potter and then away. _You may actually turn out to be rather good at this, since it requires the exact opposite talent from occlumency. I wish I knew why you're laboring so hard to let me know you don't like me, though._

The class split into pairs, given the assignment of trying to cast minor nonverbal jinxes at each other, with the recipient of the jinx trying to repel it nonverbally. The first attempts went about as expected, with most of the students unsuccessful at doing either, only one Slytherin, one Gryffindor, and two Ravenclaws managing it.

Potter was paired, as usual, with Weasley, with the result that Potter was getting no chance to practice at all. Instead of giving up and at least allowing Potter to try, Weasley insisted on straining until his face turned purple while Potter stood idly doing nothing. Exasperated, Snape moved to intervene.

"Pathetic, Weasley. Here… let me show you…"

Turning towards Potter in order to demonstrate the technique to Weasley, Snape was hit suddenly with a resoundingly verbal "Protego!" that slammed him back against a desk. As the rest of the class stopped their assignment to watch, Snape forced himself to remember Dumbledore's instructions to treat Potter with kid gloves.

"Do you remember me telling you we are practicing nonverbal spells, Potter?"

"Yes," was Potter's curt reply.

"Yes, sir," Snape reminded him.

"There's no need to call me 'sir,' Professor."

xxxxxxxxxx

"You cannot let him get away with that! It's bad enough that he spends every moment near me projecting violent, hate-filled thoughts, knowing that I can pick them up, but to attack me physically – which I intended to overlook because of the lesson – and then defy me in my own classroom in front of other students – you can't let him get away with that! And if it were any other teacher in this school, you wouldn't!"

"Severus, please try to calm down. There are special circumstances here…"

"That don't apply to Susan Bones, despite her loss, and wouldn't apply to Malfoy or Crabbe if the outcome of that fight had been different, and would also never apply to Flitwick or Trelawney! Just to Potter – and just to me!" Snape suddenly became icily cold. "You want me to resign. Is that what this is all about?"

"Good heavens, no! You of all people are the one I need most to have around me. Please do not think like that."

"Then why did you cancel his detention?"

"That may have been hasty and unthinking on my part. Let us consider it postponed. I do need to confer with Harry, and it needs to be Saturday. Is that better?"

"Yes, sir."

"Clearly not."

"Take him out of my class, sir. Or tell him to stop projecting. One of these days he may come up behind me, and I'm not going to realize it's him, and then you will have a problem."

"I am certain that you are in much better control of your reactions than that." Dumbledore regarded Snape for a moment. "I seem to recall you were quite depressed for a while about your parents' deaths."

"Yes, and I lay in bed staring at the wall for days and days. I don't recall wandering the school mentally threatening my teachers with bodily harm."

"I had thought not to tell you, because I considered it a private matter of Harry's, but I see that it concerns you immediately and intimately… Severus, Harry holds you personally responsible for Sirius Black's death."

The nature of the revelation was so unexpected and bizarre that for a minute or two Snape was unable to respond. Then, "I hope you tried to disabuse him of that notion."

"I did, but without success. He believes you deliberately incited Sirius to go to the Ministry knowing and hoping that he would be killed."

"I tried to talk him out of it."

"I know. Remus told me. Harry believes that you did so in a way that would make Sirius feel you were calling him a coward, and that he was goaded into fighting. And that you are pleased by Sirius's death."

"Then he's more of a fool than I thought, on all counts. Nothing I said would ever goad Sirius into anything except beating me up. And I never wanted anyone dead." Snape stared down at his hands. "Anyone who knew the smallest thing about Sirius would know that the moment he heard a friend of his was in danger… How can Potter even imagine he would have to be goaded? If there's anybody outside of Bella Lestrange or the Dark Lord himself who's responsible for Sirius's death it's…" Snape paused, then looked up again at Dumbledore. "I see. That's the special circumstance."

"It is a lot for a young man to bear. All at once like that."

"He'll have to face it some time. He'll have to accept the consequences of his own decisions and actions some time."

"I am hoping that it will come to him gradually, and that he works it out himself."

"Meanwhile I get to be whipping boy."

"It may work to our advantage."

"How?"

"If ever the three of you face each other – you, Harry, and Tom – all Harry will give up about you is that he hates you, and that you were working to destroy Tom's enemies. It could buy you time."

"As long as Potter doesn't kill me first."

"I think I can give you reasonable assurance that that will not be a problem. Now, since I have you here, I did have a couple of things I was hoping you could research for me."

"I remember. About Fortescue."

"Do you know anything about families named Peverell and Gaunt?"

"No. Well, John of Gaunt, of course. Character in Shakespeare's play Richard II. Speaks the great lines –

" _This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle,_

…_This fortress built by Nature for herself_

_Against infection and the hand of war,_

_This happy breed of men, this little world,_

_This precious stone set in the silver sea,_

_Which serves it in the office of a wall_

_Or as a moat defensive to a house,_

_Against the envy of less happier lands,—_

_This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England."_

It makes a lot of sense when you remember it was written just seven years after the defeat of the Spanish Armada."

Dumbledore was watching Snape with an expression of wondrous amazement. "Spanish Armada? Who was this John of Gaunt?"

"Younger son of Edward III. His son, grandson, and great-grandson were kings. If you count the illegitimate children's descendants, all our kings and queens since come from him, including the present one. His grandson Humphrey married a witch."

"Ah! A witch family named Gaunt?"

"No! The House of Lancaster. Gaunt – Ghent in Belgium – was where John was born. Only Shakespeare thought that people called him that after infancy. And Humphrey never had children. At least not legitimate children. The witch was his mistress before she became his second wife, so there might be something there. Also covered by Shakespeare in… 'Henry VI, part one.'"

"And all those years you kept popping down to the theatre in London, I thought it was a waste of time. How wrong I was. Do you think you could check on wizarding families called Gaunt and Peverell? Families important enough to be landed gentry at one time."

"Anything else?"

"Founders of Hogwarts – known artifacts whether believed to still exist or not. And anything connected with the occult or prophecy that Riddle might use to symbolically connect things belonging to any of these people."

"You never ask for anything small, do you?"

"I have great confidence in your resourcefulness. By the way, I take it you are no longer going… wherever… on Saturdays."

"No. Fridays and Sundays, though not both every week. This week I'm going down on Friday. How did you know?"

"You scheduled Harry's detention for Saturday evening. And… wherever… is south of here. Because you are going down."

"Sir, there's almost nothing north of here."

"Do not tell the people of Inverness that. They have a perfectly delightful town, not to mention a world-famous monster… And Severus…?"

"Headmaster?"

"Do try to remember about Harry."

"I'll do my best, sir. As soon as he finishes his detention, I'll try to ignore his presence."

"Thank you, Severus."

Friday evening after supper, Snape apparated to Birmingham and, after signing in, went straight to his laboratory to check on the requisitions that had accumulated in the week that he was gone. Headquarters was peaceful, the laboratory quiet and orderly, and Snape found himself wishing he could be there every day, far from the chaos and misguided malice of the adolescent world.

Yaxley came up around eight-thirty to see if Snape wanted to join him for tea. There were a fair number of employees in the cafeteria, but one in particular caught Yaxley's eye. "Watch this," he whispered to Snape, nodding towards a corner and a short wizard with mousey hair sitting there alone. Then turning to the stairs and speaking to empty air, Yaxley said in a fairly normal tone of voice, "Bella! My you're looking well tonight. Care to join us?"

The wizard leapt up so fast that his chair fell over and tea sloshed out of his raised cup all down the front of his robes. Gathering his things helter-skelter, he rushed out of the cafeteria through the clinic and was gone. The others at their tables chuckled softly.

"Who was that?" Snape asked, smiling slightly as he and Yaxley settled at another table.

"Bennett. Used to be at the Cardiff office. Good with memory charms but not much else."

"Sounds like someone I know. What's between him and Bella?"

"Came in on Tuesday with a little lacquered box that had the picture of a greyhound embossed on the lid. Very nice work, but not anything really expensive. Bella had a royal fit! Insisted it was hers and that Bennett was a thief. We had to restrain her from cursing him then and there. He kept saying he bought it from a street peddler. She wants thumbscrews. He's been avoiding her ever since."

"Hard to believe, a street peddler selling Black family possessions. I guess if I were Bella, I'd be angry, too."

"She's looking for the peddler. Apparently he had other things – silverware, cups, scattered items of jewelry… Lucky for him Bennett has no idea who he was."

"How's Bella doing otherwise?"

"Slitting her own throat. She's out to bring you down. Thinks you've elbowed your way in above your proper station. Even went so far as to insinuate that a half-blood – no offense intended – wasn't fit to advise the Dark Lord. Now she wants to check the backgrounds of all the people who seemed relieved when that tactic didn't work. She insists they're 'passing' as pure-bloods. Personnel isn't cooperating, though. They don't want the Dark Lord angry at them."

"I leave for a week and the entire place goes to perdition in a hand basket."

A messenger appeared at the door, looked around, and came over to Snape and Yaxley. "Excuse me, sir. He wants to see you."

A grin spread over Yaxley's heavy features at the respectfulness of the tone. "Looks like I'm in the right camp," he said as Snape rose from the table and headed for the interview room.

"Tell us of Slughorn."

"Fatter than ever. As conceited as ever. Still looking for anyone whose connections can get him perquisites."

"Is he closeted with Dumbledore? Is this why he has been brought back?"

"Quite the contrary, they seldom speak. He came briefly in August, left again, returned only with the students on the train, and seems frustrated that Dumbledore won't pay more attention to him. I have the feeling that Dumbledore's had trouble finding instructors. He could get no one for the Dark Arts position, and only Slughorn for any position. Slughorn can't teach anything but Potions, so Dumbledore was forced to move me into Dark Arts."

"Yes, that information pleased us. It is of great strategic benefit. Do not create any suspicion as to your motives or allegiances. We must see that you remain there for a while. In the long run it may be one of our most valuable assets."

"Thank you, Lord."

"Has Slughorn attempted to curry your favor?"

"No, Lord. I have no family connections and am not important enough."

"If he should move to bring you into his circle, you will accept his invitations. You will gain his confidence and get him to trust you."

"Yes, Lord."

Snape didn't return to Hogwarts that night, instead working late at headquarters and then apparating home to Lancashire. There he went through his own extensive library, and the next morning apparated to London to check out several muggle shops that catered to the occult and to hobbies.

Divination was a branch of magic that Snape usually had no patience with, and he certainly didn't want anyone in the wizarding world to think he'd suddenly developed an interest. In any case, many of the divinatory arts were just as well-known to muggles as they were to wizards, and muggles were more inclined to actually analyze what they were doing. Thus he avoided Diagon Alley and the area of Charing Cross Road where the Leaky Cauldron was to concentrate on large bookstores and quaint little shops, and generally pick up several good books and tips on the way.

He also purchased two decks of tarot cards. One was the Rider-Waite-Smith deck that provided the symbolism for most of the others, and the second was a reproduction of an 18th century French deck. Late that afternoon, after studying the decks for several hours, he returned to Hogwarts.

Arriving early to supper, Snape slipped into the seat next to Dumbledore's, forcing Slughorn to move further down. When Dumbledore arrived, Snape laid a card in front of him.

"What is this, Severus?"

"Beautiful, isn't it. It's the two of cups."

"What does it mean?"

"Love. Friendship. Partnership. The Union of Souls."

"It does not sound like Tom."

"Ah, but it also means the reconciling of differences and the merging of opposites. Look at the center symbols. It has three of the four houses of Hogwarts. The lion's head is joined to the eagle's wings. Fire and air merged and sharing a role. The physicality of Gryffindor and the mentality of Ravenclaw. The snakes are Slytherin of course, which would leave Hufflepuff represented by cups if we wanted to draw out the symbolism. So the earth of Hufflepuff becomes the water of the tarot. Slytherin would transform from water to earth, and Gryffindor and Ravenclaw could reverse as well."

"Why did you choose this one?"

"It's the only one where most of the house symbols are on the same card. He tends to see symbolism on the surface rather than digging deep. Look at this one." Snape took back the two and laid down the Magician. "The guide, the leader, the beginning of a new order, the One who merges the energy of heaven and earth. Also the only one with all the symbols of the suits on it: Wands, Swords, Cups, and Coins. And there's a snake, the Worm Ouroboros, the symbol of eternity. And the lemniscate, the symbol of infinity. So if we look at the two of cups and the Magician together, the cup is Hufflepuff, making the coin Slytherin. If Gryffindor and Ravenclaw also switch, then Gryffindor is the sword, and Ravenclaw is the wand. Tell me if this makes any sense to you, because I'm just fooling around with the symbols."

"Actually, it does. Is there anything else?"

"Yes, there is. The original card was much less flattering. The magician was originally a charlatan, a mountebank, trickster, and con artist who deceived by slight of hand. The symbols were just the props of his trade, no eternity or infinity. But the lemniscate was sort of there. It was a large, floppy hat."

"That give us a lot of potential items, does it not?"

"Swords, cups, money, anything inscribed with a pentacle, wands, staffs, snakes, the caduceus – pendants, rings, or anything shaped like or inscribed with any of the above – and hats. Shall I continue with this line of investigation, or are you quite fed up?"

"By all means continue, Severus. It has given me much to think about."

"What exactly am I looking for, sir?"

"Best you not know. That way your insight is not overly restricted or influenced by preconceptions."

Snape collected his cards and went to his own place at the table, allowing a greatly relieved Slughorn to move next to Dumbledore. Since he and Dumbledore had spoken below the level of a whisper, no one in the hall would have heard them. Only McGonagall had a chance to see the cards, but she was talking to Sprout. There are times when actions performed in the midst of a crowd can be the most private.

For the next few days, Snape was reasonably content. There is a lot to be said for reasonable contentedness. By the end of the week, of course, reality set in, propelled by Horace Slughorn.

"We have an entire shipment – a case lot – of flobberworms. Someone has to store them."

"I am sorry, Minerva, I'm not the Potions instructor anymore. Have you spoken to Professor Slughorn about this?"

"Of course I have!" McGonagall seemed positively apoplectic. "He says I should put the crate in the fountain court until he has the time!"

"Then maybe you should."

"Severus Snape, you irritating young whippersnapper! You may think that the loss of two hundred sixty-three galleons worth of flobberworms is nothing, but I assure you…"

"I'll take care of it, Minerva."

It was shortly thereafter that both salvation and retribution entered in the unexpected person of a Gryffindor student named Demelza Robins. She conveyed a message from Slughorn himself requesting that one Harry Potter be released from detention in order to attend a Slughorn soirée that evening.

_Load me with your work and then ask for favors? And not even have the courtesy to come yourself?_ It was with great pleasure that Snape sent back word to Slughorn that Potter would not be excused – he would be helping to sort and store Slughorn's flobberworms.

"Oh," said Snape as Robins turned to go, "and we have plenty of protective gloves. Let Potter know he doesn't have to bring his own."

The same Saturday, after he and Potter finished with the flobberworms, Snape apparated to Lancashire. Following an exquisitely pleasant evening home alone, Snape retired to bed, slept in, and then planned his Sunday over a leisurely breakfast.

The point was, of course, that everything was closed on Sundays – the Public Record Office, National Archives, and Family Records Centre at the top of the list. It was the simplest of maneuvers for Snape to apparate in, disable the motion sensors and cameras, and have the entirety of British public records to himself.

Snape, never having been moved to investigate his own family, was forced to stumble his way through the morass of records. One of the first things he discovered was that Gryffindor, Slytherin, Ravenclaw, and Hufflepuff were not family names. They, in fact, preceded most family names by about three to four hundred years, and noble family names by a century. The surnames of the famous founders of Hogwarts were nicknames only, not necessarily received from parents, nor necessarily passed on to offspring.

Another shock was that the word 'ancient' when applied to Rome and Greece meant a period over two thousand years in the past, but when applied to British families meant anything prior to the Restoration of Charles II in 1660.

_Which, of course, explains why today there are no wizarding families that bear the names of the founders. And any actual genealogical connection is based on hearsay. Someone told the visitors in 1667 that family tradition maintained a direct link to Godric Gryffindor over sixteen generations. But the actual documentary proof is a tad lacking._

By the end of a long and trying day, Snape had only a few unsatisfactory pieces of information: that Humphrey, grandson of John of Gaunt had, around 1434, married his former mistress Eleanor Cobham, daughter of Reynold Cobham, son of Reynold Cobham of Kent, subsequent to which her witch identity had been revealed, and that around a hundred years earlier Sir Hugh Peverell of Devonshire had married Elizabeth Cobham, daughter of John Cobham of Devonshire, son of James Cobham of Hoo, Kent.

It was the only connection between the name Gaunt and Peverell that Snape was to find for quite some time.

That evening Snape apparated early to headquarters so that he could sneak in a dinner at a local Pakistani restaurant. He then spent the rest of his time with potions and medicines before he had to apparate back to Hogwarts.

On Monday morning, Snape stopped Dumbledore in the entrance hall. Something had been nagging at him for a week, and he'd remembered what it was.

"Can we speak outside for a moment, Headmaster?"

When they were far enough out onto the lawn that they could not be overheard, Snape stopped. Speaking of the headquarters of the Order wasn't possible in a crowd, however quiet one tried to be.

"Is Grimmauld Place secure, sir?"

"I believe it is. Is there a reason you might think otherwise?"

"One of our people bought a knickknack from a peddler, and Bella claimed it was a family possession. It didn't occur to me earlier, but now I wonder if the things he was selling came out of headquarters. I really don't think we should use the building anymore in any case…"

"Why not?"

"Everybody knows where it is. All the upper echelon used to visit the house socially, and Bella would like to move in now that Sirius is dead. The fact that none of them can any longer find the actual building is a dead giveaway. That means that anyone inside is safe, but people arriving and departing are not. They even tried to kidnap Sirius in the square outside, remember? And now, if someone has access to go in and steal things…" Snape suddenly had to suppress an image of Phina's face that rose unbidden at the memory of the botched operation. He turned to look down the hill.

"I recall, Severus. The information is valuable and the advice sound, as always. I shall keep the matter under consideration. No decision about the place has yet been made. Thank you."

xxxxxxxxxx

Dumbledore was now gone most of the time. It made little difference to the day-to-day running of the school, which proceeded normally, although there were a few oddities that stood out. One was that Slughorn seemed to feel that Potter was an excellent Potions student.

"Wonderful boy. Takes after his mother in that, I'd say. Seems to have an instinctive grasp of the subject." Slughorn accepted a cup of tea from Sprout in the teachers' staff room.

"I don't recall your ever mentioning Potter's talent, Severus," said Sprout.

"He never deigned to reveal it to me. Are those pumpkin-chocolate chip cookies? May I?"

"Will you look at the sky! There's a storm brewing, I'm sure. Pity that tomorrow's the Hogsmeade outing. The poor students will be drenched. And frozen."

"I notice, Pomona, that you have no such sympathy for me, who must also be out in the wet and the cold shepherding them."

"You're going into Hogsmeade, Severus?" Slughorn commented. "What an excellent opportunity to chat with the students in a relaxed, social atmosphere!"

"Right, Professor. I'm going to chat. Never pass up an opportunity to chat with students, I say."

Sprout was fizzing into her tea, but Slughorn seemed to take Snape's words seriously. "I know this is an imposition on your own enjoyment of the day, Severus, but would you be willing to trade duties with me? I'm supposed to stay here and supervise the first and second years. It's been a while since I was able to visit Hogsmeade."

"I don't know… That trip to Hogsmeade means a lot to me. I am so looking forward to discussing the upcoming Quidditch season with Ron Weasley over butterbeers…"

Snape would have continued and extorted a favor from Slughorn, but Sprout was turning purple, a phenomenon that would soon tip Slughorn off to what he was doing. Better to concede defeat gracefully than to be caught in a subterfuge.

"But it is your first trip in what… fifteen years? Far be it from me to spoil the day for you. I would be happy to exchange the duty and let you go into Hogsmeade tomorrow."

Which was why Snape was still in the Great Hall the following afternoon, finishing a leisurely game of cribbage with Flitwick, when Hagrid burst into the entrance hall and charged up the staircase to the hospital with a student in his arms, bellowing at the top of his lungs, "Snape! Someone get Snape up to Pomfrey! She's been cursed!"

Snape was up and out of the Great Hall in an instant, taking the stairs two at a time to catch up with Hagrid. The student, Bell from Gryffindor, was levitating and convulsing, her body racked with strange spasms that made it difficult for Pomfrey and Hagrid to hold her down and strap her to a bed where they would be able to treat her more easily.

"What caused it?" was Snape's first question.

"Don't know," said Hagrid. "Couple of students was running for the castle as I were going down the hill. They grabbed me and took me to her. She were like this there in the road."

"How high?"

"'Bout six feet."

"Point of contact?"

"Hand, seems like."

Pomfrey was already stripping off the girl's gloves, and Snape seized a tourniquet from the supply cabinet. The contact point was a small spot of skin that was exposed by a hole in the glove. The spot itself was already mortifying, and purple streaks were spreading from it through the capillary system and into the veins of the hand and arm. Snape wrapped the tourniquet near the elbow and tightened it.

"Will that work?" Pomfrey asked. "It looks like it's already spread through her body."

"Nervous system first. That's causing the convulsions." Snape was putting on protective gloves and selecting a tiny knife and a small basin from the instrument drawer. "Now it's entering the bloodstream. That'll kill her. Lucky it was just a small spot, or it would've spread too quickly to stop. She'd already be dead."

As he talked, Snape lanced the contact point and allowed the contaminated blood to flow into the basin. "Get gloves on yourselves. No one comes near this basin that isn't protected. We're going to have to destroy it, the knife, and the gloves before we're finished. Get St. Mungo's. I can only administer first aid. They have the equipment and medicine to treat her. Hagrid, hold this basin."

Hagrid monitored the seepage of blood from Bell's hand while Snape took his wand and began a low chant around the area of the wrist. McGonagall entered the hospital then, and Pomfrey, having already passed on the medical particulars, turned over to her the business of admitting a team from St. Mungo's, while she helped Snape with the chanting to slow the progress of the poison.

The team arrived and took Bell to London. One of the medics also took the basin of blood to be analyzed, sealing it in a gelatin-like substance to avoid any accidents in transit.

"Will you be needing the thing that caused it?" McGonagall asked. "I have it here."

"No, Professor," the medic answered. "We've got what we need. We're a hospital. The artifact analysis should be done by the Ministry. We'll be mentioning in our report that it's here."

The first thing the Hogwarts staff did was place the knife and the gloves in a special metal box built through the wall of the hospital wing and incinerate them. Then they put the small bundle McGonagall carried into a small wooden container to ensure none of them touched it.

"How did you get it?"

"The other students gave it to me. I'll be taking statements from all of them as to what happened." McGonagall looked simultaneously angry and frightened.

"At least they had the sense not to try to touch it." Snape gingerly unwrapped the cloth that held the object. It was a necklace. A beautiful necklace of gold and opals. "I know this. It's been for sale at Borgin and Burke's for years. It was still there this summer."

"And what, laddie, were you doing in a place like that this summer?"

"A fine expert in Dark Arts I'd be if I didn't visit Knockturn Alley from time to time. It's a constantly changing market. You have to know what's out there. This one's killed before."

"How do you know?"

"It said so on the sign in the shop. It'd already killed nineteen Muggles, or something like that. It cost a huge amount of money, too. Fifteen hundred galleons."

"Why would someone rich enough to buy it want to hurt someone like Katie Bell?" Pomfrey looked around at the other three, clearly mystified.

McGonagall cleared her throat. "The other students said she was going to give it to someone in the castle. They thought perhaps she was under an Imperius curse."

The room seemed suddenly cold to Snape. "Who were the other students?" he asked.

"Potter, Weasley, and Granger."

"They were close enough to witness this?"

"To hear the conversation between Katie and Leanne just before Katie touched the necklace."

"So Bell would probably have seen them, too?"

"Certainly."

"Minerva, when is Professor Dumbledore coming back? I need to talk to him."

"I assume you've already spoken at some length with Professor McGonagall." Snape said as he walked later into Dumbledore's office.

"And with Madam Pomfrey, yes. Madam Pomfrey is, incidentally, extremely pleased that you have the Dark Arts position. She respects your expertise and feels that you respect hers."

"That is kind of her. It's hard to be familiar with Madam Pomfrey's skill over a period of two and a half decades and not be in awe of her."

"Now what is your assessment of these recent events, Severus?"

"I refuse to kill you."

"Severus?"

"Not only that, I refuse to kill anyone right now."

"I beg your pardon? I mean I am pleased to hear that but…" The sight of Snape's raised hand had its effect, and Dumbledore was silent for a moment.

Snape sighed, then walked over to the cabinet where Dumbledore kept his mead and poured himself a glass. "There's a question answered," he said.

"You know one of the most irritating things about you is that you assume others should know what you are thinking. What question has been answered?"

"The Vow. Malfoy has a task to perform that is so immense that the Dark Lord himself has failed at it, and so dangerous that Narcissa is sure that the Dark Lord intends him to die. We knew it wasn't information gathering. It had to be kidnapping, or murder, or something similar. I'll agree it's murder now, because the necklace was intended to kill. There couldn't be a misunderstanding because it was advertised as a killing necklace in Borgin and Burke's.

"I know the objections, sir. How can we be certain it was Malfoy? Yet the chances of two different people having expensive and powerful plots to harm or kill someone in Hogwarts at the same time is extremely small. I know Malfoy was in the castle under detention. He found some way around it.

"I think it's clear now that Malfoy is under orders to kill someone at Hogwarts. He purchased the necklace and arranged a way that a totally innocent student could be placed under an Imperius curse to deliver the necklace to its victim. His plan was foiled because his unaware agent accidentally touched the necklace and was cursed herself.

"The intended victim could not have been Potter. Potter was a few yards from Bell on the road back to Hogwarts, and she could have given it to him there. She didn't. She didn't care that he was there. Who else at Hogwarts has the Dark Lord himself tried and failed to kill? You. The necklace was intended for you. Much as I hate to admit it, you were right all along. Malfoy's mission is to kill you."

Dumbledore nodded in acknowledgment of the analysis, but waited patiently for more. Snape, too, waited, then continued when it was clear Dumbledore wished to hear everything before commenting.

"The third part of the Unbreakable Vow," Snape continued, "is that I would carry out the deed that Draco failed to accomplish. Well, he's failed to accomplish it, and I've announced that I will not fulfill it, and I'm still alive. I would say there's reason to suspect we do have a loophole here."

"Excellent. Very nicely analyzed. I must admit that I am relieved to have it confirmed that I am the target. Better me than another teacher or student. So he has tried and failed, and you are still alive. Maybe this means that Draco has a time frame in which to complete his task. When his time expires, then you die. Maybe it means that as long as Draco still believes he can succeed, we have not reached the point of 'fail.' You need to watch out for yourself. This could jump out at you at any moment."

"Whatever the loophole may be, Headmaster, I am quite certain on one point. I'm not going to kill you to complete Malfoy's task."

"You have already agreed to it for quite different reasons. I fail to see how the possibility of helping Draco would cause you to change your mind. I would feel more comfortable if you would agree to abide by my assessment of the situation should we come to a point where immediate decision is necessary."

"Are you asking for an Unbreakable Vow?"

"I would never ask for such a thing."

"Then I agree to abide by your decision."

The following day, Snape left word for Malfoy that he wanted to speak with him in Snape's office at lunch time. Malfoy didn't appear. Instead he sent a message via Crabbe to the effect that he was not feeling well and had gone to the hospital wing to have Madam Pomfrey look at him. Knowing that Malfoy would do precisely that, Snape didn't even bother to check.

_Whether his illness is real or a ruse is irrelevant. He'd find out that I didn't trust him and do his best to avoid me even more. Best wait until there's a pattern he can't deny. Assuming, of course, that he continues to avoid me._

At Birmingham, Bella started to get pushy. During Snape's Sunday trip down, she spied him in the cafeteria having tea and a scone in a corner, and slipped into the seat across from him. "You used to be a friend of my cousin Regulus, didn't you?"

"We were schoolmates. And colleagues. Do you think it's wise to bring this up here?"

"Ancient history, puppy dog. Did you ever visit him at home?"

"Someone like me? Knowing your aunt as well as you must, you can't possibly think I'd be welcome there."

"You could have passed for pureblood if Regulus was willing to lie for you. Come now, you must have known something of his family, his home life… What was the address of that house now? It seems to have slipped my mind."

"I'm sure I couldn't say."

"And I'd be willing to bet galleons to knuts that's the literal truth. You couldn't – not even if you wanted to. You couldn't say. You couldn't draw it on a map. You couldn't take me there. And that, puppy dog, is the most valuable piece of information I've ever gotten from you."

"Come now Bella, do you think I've forgotten the little side action you initiated back before summer started? None of this is new."

"Oh, yes. Poor Phina. Poor, poor Phina. Do you think about her, puppy dog? Do you lie awake at night whispering her name into your pillow? Do you regret those hours you might have spent with her and didn't?"

"Do you have a point?"

"Someone is stealing what belongs to me. Stealing it out of that house – my house. Under the circumstances, I think I'm justified in thinking this someone works for Dumbledore. Your precious headmaster abets thieves. Now, Mr. Spy-in-the-Enemy's-Camp, I know you can't tell me where, but you can certainly tell me who. And if you can't, the Dark Lord may be interested in learning why not. After all, what possible reason would you have for concealing that name… unless it was a question of your own personal loyalty?"

"I don't know who it is, Bella."

"Find out."

Bella rose to leave. Just as she stepped away, she turned to face Snape again, as if remembering something that was of marginal importance. "Oh, yes. Leave my nephew alone. He has enough to worry about without being harassed by you."

"I believe his mother is still his legal guardian. Only her wishes and instructions carry any weight with the school."

"I'm not talking about the school. I'm talking about you."

"Are you contemplating taking this issue before the Dark Lord as well?"

Bella glared at Snape, snarling in anger. Then she swept out of the room, leaving him to ponder the dilemma she'd given him.

_She can't go to the Dark Lord about Draco without revealing Narcissa's indiscretion. But she can undermine me with this theft business. Something else to discuss with Dumbledore._

xxxxxxxxxx

"Do you think this could seriously compromise your position?" Dumbledore sat calmly at his desk as Snape poked, prodded, and manipulated his right hand. "How does it look?"

"As well as could be expected, I suppose, considering the power of the curse still affecting it. Your fingers wiggle, you feel pinpricks, heat, and cold. The neural system is still there – both sensory and motor control. And the good thing about the tissue damage…"

"It is quite comforting to know there is something good about it."

"Yes. Well, the good thing is that the tissue, for all its blackened appearance, doesn't seem to be dead. It's been four months, and it hasn't sloughed off. It'll never be what it was before you behaved in such a foolish manner, but I'm beginning to think you might have more than a year left. I certainly am not going to number the days until your demise."

"I look forward to living a while longer then, in anticipation of the day when…" Dumbledore chuckled. "I will be able to play the violin?"

Snape glared at Dumbledore. "If you think I'm biting on that one, you're sadly mistaken."

"That is the trouble with wizards who have muggle experience. They have heard all the jokes. Now Arthur Weasley would have walked right into it without the slightest suspicion… What about my other question?"

"It depends on how desperate or angry Bella gets. The names of people who go into headquarters aren't covered by the Fidelius charm, so finding out the name is a performable task. The Dark Lord will believe that I didn't want to accommodate or take orders from Bella, but he would not accept that I couldn't give him a name if he asked for it."

"And if I were Riddle, I would assume that pure curiosity would lead you to investigate, even if you did not already know. So if you could not tell him when asked, it would be a grave matter."

"Very appropriate choice of words."

"Not intentional, I assure you. When do you go south next?"

"Saturday. After the Quidditch match. I'm doing some more research, and I'll go to headquarters Sunday."

There was a long pause as Snape watched Dumbledore deliberate. Finally, "If you were trying to find out the name for curiosity's sake, how would you go about it?"

"Logically," Snape replied, "methodically. Like everything else."

"I suggest you do that, then. I do not think it would be right for me to give you the name. The person in question has gone into hiding. I shall get word out that it may become more dangerous."

"Thank you, Headmaster."

xxxxxxxxxx

_A she-wolf with bubble gum-pink fur loped along Oxford street in the rain singing, 'I feel pretty, oh so pretty…' She stopped when she saw him. 'Do you feel pretty, too?' When he was silent, she added, 'It's on the application form, you know.'_

_He shook his head. 'I've never been pretty.'_

'_Not be,' the she-wolf laughed, 'feel. You have to feel. Feel pretty. Who's the pretty girl in the mirror there…' She turned to continue down Cromwell Road, which he recognized because the Natural History Museum was to the left. 'You can apply now,' she said in parting. 'They left you a puppy.'_

_There was a little pen of puppies outside Imperial College, and he stood in the queue waiting his turn. Everyone, it seemed, wanted a puppy, and he was afraid they would all be given away before he got to the front of the queue. 'Name?' they asked him when he finally made it._

'_Russ,' he replied._

_They handed him a puppy with russet fur, which he carried gingerly to the doors into the college. 'Name?' he was again asked._

'_Russ.'_

'_Not you. The puppy.'_

'_I don't know its name,' he admitted._

'_You can't bring it in if you don't know its name.'_

_He looked around to see if there was anyone who could help him. Sirius was there, inside the doors, and beside him was a delicate silver doe. 'Do you know the name?' he called._

'_What will you give me if I tell you?' Sirius called back._

'_Anything.'_

'_Then it must be valuable.'_

Sirius was suddenly gone and Snape was staring at the ceiling of his bedroom, breathing hard as if he'd been running. _Nymphadora's patronus has changed to a wolf. Is that because she's fallen in love with Remus? Potter's patronus is a stag. Was that his father's, too? Does that mean the doe is…? But if so, why now? I don't feel any…_

He stopped, pushing the thought behind locks and wards, for the voice of the bubble gum-pink wolf echoed in his brain – _You have to feel. It's on the application form, you know._


	58. Chapter 58 – Answers and More Questions

**Too Much for Granted: Answers and More Questions**

_Saturday, November 2, 1996 (moon at last quarter)_

The first Saturday in November dawned chill but sunny, with the pale, cold sun of the north as winter neared. Perfect Quidditch weather. Everything seemed normal as Snape made his way to the Slytherin changing room. The new announcer was Smith from Hufflepuff. _I thought he was one of Hufflepuff's Chasers. Who's going to announce when Hufflepuff plays? Well, at least it should be more pleasant than having to listen to a blatantly partisan Gryffindor announcer._

Then the Slytherin team came into the changing room, and Snape's eyes widened in surprise. He was expecting the new Chaser, since Vaisey 'd been injured in practice the day before, but now Malfoy wasn't there either. "Why the change in lineup?" he asked quietly, and Urquhart, the new team captain, shrugged.

"Malfoy's sick today. We just replaced him with Harper."

"Very well. You should clear it with me ahead of time, though. I'm going up to the castle to see if Malfoy's all right. You have a good game. Keep Weasley off balance and Potter away from the Snitch and we should be fine. Good luck."

For some reason, Snape knew that Malfoy wasn't really sick, so he wasn't surprised that the only Slytherin player in the hospital wing was Vaisey. He then hurried down to Slytherin house, but Malfoy was in neither the common room nor his own dormitory. Worried now, Snape started a search of the whole castle, certain that Malfoy was taking advantage of the fact that everyone was watching the game to further his own plans with regard to the Dark Lord's task.

There was no sign of Malfoy anywhere on the grounds. Snape started back to the Quidditch pitch just as the cheers and screams of the crowd announced that the game was over. He hurried down the hill, passing Filch going the other way. A moment later he saw Malfoy near the Slytherin stands. _What's he doing out here?_

Before he could speak to Malfoy, Snape was distracted by a crash and the sound of splintering wood. He made for the scene immediately, to find that one of the Gryffindor players had crashed into the announcer's booth. Smith had fallen with the impact and lay on the ground, covered by wood. Sprout had hurried over as well. McGonagall was headed onto the field to accost the guilty party.

Snape sent another Hufflepuff team member, up the hill to alert Madam Pomfrey while Sprout attended to her fallen student. Smith was dazed, and had received several cuts in the fall. It also looked as if he would develop some bad bruises.

Sprout was livid. "Idiot Gryffindors! If she doesn't take at least fifty points from them and put that crazy fool on a month of detention, I'm going to Dumbledore! That house is a menace to the whole school!"

Flitwick came over then to see if he could help. Together the three teachers got Smith onto a stretcher and started to move him away from the pitch. McGonagall joined them, and Sprout turned on her to vent her wrath.

"When are you going to start controlling those hooligans of yours! They could have killed him, crashing into the booth like that! I've half a mind to demand that Gryffindor be disqualified for the whole season. Blatant, unwarranted, vicious, irresponsible…"

"I am so sorry, Pomona. I'm afraid she was upset by his announcing. She felt it was unfair to the team and especially to her brother."

The other three teachers regarded McGonagall in silence for a moment. Finally Flitwick spoke up. "So now they know how we felt all those years with Lee Jordan announcing. I don't recall that anyone on our teams ever attacked Jordan."

Snape nodded in agreement. "You have to admit, Minerva, Gryffindor is the most violent house in the school. None of the other houses resort to physical attacks with either the frequency or the brutality of Gryffindor. You lost your Seeker and both your Beaters last year because of violence."

McGonagall seemed surprised at the unity of the other three heads of houses. "That was Umbridge trying to…"

"No, Minerva," said Flitwick. "That was Potter and the Weasley twins responding to heckling by beating up Malfoy. They need to learn that you react to words with words, not with fists, and not by endangering lives and health."

Looking over at the stretcher, which Sprout was again moving up the hill, McGonagall nodded. "I've already taken the points from them. The girl will go on detention for a while. I hope the boy is all right."

"I think it's all minor damage," said Snape, "though I'll feel better after Pomfrey's had a look at him."

It was only at supper that Snape realized he'd been so distracted that he'd forgotten to ask Malfoy where he'd been and why he couldn't play. _It will have to wait until Monday, I suppose._

As soon as the crowd of students began to leave the Great Hall, and the teachers made sure that no one from Hufflepuff was going to take issue with the behavior of Gryffindor and start a fight, Snape returned to his office to gather a few things and then leave for Lancashire.

Once again, it was a very enjoyable evening. Snape browsed through his great-grandfather's collection of grimoires and histories, looking for every mention of specific artifacts and noting them down. He was particularly interested in the items that corresponded to those on the tarot card, but did not overlook the possibility that his assessment had been in error.

Snape also made a list of everyone he could recall having met at Twelve Grimmauld Place. If the Dark Lord was going to ask him for a name, he wanted to be sure he could at least narrow the list down, to show he'd been working on the problem. When he concentrated on the first couple of times he'd ever gone to the house, it suddenly hit him, and he was surprised he hadn't thought of it at once.

_Mundungus Fletcher. He's a member of the Order. If anyone in that group is a thief by vocation, it's Mundungus. You'd better hope Mr. Fletcher, that the Dark Lord never asks, because yours is the name I'll have to give him. Pay attention to Dumbledore's warnings, and stay hidden._

The next morning, Snape again apparated to various archives around the country, looking for anything that might tie families to artifacts and anyone to the names Gaunt and Peverell. He didn't bother with anything recent, assuming Dumbledore had that already covered, focusing instead on the earlier information – nearer to the time of the founders themselves.

It was a thoroughly confusing day. Snape spent hours trying to make sense of all the Williams, Hughs, Roberts, Adelizas and Margarets, not helped by the fact that the documents were mutually contradictory. Or maybe it was just gaps in the records that made it look contradictory. Nothing profitable had come out of the day.

The one thing that attracted Snape was the coat of arms said to belong to Peverell of Nottingham and Peverell of Devon. Looking remarkably like the arms of the Earls of Chester, it had three gold sheaves of wheat on a blue background, surmounted by a horizontal gold bar.

What was intriguing was that the bundled wheat sheaves reminded Snape of the sign hanging outside the 'Three Broomsticks' inn in Hogsmeade, as if the wheat was intended to represent broom heads, or the brooms intended to be sheaves.

There was not time to think about it now, however, since he was due at headquarters. Folding a copy he'd made of the shield and putting it in a pocket, Snape apparated to Birmingham.

The laboratory was a mess. Cupboards and drawers were open and their contents disarranged. The cabinets had been emptied and refilled haphazardly. Beakers were disordered as if shoved aside in a search. Yaxley appeared right behind Snape, clearly having watched for his arrival. "Bella," was all he said.

Without a word, Snape turned and rushed downstairs, putting in a request to speak with the Dark Lord and waiting, angry and agitated, in the antechamber. After a few minutes, Bella joined him. They did not greet each other. Half an hour later, they were admitted.

"You have a complaint, Potions master."

"Lord, my laboratory has been invaded and my work ruined. Ingredients and materials are scattered all over the place…"

"Is anything missing?"

"I don't know, Lord. I'll have to do a full inventory. It will take hours."

"How has your work been ruined."

"Potions were brewing that should not have been disturbed. Temperatures that needed to be exactly maintained dropped. The potions are ruined, I can tell by the colors. Why was this permitted?"

Snape gasped as pain suddenly licked the edges of his brain. "Do you question our orders?"

"No, Lord."

"Our head of Field Operations expressed concern that there was an area within this building that was accessible to only one person. She had cause to believe there were things brewing there that had not been authorized. We permitted the security sweep."

"Did she find anything unauthorized, Lord?" Snape looked directly at Bella as he asked the question.

"No, she did not."

"Lord, I have several weeks of work that has to be redone. Some of it was for the clinic, to use specifically with field operatives that are injured. Will Field Operations now accuse me of withholding medicines they need for a cause that was beyond my control?"

It was Bella's turn to gasp, and she quickly replied, "No, Lord. We won't hold him responsible."

"Lord, give me permission to seal the laboratory so that only I can enter."

"How will you do this?"

"I don't know yet. I need to experiment with shielding. Lord, I would bring the spell to you before using it."

Bella burst out angrily, "That means no one would have access while he's at Hogwarts! What if we need the things inside?"

"What if Yaxley could also enter, and could control the shielding?"

"You have our permission."

A few minutes later Snape told Yaxley what they had to do. Yaxley was skeptical. "How do you make a shield only two people can go through?"

"I don't know, but I need to try." _If Hogwarts can do it with owls, I can do it here._

xxxxxxxxxx

Snape sat in a comfortable chair in Dumbledore's office, staring into a goblet of mead.

"The problem is, none of it fits. The whole story of the founding of Hogwarts is unraveling in a morass of anachronisms. I was always told, at least by the teachers here, that Hogwarts was around a thousand years old – more now – but I don't see how that's possible. Did you know that 'slithe-rinc' was Anglo-Saxon for "cruel man," but that Salazar is a surname from northwest Spain that didn't exist until several centuries later?"

"I can appreciate where that would hamper your research."

"I thought maybe it could be a later corruption of a similar-sounding name, so I even managed to find out that Sal-asaru is Anglo-Saxon for rope or necklace of hazelwort, and since hazelwort is also called snakeroot, it seemed appropriate, but that really is stretching things."

"I see…"

"And then it's almost impossible to tell when the other two families, Peverell and Gaunt, enter the picture. If the thousand years is true, then the castle could have been started as early as Malcolm I or as late as Kenneth II here in Scotland, which in England would be anywhere from the reign of Edmund I to Ethelred the Unready. But even Ethelred died a good half century before the Conquest."

"And this is important because…"

"Both Peverell and Gaunt become established under William the Conqueror. Peverell is from western Normandy and Gaunt from Belgium. How they may have married into the families of any of the founders has so far escaped my investigations."

"Ah, well. Not a lot to go on."

"Rowena Ravenclaw is an interesting one. 'Hraefn-clawu' means not only raven claw, but crab claw as well, so I'm also taking the tarot card of the Moon and the sign of Cancer into consideration. She came up with the idea of a constantly changing floor plan, you know. If there was any place in the castle that continuously changed, it would probably have been initiated by her. Do you know of such a place?"

"I may have heard of one. I shall have to check it out."

"It would help if I knew what I was looking for…"

"Ah, Severus. If we always knew what we would find, life would become very dull."

"I just want to go in the right direction."

"You are doing quite well, actually."

Snape glared at Dumbledore for a moment. "There is an unrelated problem. I need to know how you let the owls in."

"Through the defenses? The shields are calibrated to their bio-signs."

"Which are isolated how?"

"Well, until the early 1990s we used a crude physiological calibration, but now we employ a non-Mendelian DNA sequence…"

Snape rolled his eyes ceilingwards. "Sir, how do you know so much and so little at the same time?"

"I beg your pardon?" Dumbledore peered over his glasses.

"We adjust the shields using mitochondrial DNA, but you don't know who John of Gaunt was."

"I look into what is useful to me at the moment. I do not need John of Gaunt on a day to day basis. I need DNA. You have no idea how long it took us to discover that muggle scientists already had the information we needed to adjust the shields. This is why I need you. You have a background in muggle knowledge that will help you find these things faster. I would never have thought to look for Kenneth II or Ethelred the Unready."

"Remind me again. What do you need?"

"Artifacts and other trivia about the founders, and their relationship to other families, especially Gaunt and Peverell."

"I'll keep looking."

The DNA part was relatively easy. Genetics was one of the things that had fascinated Snape as a schoolboy, and he'd kept up on its advances over the years. Yaxley wasn't too sure about taking tissue scrapings from inside his mouth, but relaxed when Snape showed him it was just a little swab that didn't hurt at all.

The tests took a few weeks, but with a mind spell or two they were at least at the head of the line. Meanwhile the two started testing ways to calibrate a shield.

With the permission of the Dark Lord, they did most of the testing in Snape's own home, using the back storage area/potions lab. It was smaller than the one at headquarters, but otherwise similar, being also on an upper floor. The shield had to surround the room, but allow others to work unhindered in adjacent areas.

Snape realized immediately that there was more than DNA involved. Owls didn't wear clothing. Whoever passed through the shield had to do so fully clothed and possibly carrying items. Recalibrating was a cumbersome business that required them to remove the entire shield and replace it.

"If we do that, we might just as well have a simple shield that we raise and lower at need, but I don't want that. I want one where I can enter the lab and the person walking beside me can't."

Yaxley nodded, knowing full well who the person walking beside Snape was likely to be, and not wanting her around either. "Tossing something through the door isn't likely to hurt much, is it?" he asked.

"Not unless it's a bomb, in which case we'd have a lot more to worry about than a laboratory."

"So we can let objects through, just not people or spells?"

That, of course, made the task easier. Snape regarded Yaxley for a moment. "Why did they remove you from the Cardiff branch anyway?"

"Bella convinced the Dark Lord that my heart wasn't in the work. The numbers supported her interpretation. Besides, they wanted something to give to Rabastan, and he wanted Glasgow. Nott was willing to support Bella against Malfoy, so they moved me out and him in."

"The sons aren't friendly at Hogwarts. Now I know why."

"You never were very involved in the politics of headquarters, were you? Always up at Hogwarts, or messing around in the lab, or giving defense lessons. You taught me back in the old days. Just a boy you were then."

"I hope it did you some good."

"Got me out of a tight spot so I wasn't around when Bella was looking for a team to go after the Longbottoms. I didn't have a chance before to thank you for that."

"Don't mention it. Glad I could be of help."

With regard to his outside research, Snape decided to concentrate on the family of Hugh Peverell of Devon. Devon was, after all, the home county of a high percentage of Britain's wizards. Ottery St. Catchpole was in Devon, home of Weasleys, Lovegoods, and a plethora of others. Godric's Hollow itself was not far from them. Devon seemed a likely candidate for further study.

November passed slowly, a frustrating and fragmented month. At headquarters, Snape was constantly busy in the laboratory as Field Operations kept up a steady series of attacks across the Midlands. Bella was in her stride now, ringing up success after success in a string of small but tactically valuable raids against the Dark Lord's enemies. The Ministry under Scrimgeour seemed powerless to respond. _The Daily Prophet_ announced arrests, and brought great glee to headquarters in doing so, for none of the named arrestees were actually Death Eaters. The fact that the failures came during the watch of Scrimgeour, a man Snape disliked intensely, was the only good thing about it.

Recruitment was up, too. More and more of the marginal wizard families, those who had never benefited from the policies of the Ministry and who resented the prosperity of their muggle neighbors, were coming into the Dark Lord's ranks. Enough, in fact to from new cells in Hampshire and Leicestershire.

This turned out to be a good thing on a personal level because the Dark Lord sent Fenrir Greyback out to proselytize among the werewolves. Lunches in the cafeteria were much more pleasant without the prospect of Greyback's loud, crude voice or the wet-dog scent that permeated the air where he was.

Life at Hogwarts was something of a juggling act, as Snape was doing the jobs of one and a half professors. The Dark Arts curriculum had not been taught properly since… Snape hated to admit it, but not since Quirrell had taught the course. The students Snape inherited from Lockhart, Lupin, Crouch, and Umbridge were a spotty group across the board – very knowledgeable about some things and woeful deficient in others. Snape frequently had to go back to the very basics, even with his NEWT classes, in order to proceed with the course material.

Then there was Slughorn, who was continually asking Snape to do something for him. Slughorn seemed to feel that the fact that Snape remained in the office near the Potions classroom meant that Snape was Slughorn's errand boy. Snape was repeatedly promising himself that he would fling the next request back into Slughorn's face, but then he would watch the enormous Potions master huff and puff up the stairs to his own rooms and would relent. _If I made him do all his own work, he'd have a heart attack within a week._

Meanwhile his other research led Snape to stories of swords and hats, of belts, capes, rings, wands, lockets, bracelets, gloves, books, and furniture. Most of the claims of authenticity of these reputed artifacts of the founders had already been proven false, but others were still possible. Snape deeply regretted that Ollivander was not available, for if anyone knew the whereabouts of the founders' wands it was him. And Fortescue's knowledge of medieval history would have been invaluable. Dumbledore was of no assistance either, for Dumbledore was absent from Hogwarts most of the time now.

The most disturbing thing, however, were the thoughts that seemed to bubble up, unbidden, from the depths of Snape's mind. Thoughts about Phina and Sirius and Potter, but mostly thoughts about Lily.

_It has to be her patronus. It has to be. 'Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs.' Everyone thought they were just silly nicknames, but they were the animagus forms. Lupin's a werewolf, Pettigrew's a rat, Sirius was a dog… prongs are the antlers of a stag, and Potter's patronus is a stag, so that would have been James's patronus, too. If Lily's was a doe, it must mean her feelings for James…_ Whenever he reached this point, Snape began to shut down automatically. The dangers of walking that path were too great, and Snape was beginning to hate the form his patronus had taken.

The other train of thought was equally distressing. Why now? Nothing in his relationship to Lily's memory had changed. The dream voice of the pink she-wolf taunted him – _'Not be. Feel!' I don't want to feel. Everyone I feel something for dies. Not only can't I stop it, I'm the one that makes it happen. I took Narcissa to Nana's home. I gave the prophecy to the Dark Lord. I told Sirius of my suspicions about Potter's destination…_ Snape forced himself to think of Sirius's face in the green flames that night. _It's all right. I didn't want him dead. At least I don't bear that burden. It's because Sirius felt things too strongly. This 'love' is a dangerous thing._

There was one thing he could do for the memory of Lily and Sirius. It was a thing he'd promised Dumbledore long before, under duress – a duty, a charge, a commitment made by the living to the dead that their deaths not be in vain. He could watch over the boy they'd both loved, however unknowing and ungrateful that boy would be about it. Whatever else happened, Snape would see to it that Harry Potter survived.

Then December came, cold and snowy. The DNA results came back, allowing Snape and Yaxley do the final work on the shields, which Snape planned to present to the Dark Lord and then install over the Christmas break.

At Hogwarts Snape now worried about the behavior of Malfoy, who was letting his class work slide in all his subjects, and was disappearing for long stretches of time. Occasionally Snape saw him down by the gates with Filch and wondered if Filch was letting the boy out to visit Hogsmeade, but since Snape never saw Malfoy enter or leave, he didn't confront either of them about it.

Malfoy continued to avoid conferences with Snape. From time to time he'd be summoned to Snape's office, and always found a reason not to go. Normally Snape would have forced the issue, but knowing that Malfoy reported everything to Bella made him cautious. He didn't want her to accuse him again of harassing her nephew, and so Snape waited patiently for the chance to catch Malfoy where they could talk privately.

As the term neared its end, Snape received an invitation to Slughorn's Christmas party. He could think of only two reasons why he'd been invited – because Slughorn invited all the teachers, and because Snape had to be kept happy so that he would continue to handle the Potions supplies.

Large parties were a bore. In all his life, Snape had only been to one big party that was fun – on the night he became a Death Eater. Considering how that had worked out over the years, it was probably a good thing that there'd been no other fun parties.

It was rather interesting seeing who among the students had been invited. Potter, of course, and Granger… _Does she remind you of Lily, Professor?…_ but no Malfoy. The perils of having a father in Azkaban. A few years ago, when Lucius was on the Board of Governors for Hogwarts, Malfoy'd have been on the top of the list. _Sic transit gloria mundi._

Slughorn's office was garishly done up as a Bedouin sheik's tent, and the guests from outside included a Who's Who of former students. Authors, musicians, a vampire… _Was he a student, too, or just a friend of a friend?_

Passing through the throng, Snape caught a snippet of Slughorn's booming conversation. "…a few with this kind of ability, I can tell you that, Sibyll – why even Severus –" and suddenly he was seized and pulled resisting into the little group. Slughorn had clearly already had a tad too much to drink, and threw a beefy arm around Snape's shoulders.

"Stop skulking and come and join us, Severus! I was just talking about Harry's exceptional potion-making! Some credit must go to you, of course, you taught him for five years!"

A tiny suspicion suddenly raised its head above the level of subconscious thought, for this wasn't the first time Slughorn had mentioned Potter's hitherto undiscovered talents. Snape eyed the boy speculatively. "Funny, I never had the impression that I managed to teach Potter anything at all."

"Well, then, it's natural ability! You should have seen what he gave me, first lesson, Draught of Living Death – never had a student produce finer on a first attempt. I don't think even you, Severus…"

"Really?" Snape knew that Slughorn had never truly noticed his potions ability, and he also knew, having experimented with the Draught of Living Death at the age of twelve and having noted his improvements in his mother's old Potions text, that no one had ever equaled him. Except Lily, of course, after he taught her how to do it…

Potter was reciting his courses in response to Slughorn's questioning. "All the subjects required, in short, for an Auror," Snape said, allowing sarcasm into his voice. _One who jumps to the wrong conclusions and arrests all the wrong people as a result. You'll do very well in the Ministry._ It was gratifying to note that his promise to keep Potter alive did not carry with it the obligation to like the boy.

The conversation floated on to other things, and Snape was looking for escape, when Filch dragged Malfoy into the room. Malfoy insisted he was trying to gatecrash, but Snape suddenly knew he'd been out of the Slytherin dormitories for other reasons. The gate crashing was a cover. _Idiot boy! And why is Filch salivating over the prospect of disciplining Malfoy? Maybe they aren't working together after all._

Slughorn allowed Malfoy to stay, but as the boy began to flatter the professor shamelessly, Snape realized he now had an opportunity to talk to Malfoy where he couldn't make excuses or escape. "I'd like a word with you, Draco," he said suddenly.

Slughorn protested. "Oh, now, Severus, it's Christmas, don't be too hard…"

"I'm his Head of House, and I shall decide how hard, or otherwise, to be. Follow me, Draco."

It was a matter of a moment to find an empty classroom and push Malfoy into it. He pulled the boy over to a desk near the door and pointed to it. "Sit down, Draco. We need to talk." Malfoy did as he was told. Snape himself sat on the desk across from it.

"Now, Draco, you and I need to have that little chat."

Malfoy looked sullenly at the floor. His attitude was irritating and disrespectful. Snape went directly to the point.

"I have been trying to speak with you ever since that little fiasco with the cursed necklace back in October. If I had known you were planning anything so stupid, so liable to both fail and be detected, I would not have allowed you to proceed. What you are attempting is too important, your success too vital to your whole family… You cannot afford mistakes, Draco, because if you are expelled…"

"I didn't have anything to do with it, all right?"

"I hope you are telling the truth, because it was both clumsy and foolish. Already you are suspected of having a hand in it."

"Who suspects me?" In his anger, Malfoy looked directly at Snape, who took advantage of the eye contact to try reading him. "For the last time," Malfoy insisted, "I didn't do it, okay? That Bell girl must've had an enemy no one knows about – don't look at me like that! I know what you're doing, I'm not stupid, but it won't work – I can stop you!"

And he was right. Snape's somewhat limited legilimens ability was running into crude but effective blocks. Crude because they were so obvious. Effective because he couldn't get past them. "Aunt Bellatrix has been teaching you occlumency, I see." _And the fact that she's willing to risk the Dark Lord's wrath is very telling._ "What thoughts are you trying to conceal from your master, Draco?" _Shall I tell you what he does to people he suspects of trying to control what he can see?_

"I'm not trying to conceal anything from him, I just don't want you butting in!"

_Why have you decided to go into Bella's camp? Don't you know she and your father are enemies? Or have you decided that you don't want a father who gets himself thrown into Azkaban? Watch out, Draco. No one is as close to the Dark Lord as Bella claims to be._

"So that is why you have been avoiding me this term? You have feared my interference? Had anybody else failed to come to my office when I told them repeatedly to be there, Draco…"

"So put me in detention! Report me to Dumbledore!"

_Is that an accusation that you believe me to be working for Dumbledore? Dear Bella's influence again._ "You know perfectly well that I do not wish to do either of those things."

"You'd better stop telling me to come to your office then!"

"Listen to me. I am trying to help you. I swore to your mother I would protect you. I made the Unbreakable Vow, Draco…"

"Looks like you'll have to break it, then, because I don't need your protection! It's my job, and I'm doing it, I've got a plan, it's just taking a bit longer than I thought it would!"

_He's beginning to crack. Things aren't going well, and he's scared._ "What is your plan?"

"It's none of your business!"

"If you tell me what you are trying to do, I can assist you…"

"I've got all the assistance I need, thanks, I'm not alone!"

"You were certainly alone tonight, which was foolish in the extreme, wandering the corridors without lookouts or backup, these are elementary mistakes…"

"I would've had Crabbe and Goyle with me if you hadn't put them in detention!"

"Keep your voice down! If your friends intend to pass their Dark Arts OWL this time around, they will need to work a little harder…"

"What does it matter?… it's all just a joke, isn't it, an act? Like any of us need protecting against the Dark Arts…"

"It is an act crucial to success… Where would I have been all these years if I had not known how to act? If you are placing your reliance in assistants like Crabbe and Goyle…"

"I've got other people on my side, better people!"

"Then why not confide in me, and I can…"

"I know what you're up to! You want to steal my glory!"

"You are speaking like a child! I understand your father's imprisonment has upset you, but…"

Then Malfoy was stomping angrily out of the room. Snape watched him go in frustration, wondering what else he could have done to get Malfoy to talk to him. Then he slipped quietly into the empty corridor and headed for Dumbledore's office, for Dumbledore had returned in time for Christmas.

"He won't admit to the necklace business, and he won't accept my help. Bella's got him believing that I work for you."

"Well, you do."

Snape just glared at Dumbledore. "He hasn't given up, and he refuses help. So it's probably Malfoy's assessment that he's failed that drives the Vow. He's very frightened, so he may be coming up on some kind of a deadline. He did let slip that something's taking longer than it should."

"Poor Draco. He's going home for the Christmas break. I hope that he returns to us whole and healthy in January."

"If anything happens to him, it'll be all over headquarters in a heartbeat. I'll try to watch out for him."

"You have to. You took a Vow."

"To the best of my ability. I just love loopholes."

Christmas break started, and two days after Christmas Snape and Yaxley were ready to present their shield to the Dark Lord for his approval. They arrived to a somber and subdued headquarters.

"I don't think you want to go down there," the clerk at the sign-in desk said when the two started for the stairs.

"Why not?" Snape was suddenly apprehensive.

"Bit of unpleasantness. I wouldn't be related to the Malfoys for all the firewhisky in Scotland."

Downstairs they found Bella in the antechamber. She looked sick. A few minutes later the door was opened by a messenger who seemed surprised to see Snape. "He wants you now. All of you. How did you…?"

Snape shook his head as the three of them entered the interview chamber. All was dark except for the circle of light where Draco knelt, clutching his stomach. Narcissa was lying on the floor moaning. Bella started at once for her, but Snape seized her arm, trying to communicate wordlessly that her action wouldn't help her sister.

"Ah…" the Dark Lord's voice hissed across the room. "A trio of faithless servants. We honor them with our trust, and they all betray us."

"Lord," Bella cried, "I am your most faithful servant. I'd never betray you!" She collapsed writhing on the floor.

"Have you protestations as well, Potions master?"

"Lord, I am weak and ignorant. If I have failed you, I deserve to be punished."

"Do you speak of Hogwarts to this other servant?"

"No, Lord. It is not part of his tasks."

"Nigel, you will go. This does not concern you after all." Yaxley bowed and left in silence, not glancing at Snape as he went.

Muscle cramps spasmed through Snape's stomach and legs, felling him to his knees, and searing fire flared in his right arm so that he cried out.

"What is your job, Potions master?"

"To make potions and medicines for your servants," Snape gasped, "to train them in defense, and to report to you what goes on at Hogwarts and within the Order of the Phoenix."

"And it did not occur to you that we might wish to know that Dumbledore had been injured."

There was no good answer. Understanding now why the Dark Lord targeted his right arm with flame, Snape closed his eyes and gave himself up to the pain.

Awareness returned slowly. Snape had no idea how many minutes the torment had lasted, but Bella, Narcissa, and Draco hadn't moved. Draco looked as if he were about to be sick.

"Rise, son of a dishonored house."

Draco clambered to his feet, sweat beading his forehead. "Yes, Lord," he stammered.

"Twice you have failed, and our patience wears thin. You know what you must do."

"Yes, Lord."

"Take these worthless women and leave our presence."

Draco helped his mother and aunt to rise, and the three of them left the interview chamber. Snape lay very still, not daring to move.

"Kneel and face us, Potions master."

His arm still burning with pain, Snape struggled into a kneeling position and obediently made eye contact with the Dark Lord. After a moment he was released from the probe.

"When did Dumbledore receive this injury?"

"I don't know, Lord."

"It was not the cause for which you were summoned to him in July."

"No, Lord."

"Had he already been injured at that time?"

Not knowing which answer would be more acceptable, yet not daring to hesitate, Snape said, "No, Lord."

"When you saw him again in August, had he been injured?"

"Yes, Lord."

"Rise. You will speak of this to none. When you return to Hogwarts, remember that young Malfoy has a task. It is not for you to know what it is. You will see that no one hinders him."

"Yes, Lord." There was silence. "Lord, forgive my boldness, but there was another task."

"Speak."

"Yaxley and I have finished the shielding that we promised you. We came today to present it to you."

"Send for Yaxley."

xxxxxxxxxx

"I swear I don't know how you do it. You take that kind of punishment, and then you talk calmly of routine business as if nothing had happened."

"I was not calm. I've no idea what gives you that impression."

"Maybe it's the quiet voice, the steady hands, and the attention to minute detail." Yaxley chuckled. "Macnair had some fascinating theories about you, you know."

"Macnair's an idiot."

"I don't know. You take it so much in stride. By the way, thank you."

"For what?"

"Keeping me out of it."

"You weren't involved."

"Others would love to cast blame randomly. You don't. Thank you."

Just at the end of the Christmas break, Snape was called once more into the presence of the Dark Lord. Anger frosted the air, and Snape braced himself for more punishment.

"We have asked you before about Slughorn. Does Dumbledore treat him with honor? Is he consulted and sought after for counsel?"

"No, Lord. Dumbledore still pays little attention to him. He is not given any special place or honor."

"We wish to interview him, but Dumbledore keeps him from us. Does he ever leave Hogwarts?"

"He went at least once into Hogsmeade, Lord."

"Advise us should he do so again."

"Yes, Lord."

Snape had been away from Hogwarts for most of the Christmas break, something he hadn't done for years. It felt almost like September when he returned, rather than January, because he'd been gone so long. He went up to the seventh floor immediately to see Dumbledore, but the headmaster was once again away from Hogwarts.

Descending the stairs again to the dungeons, Snape paused on the fifth floor. _The Library. Here I've been poring over muggle books and never bothered to check the Hogwarts Library. I wonder..._

The students who'd gone home for the break were arriving the next day, and the Library was thus empty. Snape glanced briefly at the history section, realized he had no idea where genealogical material, if any, might be shelved, and went looking for the librarian, Madam Pince. She steered him toward a far aisle where students seldom went, the works there being neither necessary for classes nor in any way forbidden.

As the librarian turned to go, Snape remembered something Dumbledore had said months earlier. "Madam Pince," he asked, "would you happen to have something on Beedle the Bard?"

Pince gave him a strange look, then returned after a few minutes with two books which Snape added to the four he was taking from the family history section. In those few minutes, all Snape's attention had shifted from her, Beedle, or anyone else, for on the little flap of parchment glued onto the inside cover of one book, the flap on which the identity of borrowers was recorded, Snape had noticed a familiar name: T. Riddle.

Gathering up the books, six in all, Snape hurried to his office in the dungeons.

Once in the dungeon rooms, Snape settled himself in his reading chair in the bedroom with the books piled on the small table beside him. He took the book that the Dark Lord had borrowed as a student and stood it on its spine in his lap, then gently allowed the book to fall open of its own accord. Knowing the Dark Lord, Snape imagined he would study a valued text over and over again. If there had been one place where it had been kept open for long periods of time, the book might open again to that spot where the spine was now weaker.

It did. It opened to a section with several pages of family tree charts covering about ten generations between 1400 and 1700. The charts detailed the intermarriages between a number of families from the counties of Stafford, Warwick, Worcester, Hereford, and Shropshire. There were names Snape recognized, and names he didn't, wizarding families having predictably died out and been replaced by muggle-born families in a regular progression over the decades.

It amused Snape to scan through these charts, and in doing so he noticed a number of tiny penciled ticks that followed certain bloodlines through the generations, multiplying ancestors as it went. _Could these have been made by the Dark Lord as a teenager?_ Snape wondered, having no trouble imagining the muggle-raised Riddle using a pencil without a second thought, especially to make marks in a library book. One line led to the marriage in 1396 of Percival Pudsey to Serpentina Woolcroft. It was not the bride's name alone that caught Snape's attention, but also the tiny snake printed next to her name. Miss Woolcroft was believed to be a descendant of Salazar Slytherin.

_So there really may be evidence that the Dark Lord is Slytherin's heir. I wonder how clear-cut that actually is._ An hour's study convinced Snape that it was not clear-cut at all. Slytherin's family had died out in the male line long before 1400, and the number of families descending through any one of several female lines was large. Taking into account the uncertainty of birth dates and the frequent marriage of distant cousins to combine previously separate lines, it was impossible to tell which of the many families claiming descent from Slytherin could possibly be called his 'heir.' _Not that there's anything to inherit_, Snape thought. _Parseltongue seems to be it. Definitely not land or money._

Having exhausted that part of the pedigree, Snape tried another. This led, to his great surprise, to the name Peverell in Somerset around the year 1250. _And here I'd given up finding any wizarding families named Peverell._

Peverell had turned out not to be a Norman name, but a Normanization of a Welsh nickname. It was first used by the stepfather of an illegitimate son of William the Conqueror. That particular family had also died out in the male line, though later families with the same name strove to find a connection. _Probably just a similar nickname, but everyone wants to have royal blood, even if out of wedlock._ None had any claim to wizarding blood, though, until now.

Following the line through names like Dionysius, Archaeleus, and Cadmus, Snape stopped in shock at Hamo. Hamo Peverell was half-brother to the son of the Conqueror, but he didn't have any children. Snape got up and searched for his notes. His memory was not at fault. The Conqueror's mistress had married Ranulph of Whittington, known as Peverell, and by him had three sons – Hamo, William, and Payne. Hamo had left his lands to his brother William, and therefore most people assumed he had no children. But what if he was a wizard? A muggle-born wizard who had to flee from his society because of his affliction? It was interesting to speculate on, but as there was still no connection between Peverell and the Founders, Snape put it aside.

Next Snape followed the little pencil marks down into 18th century charts and got another surprise. A female descendant of Percival Pudsey, one Mehitable Chaffinch, married a man named Lorenzo Gaunt of Yorkshire in 1746. There was a pencil mark by this name.

_Peverell and Gaunt. Dumbledore told me to find artifacts, not ancestors of the Dark Lord. Will this be a surprise to him, or does he know this already?_ Except for Serpentina Woolcroft, there was no other link to the Founders.

Snape then turned to _The Tales of Beedle the Bard_ and was disappointed to find it was nothing but children's stories. There were magical pots, enchanted fountains, crystal caskets… Snape didn't even read the stories, he just skimmed through them. The only interesting thing was the invisibility cloak. _I bet Moody uses his to hide from Death whenever he can._ He chuckled, and tossed the book aside.

The last book was a critical analysis of the Bard's stories, and Snape was flipping idly through the pages, not really wanting to read it, when a name caught his eye. Peverell. The brothers who tried to cheat death were named Peverell. Antioch, Cadmus, and Ignotus Peverell, to be exact. The three names rang a bell. Snape returned to the genealogies to find they were the grandsons of Hamo Peverell, and were young men at the time of the civil war between King Stephen and the Empress Maud.

_Well, well. Gaunt, Peverell, Salazar Slytherin, and the Dark Lord, all wrapped up in Beedle the Bard. But I'll be hanged if I have a clue what it all means._

Snape had to leave the dungeons then, and hurry upstairs, for Dumbledore had returned to Hogwarts. He put the afternoon's work in another part of his brain for there were more important things to discuss.

"You are not happy, Severus. I hope your stay down south was not too unpleasant." Dumbledore sounded both official and familiar at the same time.

"I want to know why I learn more about what you're doing from the Dark Lord than from you." Snape stood by the window, staring out at the winter stars.

"Direct and to the point. What do you believe Riddle has told you about my activities?"

"You misled me about why I got the Dark Arts job. You didn't want me as the Dark Arts teacher, you wanted Slughorn on the staff. Slughorn knows something that the Dark Lord doesn't want you to know. You brought him in to keep him safe, but the only thing he can teach is Potions, so you kicked me out of the job, or halfway out of the job – I still have to do most of the administrative work. I got Dark Arts because you didn't have any place else to put me."

"True to some extent, but not true that I didn't want you for Dark Arts. You will potentially be very useful to me there."

"Potentially? I thought I was useful to you in July."

"You were. And you will be useful to me again."

"By the way, he knows something happened in July. He knows your arm was injured, he knows more or less when it happened, and he considers it significant. It seemed to be the occasion for his bringing up his displeasure at not being able to 'interview' Slughorn."

"Well, I suppose it was only a matter of time. Has he yet connected any of this with the diary that was destroyed? And why did ne want to interview Professor Slughorn?"

"I don't know. The diary was why he was so angry with the Malfoys this summer. That seems to have been much more important to him than Slughorn. The diary was his horcrux." In the ensuing silence, realization began to dawn in Snape. He turned to Dumbledore, horrified. "The ring was a horcrux, too!"

"I fear so."

"But you only make one… He can't have split… How many do you think there are?"

"I am not going to say. It is best you not know. Is Draco all right?"

Snape's gaze returned to the night sky. "He was punished, but not too badly. The Dark Lord wanted to frighten him, though, so his mother and Bella were punished more. The Dark Lord said he'd failed twice. We know about the necklace, but that means there's something else, maybe another cursed item, floating around the castle. We need to be alert."

There was the soft sound of robes sweeping the floor, then Dumbledore stood behind Snape and laid a hand gently on his shoulder. "And you? Are you all right?"

"I know what your arm felt like that night. It was my own fault; I should have told him long ago. About your arm, I mean. I forget sometimes that Hogwarts is in the same universe as headquarters, and that students can tell their parents…"

"I am deeply grateful you did not tell him. It gave me several more months in which to track down information that I might not have gotten otherwise. I grieve that you had to pay for it."

Snape ignored the apology. "I have officially been told that Malfoy has a task, but still not what it is. I'm to keep people from hindering him. I'm to tell the Dark Lord if Slughorn ever sets foot out of Hogwarts. Keep him locked up – he's a potential kidnap victim. And I'm going to report every move you make."

"I would expect no less."

"There's more." Snape paused, but Dumbledore waited quietly. "The Dark Lord accused Draco of failing – failing – twice. The Vow was not activated. Either the Dark Lord used the word without meaning absolute failure, or it isn't the Dark Lord's view of the matter that counts. I knew that Draco was still working on something just before the Christmas break, and I assume that it was the second failure, so I'd guess it's Draco's idea of what constitutes failure that counts. I intend to give him moral support and urge him to perseverance at every opportunity."

Dumbledore smiled. "I would join you, but as it appears I am to be the victim_..._ What of your other pursuits?"

"The Founder artifact business is entertaining. Did you know that there are three shawls of Helga Hufflepuff still in existence, but that two of them were woven from the wool of Saxon Merino sheep, a breed that didn't exist until 1765? Or that a piece supposedly of Slytherin's jewelry was offered for sale at a market in Leeds in 1762, bid on by one customer, and then bought at a lower price by another who claimed to be Slytherin's heir and terrified the owner into accommodating him by speaking Parseltongue? Or that the glove reputed to be Gryffindor's was manufactured in Newcastle in 1725? Or that Ravenclaw's measuring spoon was shown in 1833 to have been manufactured in China in 1154 BC?"

"Is there anything, Severus," Dumbledore asked, "that you have found to be true?"

Snape shrugged. "There seem to have been actual families of Gaunt and Peverell in the wizarding world. What's more, they're mentioned together in a book in the Hogwarts library. A book that someone thought interesting enough to want to mark the connection in pencil. One of the borrowers was T. Riddle, though there's no proof he was the same person who made the marks. I imagine he would have been more fascinated by the line descending from Serpentina Woolcroft."

"Let me guess," said Dumbledore with a smile. "A descendant of Slytherin's."

"Bingo," Snape replied. "But that's the only link to a Founder, and there aren't any relics or artifacts associated with her."

"I wonder," Dumbledore mused, "if he was aware of the legends surrounding the family."

"You're not talking about Mother Goose, are you?" Snape's attempt to stifle a laugh produced a sound more like a snort.

"Mother Goose?" Dumbledore eyed him quizzically. "Is that another wizarding family you have found?"

"They're children's rhymes," Snape explained. "Things babies learn at their mother's knee. Humpty Dumpty and Little Miss Muffet."

"I thought you did not know any children's stories."

"I said my parents never told me any. That doesn't mean I couldn't learn about them later. We got a few in school. And from Disney, of course."

"Of course," responded Dumbledore, for all the world as if he understood the reference. "What Mother Goose stories are we talking about?"

"Beedle the Bard. I can't believe you sent me to look up children's stories. But there is a connection to the Peverell family. It seems the characters in one story are supposed to have been three of the descendants of Hamo Peverell."

"And which story would that be?"

"You know perfectly well which story." Snape glared at the headmaster. Then his mouth twitched in a near smile. "I wonder if that's how Moody's managed to cheat Death all these years. One of his invisibility cloaks is a Hallow. Or maybe that's why the Dark Lord kidnapped Ollivander – because Ollivander's got the Elder Wand in his shop disguised as a display item."

Dumbledore's silence at this remark made Snape turn to face him, suspecting him of hiding something. "Do you think the Dark Lord knows about the Hallows? That he may have turned a thing he thought was one of them into a horcrux?"

"It is a possibility," Dumbledore said, "Though I remind you that Riddle would be much like you in that he is unlikely to have heard wizarding children's stories when he was young, and therefore may never have heard of the Hollows at all. I do like your tying them in to the kidnappings, however. That is an intriguing angle. Was there anything else that you uncovered?"

To Snape the tone sounded as if suddenly he was about to be dismissed. He still had the feeling that Dumbledore was withholding information from him. "No, sir," he replied.

"Well then, I believe we may have exhausted that line of inquiry for the moment. Keep in mind what you have learned. It may be valuable someday."

With that, the interview was over. _But if what he wanted me to know was the content of a children's tale_, Snape thought on the way down to his rooms in the dungeon, _why didn't he just tell me? Why make me do all that research? What might he still be hiding?_

The following Sunday evening, immediately upon arriving at Birmingham, Snape put in a request to speak to the Dark Lord. He'd no sooner gotten up to his laboratory than a messenger came with the summons, and he hurried down to the interview chamber. _I don't know if this is the right thing to do or not, but I can't risk his learning about this later from someone else._

"It is well that you have news for us," the Dark Lord told him, motioning Snape not to kneel. "We would have sent for you in any case. Tell us this news."

"Lord, it is a small matter. Dumbledore is seeking information about a wide number of ancient items, legendary artifacts. Some may never have existed outside the imagination of the story tellers, but he wishes them checked."

"Are there any in particular that he singles out for notice?"

"Yes, Lord. Items from the stories of Beedle the Bard. The tale of the three brothers. He even wishes information on the family that the brothers were said to have belonged to…"

"Yes, we know of this story. So, it is of interest to Dumbledore. He is a fool, but it is good to know in what direction his mind turns. Tell us, does Dumbledore speak of the disappearance of Ollivander?"

It was a moment pregnant with promise, that the Dark Lord should mention what Snape and Dumbledore had so recently discussed themselves. Snape's face remained bland as he answered. "He mentioned it in passing at the time. I haven't heard him talk about it since."

"Does he refer to the founders of Hogwarts, asking questions about their history?"

Snape was suddenly aware of the beating of his own heart. Pits opened on either side of him, danger and death swirled in the air around him, but now – now he had a chance to learn what the Dark Lord was thinking and planning. The dim light of the chamber glowed brighter, and every detail of the room stood out with the clarity of Venetian glass as he rolled the dice.

"Yes, Lord, he has. He's asked about possessions and artifacts of theirs as well."

"He grows troublesome. He will learn, though, that he is not as wise as he believes."

"Tell me, Lord, what must I do if he asks again?"

"He must not suspect you. You will assist him to the best of your ability. If you should discover what he seeks, or if he should tell you what he has found, you will report it to us instantly."

"And if he doesn't share it with me?"

"Then he does not share it. It will make little difference in the end."

xxxxxxxxxx

Snape once again paced the breadth of the carpet in Dumbledore's office, a caged beast whose movements were those of frustration rather than strength. "You don't understand, sir. He already knew you were looking for these things. He could be planning some kind of a trap!"

"Well," said Dumbledore complacently, "this may complicate things a bit. I shall definitely have to proceed with more caution. Meanwhile, you will do as both your masters command and find out as much as you can about the…"

"No. Sir."

"I beg your pardon?"

"I will not help you in this. You'd actually walk right into whatever he's planning for you and get yourself killed. I won't be party to this. I won't do any more research for you."

"And here I thought that having Tom and I in agreement about your job would make things easier for you. You can please both of us without subterfuge."

"No. I will not help you kill yourself."

Dumbledore watched Snape for a moment, his expression hardening. "You have a very poor opinion of my abilities if you think that Riddle can take me so easily after I've been forewarned. I assure you that I am not going to walk right into anything without employing proper precautions. Now, you have been working on tracing all the reputed artifacts…"

"No. I won't do it."

"Severus, I have not known you to refuse to follow my instructions before. This is becoming tedious."

"No, sir. It's becoming dangerous. I'm not going to lose you. What'll you do? Send me to Azkaban?"

"Professor Snape, you will continue to assist me in the research I have requested from you."

"It isn't in my job description. You can't make me."

"I can dismiss you from the school."

"I think I could explain that to the Dark Lord's satisfaction."

It was a stalemate. Dumbledore turned away, his anger seeming to simmer just under the surface. "You have a class in ten minutes, Professor. I suggest you not be derelict in that duty as well."

Snape left the office without another word, his own anger at Dumbledore's stubbornness just beginning to seethe like a poison brewing in his veins.

Thursday evening after supper, Dumbledore paused on his way out of the Great Hall and turned to face the staff table. The message was clear, delivered and received in a fraction of a second. _I would appreciate it if you would come to my office this evening. Say, around eight?_

The atmosphere in the room was much more relaxed than it had been when Snape last left, and Dumbledore handed him a goblet of mead as he entered, raising his own glass and smiling slightly as he proposed, "Confusion to the enemy."

"That I can drink to," replied Snape, joining him. He then waited for Dumbledore to begin.

"Yes," said Dumbledore after a moment. "We ended our last meeting on such a sour note that I thought we might discuss those points on which we are in agreement. Shall we sit down?" He moved two chairs in front of the fire and Snape, seeing no reason not to, settled into one of them. The warmth was welcome on a cold January night.

"Now," Dumbledore continued, "I should like to be sure that we are acting in unison with regard to Draco. Draco must be protected."

"I'm pleased to see you're still concerned about the boy."

"Severus, I am concerned about all my students. With some, I confess, it is easier than with others. Goyle, for example. The way he stands with his hands hanging down and his mouth slightly open… Not funny? No, I imagine not. I have never been good with spontaneous humor. But Draco, now. Draco is rather easy to feel concerned about."

"I am… both pleased and surprised to hear you say so."

"Surprised? How so?"

"There has from the beginning been something of an antagonism between him and… Potter."

"Oh, and you suspected that I would see things more from Harry's point of view. Has it really seemed to you that I have played favorites?"

"There are times when it has been blatant. I still haven't forgiven you about the House Cup at the end of their first year."

Dumbledore frowned, then let it pass. "Draco is bright, ambitious, loyal, hardworking, suffers from an overbearing father, and would be a sweet boy if given half a chance. He craves affection, but has had to live his schooldays under the shadow of the popularity of Harry. He does somewhat remind me of you."

"I think that's stretching it a little, sir."

"Really? Well, I try. In any case, Draco deserves a future, and I do not wish to see his chances destroyed by having his soul split due to a murder."

"There, sir, we are in agreement."

"I am glad. You will see, therefore, why it is necessary, should it come to it, that you take Draco's task from him and accomplish it yourself."

"Why don't we just take the opportunity away from Draco and leave the task incomplete?"

"You seem not to comprehend, Severus. I am concerned about all my students, past as well as present. There is the matter of the Vow."

"No, sir. I don't think you're really thinking about me. You're thinking of sacrificing yourself so that I can stay alive, but that's not thinking about me, it's thinking about yourself."

"Well I am flummoxed! How can that be thinking about myself?"

"You don't want to have to live with the guilt of my death."

"I would not be guilty. I did not make an Unbreakable Vow."

"No, I did. And I'm the one who has to accept the consequences of that action. We have to protect Draco, on that we agree. And you have to stay alive to fight the Dark Lord. We're in this quandary because of something I did, ergo I should face the consequences."

"Severus, I am an old man. You are young and still have…"

"Why are you worried about Draco splitting his soul, but you're not worried about me splitting mine?"

The silence lengthened in the tower office as Dumbledore and Snape stared at each other in the glow of the fire. At last Dumbledore rose and refilled the goblets of mead.

"You have never killed anyone?" Dumbledore stood now by the mantle, staring into the fire.

"If I had, I would have told you. Surely you knew that?"

"You told me so much. I did not want to pry further. You'd been a Death Eater for some years…"

"The Dark Lord has always preferred specialists. I was recruited for potions and spells. And later for defense training. I wasn't allowed on field assignments because… Do you remember my grandmother?"

"Constantina Rossendale was a grand lady. Such a tragic death. Yes, you told me about that."

"So… I wasn't allowed on field assignments."

"You present me with a great problem."

"I don't think so. We let events unfold. We try to protect Malfoy. I don't kill you, and whatever happens, happens."

"It is not a satisfactory solution."

"It is to me." Snape stared into his again empty goblet, then rose and refilled it himself. He was beginning to feel rather mellow. "Besides, you haven't considered what my life would be like if I did what you wanted."

"You would have a life."

"That's a matter of opinion. Let's assume first that no one knew it was me that killed you. Without you to spy on, I would have no excuse to give the Dark Lord for remaining at Hogwarts. Potter would poison the rest of the Order against me, and I'd be forced to stay at headquarters doing the Dark Lord's bidding with no one on the outside to turn to. I see suicide as a viable alternative, which would make your sacrifice meaningless.

"On the other hand, if it were known that I killed you it would be worse. Everyone outside the Death Eater organization would be after me. Can you see me trying to explain to Potter and Moody that I did it on your orders? Give me a break. Once again, suicide becomes a highly attractive alternative. Do you really want that?"

"I do not want you dead. Not under any circumstances, and certainly not because of a Vow."

"Are you certain of how the Vow will operate?"

"No. Especially since you took the Vow unaware of its terms. Vows are tricky. I cannot predict how this one will operate."

"All the more reason not to jump the gun. I may not have to do anything. And the worst scenario in that case is still better than the best scenario if we follow your plan."

Dumbledore agreed not to press the issue, and Snape returned to his duties somewhat lighter of heart. He did no more research for Dumbledore, but supplied the Dark Lord with most of the details of what he'd already done. The Dark Lord listened to the litany of artifacts, confirmed or spurious, of shawls and rings, of capes and gloves, with calm detachment. "Is there nothing more?" he asked at the end.

"Some rumored to have once existed, but now lost forever," Snape replied, and gave the Dark Lord that list as well, at the end of which the Dark Lord seemed pleased. Snape was dismissed to continue with his regular assignments is the lab, where Yaxley now assisted him on a regular basis.

Gradually, Snape was beginning to realize what an excellent partner Yaxley was. Neither of the two was overly ambitious, and neither was fanatical about being a Death Eater. There was no conspiracy, just a tacit mutual agreement not to discuss certain things. Above all there was a common sense that they would watch each other's back up to a point, and the point was understood. It was a comfortable relationship, insofar as anything at headquarters could be said to be comfortable.

At Hogwarts, life continued normally, though Malfoy persisted in withholding details of what he was doing from Snape. Things were, in fact, so distressingly normal, that the upcoming annual apparition lessons on the first of February were something to look forward to.

Rain fell sadly from the gray sky that Saturday, turning the lawn into mud and dissolving the last of the snow. Snape and McGonagall stood at her first floor window staring out at the dreary weather.

"Well, it won't be the first time we had apparition lessons in the Great Hall." McGonagall sighed.

"In some ways it's more fun in the Hall, where they all have to be crowded together more. It concentrates the action. Not that there'll be much on the first day."

"You sound like you're going to the circus!"

"In a way I am," replied Snape, keeping a perfectly straight face. "You have no idea who I'm hoping is going to splinch today, or how."

"You wicked man! Are you actually planning to gloat over Gryffindor's gaffes?"

"Did you do that on purpose, or was it serendipitous?"

"What are you talking about, dear lad?"

"Let's see… I may not gloat over Gryffindor's gaffes, but I may rejoice over Ravenclaw's ruptures."

Through her laughter, McGonagall managed, "Savor Slytherin's splinching! Now let's see you do H!"

The letter H proved more difficult, and they made their way downstairs tossing possibilities back and forth.

"Honor…"

"Too respectful. Hilariate."

"There's no such word as hilariate!"

"Aha! Howl over Hufflepuff's haplessness!"

The sixth years were milling around in the Great Hall, unsure what to do, as the four Heads of Houses entered behind Wilkie Twycross. Just as they were passing through the door, Snape whispered to McGonagall, "Stephen Cornfoot's ears," with the result that she looked particularly cross and out-of-sorts as she struggled desperately to stifle her giggles.

As Twycross began to introduce himself, McGonagall found focus in the disciplining of two students who were softly conferring in the back of the crowd, the only two whose eyes were not on the apparition instructor. "Malfoy, be quiet and pay attention!"

Snape's glance went at once to the movement as Malfoy and Crabbe separated. Two Death Eater children with fathers in Azkaban. _Have you been foolish enough to share your mission with Crabbe, or does fear of the Dark Lord keep you secretive?_ It was a momentary thought, as the apparition lessons began in earnest.

Snape, McGonagall, Flitwick, and Sprout began to separate and line up their students by houses, with Snape between McGonagall and Flitwick. There was a moment when Potter and Malfoy started posturing like rival peacocks, but the professors quickly got them into line.

Destination! Determination! Deliberation! – every year the professors heard the same speech. Every year the beginning students twirled stupidly in their efforts to apparate the few inches to the hoops set before them. Watching the irritating, lazy students he struggled hardest to teach stagger dizzily around the Hall was one of the high points of Snape's year. Externally he was stern and unmoved. Internally he was laughing.

"What was your worst splinch?" McGonagall asked as it became increasingly clear that there were no apparating geniuses in the crowd.

"I never splinched," Snape replied.

"Never? That's hard to believe."

"My mother taught me to apparate when I was nine. I spent my first couple of lessons here pretending I didn't know what to do so that no one would find out."

"But that's illeg…" McGonagall started to protest, but at that moment Susan Bones splinched. It was a bad splinch – her entire left leg – and the girl was going into shock. Snape, McGonagall, and Flitwick all rushed to assist Sprout in reuniting the girl and getting her up to Madam Pomfrey. Splinching like that was rare, but needed to be addressed immediately or the emotional trauma could keep a person from ever trying to apparate again.

In the excitement, Snape's and McGonagall's conversation was forgotten, and the lesson soon ended.


	59. Chapter 59 – Evading the Inevitable

**Too Much for Granted: Evading the Inevitable**

The new shields for the laboratory worked perfectly. Neither Snape nor Yaxley even had to think about them, passing through the doorway as if there were nothing there, but everyone else soon became very wary of them. Aside from blocking any entrance or casual penetration, the shields gave a mild but uncomfortable electric shock. Messengers from the Dark Lord learned to stand well away and call out to Snape or Yaxley if either of the two was wanted.

Snape also noticed that he could 'see' the shield. Although itself invisible, the shield affected the quality of the air visible on the other side, producing a faint shimmer. When he mentioned this to Yaxley, he got a quizzical look in response, though later that day Yaxley admitted he could see it, too. They spoke of it to no one else.

Near the end of February, Snape was called to the interview chamber.

"Dumbledore gets no closer to his goal."

"I don't know, Lord. He doesn't confide in me about everything. There's no one to whom he reveals everything."

"But he has investigated both the Gaunt and the Peverell families. And the legends of Salazar Slytherin."

"Lord, he has."

"Then he must be nearing a conclusion. How goes it with young Malfoy."

"He's seldom seen in the castle. There's somewhere he goes to work on his task. I don't know where it is, but I know he's conscientious about the job you've given him to do. It's a great honor for one so young to be entrusted with his Lord's work, a great honor for the family. His father would be proud…"

"Silence." Pain flickered and spiked on the edges of feeling. The chamber grew suddenly chill. "Do not speak for that worthless traitor. He was given charge of that which was ours, and chose to use it for his own ends. He will understand before he dies what it is to lose what does not belong to him, and how far our arm stretches in vengeance. He will learn in Azkaban of the destruction of the last of his house."

Snape felt the blood drain from his face and limbs, and grew suddenly faint as realization dawned. "Forgive me, Lord. It is not my place to know everything, but you have charged me to see that young Malfoy works unhindered. Is it your design that he fail in his task?"

The Dark Lord laughed, high and cold. "No, Severus. It is our intention that he succeed, and that he fall in the midst of his success. See that Malfoy is not hindered. When he faces the task, you will understand."

"Yes, Lord."

To all appearances, Snape was calm as he left the chamber, but appearances can be deceptive. The equation upon which Dumbledore was constructing his plans was inaccurate. Draco's downfall was to come with success, not failure, and if Snape took Draco's task from him, the Dark Lord would be… displeased. The future was looking worse and worse all the time.

There had been a time during the last three years when the mental communication between Snape and Dumbledore had proceeded with the measured pace of spoken conversation, but that time was long past. When they wished, their eyes could meet and the words flash with the speed of thought, whole messages conveyed back and forth in a few seconds. The experience was not comfortable for Snape, since it required maintaining eye contact with Dumbledore, something he was not always willing to do.

Now, the weight of his new knowledge burdening him with worry and fear, Snape caught Dumbledore's eye on the way to his seat at breakfast the following morning.

_The situation is not what we thought. I have to talk to you._

_Now? Or at lunch time when we will be less obvious?_

_Lunch will do. It's important, not urgent._

The exchange had lasted the space of two heartbeats.

xxxxxxxxxx

"Don't you see, sir, that if I perform Malfoy's task, neither of us will have anywhere to go? The Order will be after us, the Dark Lord will be after us, and you won't be there to protect us. At least if you're alive, you can protect Malfoy here at Hogwarts. How can I watch over Malfoy if I have nowhere to go that's safe?"

They were walking out on the lawn while the rest of the school ate lunch in the Great Hall. Snape had stopped at the edge of the cliff and was looking down at the lake. Dumbledore stood a little behind him. "As you said, the situation has changed. There are still so many variables and unknowns that I do not wish as yet to rule out any scenarios, but this information requires careful consideration."

Snape didn't move, didn't allow their eyes to meet. "You'll pardon me, sir, but it's ruled out one or two for me."

"I must ask you not to be so hasty concerning what you will and what you will not permit yourself to do. I need to think about this. Let us speak again when I have reviewed the options. In a day or two?"

"Yes, Lord."

Snape turned and reentered the building, not looking at Dumbledore, not wanting to see his face, or his eyes…

By Thursday evening, Snape was as nervous and irritable as he'd ever been in his life. He was going down to Birmingham Friday night, wouldn't be back until Saturday supper, and was giving up hope of being able to talk to Dumbledore again before that happened. To make matters worse, in his hypersensitive mood he was intensely aware of the actions of people around him – people he'd only allowed on the edges of his consciousness for several months now.

Take Slughorn, for example. Was it Snape's imagination, or did the old fool seem to be wary, even nervous around Potter? For a couple of weeks, Snape had been vaguely aware that Slughorn was more attentive to the behavior of the students than before, constantly glancing around the Hall, but today at supper, Snape realized that it was the Gryffindor table, the spot where Potter and his friends sat, that attracted most of Slughorn's attention. And Potter was watching…

Snape's eyes darted to his left in time to catch a look between Potter and Dumbledore that set him seething again. _There's something between them that involves Slughorn. I… I told Dumbledore that the Dark Lord was interested in Slughorn, but it's Potter that Dumbledore entrusts with his confidences! How much more is he keeping from me? How much is he telling Potter about me? Is this why Potter is so belligerent, so defiant this year? Because Dumbledore tells him everything!_

As soon as supper was over, Snape headed out of the castle and down to the lake shore to try to calm down.

About fifteen minutes later, the very obvious sound of someone moving through the fringe of trees let Snape know he'd been followed. He sent another stone skipping across the water, not needing to turn around to know it was Dumbledore.

"I would be delighted if you could teach me to do that. I do not believe I have ever seen another wizard make rocks bounce on the water like that."

"Lily taught me. It's a muggle skill. Haven't I told you that before? Besides, Hagrid can do it."

"Perhaps. Some things skip my mind. Come, walk with me nearer to the forest where we cannot be seen from the castle."

There were things Snape wanted to say, but the thing that burst from him was not what he'd planned. "What are you doing with Potter, all these evenings you're closeted together?'

"I spend time with Harry because I have things to discuss with him, information I must give him before it is too late. Information for him to do what he needs to do."

"You trust him more than you trust me."

"Let us say I prefer not to put all my secrets in one basket. Especially a basket that dangles on Riddle's arm." Dumbledore raised a hand at Snape's protest. "I do not underestimate the constant danger you are in, Severus. Considering the risks, I trust you with more than I would ever trust anyone else."

"But Potter? Incapable of Occlumency, a mediocre magician who has a direct connection to the Dark Lord's mind…"

"Riddle has had a taste of what truly sharing Harry's mind means. He will not try to possess Harry again. His soul cannot bear close contact with a soul like Harry's. Like a tongue on frozen steel. Like flesh in flame…"

Snape turned away from Dumbledore, trying to force the image of Potter's arrogant, sneering face from intruding into his mind. "We were talking of minds, not souls."

"In the case of Harry and Riddle, to speak of one is to speak of the other."

Snape didn't respond, nor did he turn to see the pitying look in Dumbledore's eyes.

"But it was not of their souls that I came to talk to you, Severus. It was yours. I have deliberated, and it seems to me that in some things you are right."

"I'm astounded. Overwhelmed."

"Do not be cheeky, or I shall subtract points from your house. I have considered that there are some circumstances in which it might be better to leave Draco's task unfulfilled. I have also considered your accusation that I do not care about the state of your soul, and found it to be inaccurate. I care very much. I do not think the splitting of a soul is at issue here."

"I would dearly like to know your reasoning about that, since it's my soul we're talking about."

"I believe that the state of the soul at the time of killing is of vital importance. It is the intent, the malice, that splits the soul. Thus, if the killing is done without malice, at the request of the victim for example, then the soul is not split."

"And I would have no problem about your acting in accordance with that belief if it were your soul we were talking about. Since it's mine, however, permit me to be skeptical."

"I think we should prepare for a variety of scenarios. There is always the possibility, for instance, that I may die first of the curse that still infects my hand, thus negating the Vow entirely. Under those circumstances you would, of course, look after Draco."

"Of course. Though it's looking more and more as if the curse is waning."

Dumbledore ignored the observation. "I should like you to investigate certain other things for me. Do not look at me like that – it has nothing to do with Gaunts or Peverells. I should like you, in the privacy of your own home, to investigate spells involving resurrection or resuscitation…"

"You're not fooling me like this! Not this easily! There is no such thing as a spell that resurrects from the dead, and I'm not killing you on your assurance that there is!"

"Shh. Keep your voice down please, Severus. I also want you to investigate any and all spells and potions that mimic death. Anything, in short, that would help us fool Riddle into believing his wishes had been carried out. And I mean for Malfoy as well as for me. Remember Emmeline Vance."

"But if both of you survive, what of the Vow?"

Dumbledore peered at Snape over his glasses. "You yourself said you preferred the idea of your death due to the Vow to my death due to your action. Are you backing down?" When Snape didn't answer, he continued. "Of course, these cannot be the only scenarios. You must also agree that if the situation warrants, and my death is truly required, you will abide by my assessment of the circumstances and do as I request."

Snape spun on Dumbledore in fury. "Now the truth comes out! This was all a blind to lead me by the nose back to the same old solution. Forget the near-death potions and the resuscitation spells! What we really want is for gullible old Snape to agree to kill you when you ask him to! Because gullible old Snape always does what Dumbledore asks! Well maybe you take too much for granted. Maybe I don't want to do it anymore! Maybe this obedient little donkey has finally been given too much, and he's going to kick over the traces! Get someone else to do your work!"

"You will not speak to me in that tone. I am asking nothing new. You have already consented, or have you forgotten? You gave me your word, Severus!"

When Snape refused to answer, allowing the mutiny in his heart to reflect on his face, Dumbledore sighed. "Come to my office tonight at eleven, Severus. You will never again complain that I have no confidence in you."

It was a confidence Snape would have given anything not to share. He listened in horror as Dumbledore, eyes closed as if to shut light from the dark truth, told him that a fragment of the Dark Lord lodged in Potter – that Potter was a horcrux that would have to be destroyed if the Dark Lord was to be defeated. By the time Dumbledore opened his eyes again, Snape had reached critical mass.

"You've kept him alive only so he can die at the right moment!"

"Don't act so shocked, Severus. How many men and women have you already watched die?"

It was a viciously low blow, and Snape's voice turned to ice in reply. "Lately, only those I couldn't save." He rose. He was already facing the door. "You used me!"

"Meaning?"

"I've spied for you, lied for you, gone into mortal danger for you, all to keep Lily's son alive… I believed it was for Lily! But you! You've been raising him like a pig for slaughter!"

Striding forward, Snape left the office without another word, slamming the door behind him with all the force in his body.

xxxxxxxxxx

Snape stood poised at the top of the narrow path that led along the cliff face to the lake's edge and Lily's rock, with no recollection of his descent down the staircases of Hogwarts or his passage out through the great oaken doors into the night. Automatically he stepped forward onto the path, then stopped, rage throbbing in his veins with the savage beat of his pounding heart. He didn't want to talk to Lily. The last thing at that moment that he wanted to do was talk to Lily. He wanted… he wanted to smash Dumbledore's face into a brick wall and scrape the smirk off it. He wanted to tear Hogwarts down, stone by stone with his bare hands He wanted to wipe the entire wizarding world off the face of the earth with one cataclysmic spell…

Turning his back, literally and figuratively, on Hogwarts castle, Snape sped down the hill toward the gate, miraculously keeping his feet on the narrow road in the darkness. The gate with its boar guardians was the doorway to freedom, but it was his jailor, too. Snape didn't care. Not slowing his pace, he threw himself against the bars and, to his surprise, it opened and released him into Hogsmeade.

It was only at that moment that the fury burning in Snape began to reform itself into thought, for he glanced back over his shoulder at the towers of the castle where the light still glowed in Dumbledore's office.

So, you're going to let me out… let me run wild a bit… let me work through it and calm down… Snape's wand slipped from his sleeve into his hand and he raised it in defiance, sending a tightly focused pulse straight at the light, and felt a bitter satisfaction when the faraway pane shattered at the blow.

_Take care the next time you ask me to kill you, you evil, sadistic, manipulative old ogre. You're going to get your wish._ Snape looked around at the quiet village and disapparated.

Wind and rain lashed the cliffs of Cornwall and whipped the sea into a froth far below where the water pounded against the rocks. Snape stood there, feet on the very edge of stone, the gale tearing at his hair and clothing, stinging his face with salt spray, and stared down into the turmoil of earth, air, and water, where they came together with such violence. If a bolt of lightning had struck at that moment, adding fire to its sister elements, he would have flung himself from the pinnacle to join them, with no Hagrid behind this time to pull him back from the brink.

Guilt had come full circle. At nineteen, afraid of pain, afraid of death, he'd bought his own life with a few repeated words whose import was unknown to him, and had thereby destroyed the sole thing he had left to treasure. Life had ended that October night, but he'd been spared to fulfill a duty, a duty he'd accepted as the only road to salvation that remained, to preserve the one piece of Lily that hadn't died – James Potter's son. To fulfill that duty he'd accepted the pain, accepted the constant companionship of death, accepted the submergence of his own will into that of Dumbledore, and for what? So that now that remaining piece of Lily could die, too. Die at Dumbledore's whim and for Dumbledore's purposes. And it was his, Snape's, fault. All his fault. Punishment had crouched waiting for him for over fifteen years. And Dumbledore had known all along. Had known and watched and laughed all those years. Gullible old Snape. Dumbledore's little donkey.

Snape hated Dumbledore with every fiber of his being.

But what if Dumbledore was thwarted? What if he wagered on the dumb donkey's obedience and was himself fooled? Snape could take Lily's Potter son and spirit him away where neither Dumbledore nor the Dark Lord would ever find the boy. Remove him from the game. Let the two power-mad sorcerers finish the war between them with no help from the donkeys or the swine…

There swam before Snape's inner vision the image of the Dark Lord's serpentine face and crimson eyes. No, that was not the way. To preserve Harry was to preserve the Dark Lord. No matter how desperately Snape tried to stave off the inevitable, it could not be escaped. There was no salvation. There had never been the possibility of salvation. All of it ashes, ashes strewn by the wind.

With a sigh that was also a sob, Snape accepted the inevitable and gazed in longing at the beckoning rocks.

That was when the new road opened before him. He blinked, then blinked again. There was something he could snatch from destruction, something he could cheat the Dark Lord of, and not because of Dumbledore. Because he himself wanted to do it. He could save Draco. The Snow Queen's son. Narcissa's boy.

It was only a straw, but Snape grasped it. Grasped it and returned with it to Hogwarts where for all of Friday he steadfastly refused to look at Dumbledore. He had been deprived of one hope, he would seize another. No matter what fate demanded of Harry Potter, Draco Malfoy would be spared.

Friday evening at headquarters might have been quite pleasant. Bella was not there, nor did the Dark Lord wish an interview. Snape was left alone with peacefully bubbling cauldrons and the calm precision of chemistry. He himself was neither peaceful nor calm.

_He doesn't care what happens to me. All that hogwash about not losing me to the Vow was a con game. I tell him I'll be punished for usurping Draco's task, and he doesn't care. He's going to force me to defy the Dark Lord's wishes and remove himself as my protector at the same time. At the very least, the Dark Lord will believe I'm more loyal to Malfoy than to him. Narcissa will be in trouble, too. Would Bella risk her neck for me? No. Would she risk her neck for Narcissa and Draco? Maybe. What if Bella is already targeted for destruction like Draco? Probably not. She had nothing to do with losing the diary._

_Insurmountable problem number one is the dark mark. If I run, he can summon me, he can punish me, he can find me. How can I remove the mark from my arm? From Draco's arm, too. Even if Draco resists._

Snape removed his jacket, rolled up the sleeve, and examined the brand. Just defacing it wouldn't be enough. It would have to be cut or burned out. _I wonder how deeply it penetrates into the flesh? What if the only way to get rid of it is to amputate the arm?_

Rolling the sleeve back down, Snape returned to his work, carefully and steadily decanting a batch of newly made Wakefulness Potion into small bottles that could be carried in a pocket.

_Where would I go? I'd have to take Narcissa – I couldn't leave her to face the Dark Lord alone. He'd send operatives to my home and the Malfoy mansion before anything else. The amount of time we'd have before that would be minimal. And neither Narcissa nor Draco would want to go. They wouldn't believe me. I'd have to stun them._

_Get Narcissa. Go somewhere to remove the dark marks. Go to a preplanned safe house. With two angry and hostile wizards. Dumbledore's the classic chief executive. All grandiose ideas but none of the logistics of making it work. Can't he see how much easier it would be just to keep Draco and Narcissa at Hogwarts? But then he'd have to be alive._

_This might be easier if I had someone here at headquarters…_

Snape finished up with his potions, put on his jacket, and went to the cafeteria. Yaxley was sitting at a table by a window reading _The Daily Prophet_. Snape casually walked over but didn't sit down.

"Have you eaten yet?" Snape asked.

"No. Want to join me?"

"Ever try fish and chips and a pint in a pub?"

Yaxley glanced around, but no one was watching or listening to them. Then he looked up at Snape and mouthed the word 'Muggles?'

"You have to know the enemy."

"I'm game. Food here's tasteless anyway. Lead on."

After giving Yaxley the appropriate muggle clothing, the two left headquarters into the chill of Friday evening in working class Birmingham on the last day of February. Normally Snape would have looked for something a bit more upscale, but with Yaxley he was quite willing to brave rowdy neighborhood pubs. Yaxley looked like a prizefighter, massive, fierce, and brutal, and he was the type who'd love the noise and atmosphere, and maybe even a fist fight.

The two found a likely place with a free booth in a corner, where they ordered muggle food and beer. A group on the other side of the room had a dart game going, and the level of noise from talking was so high that Snape and Yaxley had to raise their voices just to hear each other.

"Actually, I wanted to talk to you because I need backup. I'll be honest. Knowing about this could get you into trouble, so I can't tell you everything. I have a task, but I can't guarantee I'll be in the right place at the right time to do it. Being at Hogwarts all the time makes it harder. If I had someone helping me prepare, and covering for me without looking like he was covering for me, it would make things easier. If you don't want to hear any more, just say so and I stop now."

Yaxley shoveled another bite of food into his mouth and chewed thoughtfully. "Sounds interesting," he said after a moment.

Snape took a deep breath. "It involves Lucius's son Draco, and when it happens we may be moving fast."

After their talk, and considerably more food for Yaxley, who turned out to love fish and chips as much as Snape had as a boy, the two departed Birmingham for their own homes. Snape needed to start his new line of research for Dumbledore, and also work on a safe place to hide from the Dark Lord should it come to that. Yaxley was checking into short-term safe spots, Snape not having told him that going underground might be permanent.

One of Snape's first decisions was that any place of long-term refuge would have to be outside Britain. He himself had been to northern France and Holland, but no farther. The Dark Lord had been as far as Albania. But the Dark Lord had a very insular, Eurocentric mentality. There were places in the world he would simply not think of.

Australia, for example. Or most of Latin America. The fact that Draco and Narcissa were so clearly of northern European extraction did limit Snape's choices. They couldn't go anywhere where they would stand out and be noticeable. Snape's dark coloring might be able to pass for a variety of nationalities, but not the icy blondness of the Malfoys.

_Canada? The United States? Uruguay? South Africa? Siberia? New Zealand? I suppose we'd have to go somewhere where they speak English. I really can't imagine Narcissa learning Spanish… And a large metropolitan area – somewhere easy to get lost in a crowd. How could I keep Draco away from a local wizarding community?_ The longer Snape thought about it, the more hopeless the problem seemed.

The next morning he started thinking about it again. Large cities in other parts of the world… _New York is out. If he ever thinks of America, it'll be of New York. Toronto or Minneapolis… Could we take the cold winters? Better that than too much heat. Seattle or Vancouver… maybe. I don't really know very much about them._

Then Snape reached a point where he was telling himself the whole thing was pointless anyway since they'd never survive long enough to get out of Britain. That was when he started looking for resuscitation spells.

By mid-afternoon, having had quite enough research for one day, Snape returned to Hogwarts – to a Hogwarts that was fluttering with the news that Ron Weasley had nearly died from drinking poisoned wine.

"And where were you, I'd like to know?" McGonagall demanded. "You might have been of some use helping the poor boy."

"From what I understand, Minerva, the most important step was taken by Potter before anyone could be notified. Though how that boy thought to use a bezoar, much less knew where to find one at that moment, is beyond me. Besides, it was ordinary poison, meaning it wasn't some dark, cursed thing. Madam Pomfrey is at least as capable as I am in dealing with poison cases."

Talking to Dumbledore later, Snape was more interested in a different aspect of the case. "That was the second attempt the Dark Lord referred to. He must have been expecting to hear of your demise on Christmas Day after having partaken of your gift."

"It would so seem. I understand why Draco continues to attack me, but I deeply regret that these deadly presents continue to wind up in the hands of students. "

"We could just incarcerate him and keep him incommunicado."

"Which would result in Draco's failure and the invoking of your Vow. No, Draco is not actually attacking the students. He is trying to attack me. Maybe I should make myself more available to him."

"Maybe we could send the two of you to a desert island and let you duke it out there."

"Duke it out?"

"Fisticuffs. Your reach being so much longer than Draco's, it'd be a sure thing."

"You are not taking this seriously enough."

"Sir, with all due respect, maybe you're not taking it seriously enough. Draco could actually kill someone. He's almost done it twice now."

"It is a quandary. The Heads of Houses will have to instruct their students to be especially vigilant, and perhaps there should be a ban on gift-giving as well, as we have no way of knowing who may be placed under an Imperius curse next."

Snape rose to leave the office.

"By the way, Severus, have you managed to find out anything on those other topics."

"Winters in Seattle are warmer than winters in Minneapolis."

"I beg your pardon."

"Vancouver might be nice. I'm also thinking about Vancouver. That's assuming we survive the crossing of the Atlantic."

"Hmmm. Well, do what you can."

"Yes, sir."

The next day was Sunday, a day of leisurely mornings and long conversations. Snape contrived to sit beside Slughorn at breakfast.

"I hear you were instrumental in saving young Weasley from death, Professor. Wasn't it your bezoar that arrested the initial penetration of the poison?"

"Well, that's right! It was my bezoar! Though I give young Harry full credit for remembering I might be carrying it. It was my bezoar."

"I was away from the school that day, so I'm afraid I missed a lot. How did he know you were carrying a bezoar?"

"Well, he brought it up himself in Potions the first of the year. We were doing Golpalott's Third Law and Harry produced a bezoar as the solution." Slughorn suddenly slapped Snape on the back in a hearty display of camaraderie that was not received in the same spirit it was given. "Gad, it made me feel young again! Do you know his mother pulled the identical stunt for the identical lesson! What an intuitive grasp of potions that girl had, and the boy's got it, too."

_Except she didn't, professor. Oh, she was good, but she wasn't that good. That was the day we started talking again, when she couldn't make her antidotes, and I told her to show you a bezoar. But where would Potter get the same idea?_

Snape finished his breakfast as quickly as possible and hurried down to his office. The idea had flashed across his mind once before, at Slughorn's Christmas party with the mention of the Draught of Living Death, but then he'd been sidetracked. Now he checked cupboards, cabinets, and shelves, looking through stacks of manuals and recipe books, not finding what he was looking for.

At lunch Snape once again sought out Slughorn. "Did I leave some books in your room when I packed up? Manuals and things?"

"I don't think so. Just some used textbooks."

"Mind if I check?"

Slughorn unlocked the classroom door and waved lazily toward the cabinet. "Bottom shelf."

The book with its familiar cover was there. Snape didn't want to draw attention to it by taking it, since he had no reason to keep Potions texts in his office. Instead he moved the books aside as if looking for other things. "No one's been in here all year then?"

"No one. Had to loan out a couple of books to students who got Es on their OWLs, but they gave them back when they got their own copies."

Snape stared down at the book, then casually opened it. The half-century-old cover bound a brand new text. Someone had ripped the cover off the book to disguise the fact that he was using another student's notes to help him with his work. And Snape knew who the someone was. The one who'd read and followed the instruction Snape had written to his mother twenty years earlier: _Just shove a bezoar down their throats._

That left two problems, problems that Snape wrestled with for some time. First, of course, should he take the book away from Potter? But then Potter would know that it was his book and, considering Potter's attitude towards him and the fact that there were some nasty little curses in the margins, might start spreading tales. So far no one, to Snape's knowledge, had been lifted into the air with a Levicorpus, so it seemed Potter wasn't using the hexes. Snape decided to wait for an opportunity to take the book when his own connection to it would be less obvious.

The second problem was more of a mystery. Snape knew he'd checked that cabinet and every other cabinet when he moved out of the classroom. He hadn't been thinking of the book because he hadn't used it for so long, but if he'd seen it, he'd have taken it with him. It was, after all, his personal property, his mother's book, and something he wanted to stay out of Slughorn's hands. Why hadn't he seen it?

It had to be the Peculiaris spell. That would mean that the book was not Snape's property. _The connection from my mother to me is clear. She gave it to me, and in any case when she died all her possessions became mine. Could she have purchased a used book, and the original owner is still considered to have possession? Or could it mean that in some way ownership has passed from me to someone else? Not necessarily Potter, since the Peculiaris spell was cast before it was loaned to him. To whom does the book belong?_

It was a question whose solution would have to wait for a while – one among many and by no means the most important.

The next weekend, Snape went down to Birmingham on the Friday again. This time Yaxley came looking for him.

"What else can you get in one of those pubs?"

"Traditional English food. Bangers and mash, steak and kidney pie, Yorkshire pudding. Nowadays they serve almost anything, so I suppose chicken Kiev and falafel, too."

"Good. I'm starved. What say we go out to eat?"

"You're going to have to wait. I've got a bundle of orders to fill that'll take me at least two hours."

"Anything I can help with?"

It was a question that had never occurred to Snape before, but he didn't see why not. Not having an idea of how capable Yaxley was with potions, Snape set him to some easy mixing at first. Yaxley turned out to be an acceptable potions maker. Not extraordinary, but acceptable.

"What's your regular job around here, anyway?" Snape asked as they were straightening up the mixing area, washing the beakers, and making sure the cauldrons were simmering properly.

Yaxley gave him a funny look. "You've got to be the least curious person at headquarters," he said. "Bella never could figure out why the Dark Lord wanted you to be his spy at Hogwarts. She can't imagine you hunting down bits of information."

"There's not a lot to learn at Hogwarts. It's chiefly keeping an eye on Dumbledore. Besides, I was wanted for the potions and spells. That's why they recruited me. The Hogwarts job was a bonus."

"Me – for my looks, I guess. I scare lots of people. I came in at the same time as a bunch of mates. All at once. Pledged ourselves on the same day. You'd 've been a kid in school still when that happened. Got my big chance at Cardiff, but didn't do such a good job. Now I float around, mostly supplies or helping out in personnel. I'd normally be out in the field, but Bella doesn't want me."

Snape nodded in understanding. If that was the case, he could use Yaxley with the potions, especially during the week. Maybe with defense training, too, if there was ever another class. As it was, his job today had taken a little over half the time he anticipated because of two pairs of hands.

While they finished up in the lab and got ready to leave, Snape's thoughts went back to his own initiation into the Death Eaters. _If I'd known then what I know now, I wouldn't have been so eager to be a part of this 'family.' It seems so long ago, pledging…_

'_All I have and all I am are yours.'_

Snape stopped, stunned. Was that when it happened? Had he indeed given everything to the Dark Lord, including the copy of _Advanced Potion Making_? The ramifications of that idea were astounding. It meant that the Dark Lord owned the possessions of every Death Eater in Britain, at least of every Death Eater who'd made that particular vow. It would include Snape's own home and Lucius Malfoy's mansion, and yet…

At no time had Snape ever heard that the Dark Lord laid claim to those things. It would never have occurred to Snape himself that the words could be taken literally had it not been for the episode with his book. Could it be, if it were true, that the Dark Lord was also unaware of the transfer that had taken place?

Filing the thought in the back of his mind, Snape left headquarters with Yaxley for a pleasant evening at the pub they'd visited the week before, where they discussed, among other things, possible locations for safe houses in Britain.

xxxxxxxxxx

"This is a most interesting development, if true." Dumbledore leaned back in his chair, steepling his fingers in front of his chest. "Are you sure?"

"That the few items in the classroom that I owned before I became a Death Eater became invisible to me after I performed the Peculiaris spell, but that things I acquired later did not? Reasonably sure. I haven't figured out a way to test it with other people's things, so at the moment it's just a hypothesis. I wouldn't want to check with mine using any kind of spell that might alert the Dark Lord. Which means at the moment it remains a hypothesis."

"We must study ways to use this to our advantage… You returned early. May I take it you did not go to your home in Lancashire?"

"I thought you might be interested in hearing about this right away."

"A correct assumption. May I suggest, however, that you go to Lancashire now? I do want you to work on that other research I requested, and you might experiment with your things in the house to see which of them vanish from your sight as well."

"If I'm right, it would pretty much be the whole house and everything in it. I don't have a lot there that's new."

"That would be a most amazing sight to see. I look forward to your description of it."

Snape departed Hogwarts immediately and spent the rest of the night and most of Saturday in Lancashire, with the result that he missed seeing Potter hit in the head with a Beater's bat by his own Keeper at the Quidditch match that day.

Instead of a Quidditch game, Snape spent part of Saturday looking into tetrodotoxins, saxitoxins, and a variety of other neurotoxins. The whole matter of simulating death was a fairly easy problem, requiring only great care in matching the minute amounts of poison to the general health and body mass of the 'victim.'

Likewise resuscitation, the revival of the apparently dead, was a relatively easy process. One merely had to know the cause of the cataleptic or paralytic state and use the proper methods. The difficult part was resurrection, the revival of one actually dead.

Most of the texts in Snape's possession agreed that it was impossible to resurrect the dead. Just one reference contradicted this consensus, citing a spell that could only be cast by the person responsible for the death and claiming to have been successful in 50% of the cases. The major drawback was that in 100% of the half dozen recorded attempts to cast this spell, the spell caster had died. _I think I won't even mention this one to Dumbledore. He'd be sure to try to talk me into it._

The following weekend, Snape went to Birmingham on the Sunday evening and had the unpleasant experience of running into Bella Lestrange and Fenrir Greyback at the entrance to headquarters.

"Why puppy dog! How lovely to see you! I see your little shield is working nicely."

"It is indeed, Bellatrix. Were you trying to break in again?"

"You're mistaking me for some of Dumbledore's people. He's the one who consorts with thieves, as we've just been mentioning to the Dark Lord. Birds of a feather, you know."

Snape thought about this as he went to check the week's list of requisitions and was therefore not surprised to receive the summons to the interview chamber.

"You have access to the headquarters of Dumbledore's Order."

"Only if I'm called to a meeting, Lord. Though I can go to the place, I have no keys or spells to unlock the doors. I have to be admitted."

"This is unfortunate. Still, it may be a minor point. One of the Order has been stealing the possessions of the Black family. Do you know who it is?"

Not wanting the Dark Lord to know that he had the answer prepared, Snape paused as if to reflect. "There is only one I can think of, Lord. One member of the Order is, in fact, a petty thief and fencer of stolen goods. His name is Mundungus Fletcher."

"You may return to your work."

Yaxley was in the cafeteria where Greyback and the Carrows had opened a bottle of firewhisky and were becoming obnoxious.

"Just think," Greyback was howling, "a whole generation of little wolflings to do the Lord's bidding! Where's the best place to 'recruit' them? Where do they congregate in a mass? Hey, Professor! How many little recruits you got up there in Scotland? If I get my work done down here before next weekend, I may pop up north and check them out!"

"Do you want to go out for a pint?" Snape asked Yaxley quietly. "The atmosphere here is less than wholesome."

"I'm with you."

The clerk at the sign-in table was used by now to seeing the two leave for the pub. "Enjoy your evening," he said automatically.

Once in the pub, Snape waited a decent amount of time, then excused himself to go to the men's room. There he opened the small window and released a patronus with a message for Dumbledore: _Get Mundungus Fletcher somewhere safe. The Dark Lord is looking for him and possibly for anyone who purchased things from him._

Snape then returned to the booth and spent the next hour discussing safe houses with Yaxley. They were narrowing it down to York, Sheffield, or Oxford.

xxxxxxxxxx

"What do you mean, the students are going to Hogsmeade next Sunday? It's the full moon. What if Greyback does attack?"

"Now Severus, it is only the sixth years who will be seventeen before the apparition tests on the twenty-first of next month. Do not worry, they will be well guarded and will be back on the grounds before moonrise. By the way, have you seen this morning's _Prophet_? Your work is mentioned in it."

Taking the newspaper from Dumbledore, Snape scanned it quickly. At first he saw nothing, then noticed the article that said Mundungus Fletcher had been arrested. "That was fast."

"I try not to waste time when Riddle is looking for someone. I wish I knew why he targeted Octavius Pepper."

"Who is Pepper?" Snape looked at the paper again. "Why would they take him?"

"I was hoping you could tell me. He isn't anyone very important. Adequate in his studies, but no more."

"If I hear anything, I'll tell you. I have a class now."

"Thank you, Severus."

The last student into the class by a measurable amount of time was Potter, who burst through the door and rushed to his desk drawing all eyes to him in the back of the room. _Probably his intention._

"Late again, Potter? Ten points from Gryffindor." _More if I manage to catch you with my book._ "Before we start, I want your dementor essays…" Snape collected them with a wave of his wand. "And I hope for your sakes they are better than the tripe I had to endure on resisting the Imperius Curse. Now if you will all open your books to page… What is it, Mr. Finnigan?"

Finnigan lowered the hand he'd been wildly waving in the air. "Sir, I've been wondering, how do you tell the difference between an Inferius and a ghost? Because there was something in the paper about an Inferius…"

_I do not want to think about Mundungus Fletcher this morning. I do not want to think about anyone who forces me to send off a patronus two blocks from headquarters…_ "No, there wasn't."

"But sir, I heard people talking…"

"If you had actually read the article in question, Mr. Finnigan, you would have known that the so-called Inferius was nothing but a smelly sneak thief by the name of Mundungus Fletcher."

Potter immediately began whispering to Weasley and Granger, probably about Fletcher. _If one of the other students overhears what they're saying and realizes they all know Fletcher it could compromise the Order. Has that boy no sense at all?_ Snape cut the conversation short. "But Potter seems to have a lot to say on the subject. Let us ask Potter how we would tell the difference between an Inferius and a ghost."

Caught off guard, Potter stammered, "Er… well… ghosts are transparent…"

Snape cringed slightly, then took a deep breath. "Oh, very good. Yes, it is easy to see that nearly six years of magical education have not been wasted on you, Potter. Ghosts are transparent." This from the boy who took an Outstanding in his Dark Arts OWL.

Potter plunged ahead. "Yeah. Ghosts are transparent, but Inferi are dead bodies, aren't they? So they'd be solid…"

"A five-year-old could have told us as much. The Inferius is a corpse that has been reanimated by a Dark wizard's spells. It is not alive, it is merely used like a puppet to do the wizard's bidding. A ghost, as I trust that you are all aware by now, is the imprint of a departed soul left upon the earth… and of course, as Potter so wisely tells, transparent."

Then Weasley broke into the exchange with another distillation of wisdom. "Well, what Harry said is the most useful if we're trying to tell them apart! When we come face-to-face with one down a dark alley, we're going to be having a shufti to see if it's solid, aren't we, we're not going to be asking, 'Excuse me, are you the imprint of a departed soul?'"

_A determination one could make in a fraction of a second, but you didn't say that to add information, you said it to get a laugh. Laugh at this…_ "Another ten points from Gryffindor. I would expect nothing more sophisticated from you, Ronald Weasley, the boy so solid he cannot apparate half an inch across a room. Now open your books to page two hundred thirteen and read the first two paragraphs on the Cruciatus curse…"

The rest of the class was focused and on task, neither Potter nor Weasley apparently willing to make greater fools of themselves than they already had.

As it turned out, there was no trouble the following Sunday when the older sixth year students went to Hogsmeade for their extra apparation lessons. Snape had gone to Birmingham on Friday and returned on Saturday just to be available as a chaperone, but he needn't have bothered. The day was, in fact, completely uneventful.

The following week was hectic as students wrapped up reports and projects for the term, and then it was the Easter break, and the school emptied, students scattering to all corners of Britain to pass the next three weeks with their families.

Snape got permission from Dumbledore to spend more time during the break at his home or in Birmingham, one of the things he wanted to do being to set up the safe house with Yaxley. They decided on Oxford as so full of tourists, students, and professors, many of whom might be wearing academic robes at any time, that he and Malfoy would be less conspicuous should they have to run quickly with no time to prepare.

They found a tiny apartment in the upper rear of a nineteenth century brick building on Cornmarket Street. Mind spells made it easy to lease the two small rooms, after which Snape and Yaxley shielded them as they'd done with the laboratory.

A couple of beds, a table, some chairs, tins and boxes of nonperishable food, a hot plate, dishes and utensils were all the furnishing the place needed. Snape then began moving in certain tools, including some basic potions ingredients and equipment, medicines, bandages, a set of surgical knives, and a small brazier with charcoal and a pair of instruments that resembled branding irons.

These last caused Yaxley to raise his eyebrows. "Looks like you're planning a party," was all he said.

They roamed Oxford for a few days, giving Snape the chance to visit Blackwell's bookstore as well as a couple of places that specialized in rare books, one of which was clearly run by an old wizard who treated them very well the moment he sniffed out that they weren't muggles.

Yaxley had never been to Oxford before, so Snape kindly played the role of tour guide, and generally played it straight – except for managing to convince Yaxley that Martyrs' Memorial really was the spire of an underground church that happened to stick up out of the pavement due to an earthquake. Since that was the only joke he played, Snape felt he'd been rather restrained and that he deserved his very own martyr's crown.

Before they left Oxford, Snape and Yaxley experimented with apparating into the new safe house. They had no problem, but Snape was worried about traveling with Draco. He told Yaxley that he might send down a tissue sample for DNA analysis, and Yaxley promised to adjust the shields.

All in all, it was an extremely pleasant week. The rest of Snape's time at headquarters was spent working on potions, conducting a small self-defense class to train some of Bella's new people, and in general avoiding Bella and Greyback. Reports were coming in of attacks, especially on children, that Snape found highly disturbing.

Meanwhile, Snape continued his research and amassed an impressive collection of potions and spells that would mimic death and aid in the resuscitation of a person near death or in a comatose or paralyzed state. He'd still found no other resurrection spells.

Dumbledore also went through a series of scenarios in which simultaneous spells might be cast, one verbal and one nonverbal. The fact that the Unforgivable curses had little or no power if said without intent aided this scheming immensely.

As soon as the Easter break ended, the older sixth years took their apparation tests. Granger passed hers, one of the few to do so on the first try. Neither Malfoy nor Potter was old enough to take the test.

For the next couple of weeks everything moved so smoothly that Snape was beginning to wonder if all the worries of the previous months had been for nothing. There was no further attempt by Malfoy on Dumbledore's life, nor very much of an attempt at anything, truth be told. The boy kept to himself most of the time. Headquarters was quiet, and the students at Hogwarts were beginning to realize that there were less than six weeks to go before exams. The fifth and seventh years were madly studying for OWLs and NEWTs, and Hogwarts basked in peace.

It was therefore a total shock to be leaving Dumbledore's office by the seventh-floor exit in the middle of the second week in May and hear from the floor below the sound of a girl's voice screaming, "Murder! Murder in the bathroom! Murder!"

It took but a few seconds for Snape to reach the sixth floor bathroom. What he encountered there was horrific.

There was blood everywhere. In the midst of a pool of blood and water, Malfoy lay on his back in shock, his body quivering as his hands struggled feebly to staunch the flow of blood from massive gashes in his face and chest. Potter knelt next to him, spattered with Malfoy's blood, himself too panicky to do anything but stare.

Snape knew the spell, the curse he'd invented himself and then retreated from when he witnessed its effect on bushes and a tree. He'd never used it against another human being until he'd learned to control it with the precision of a surgeon's scalpel, and he'd never taught it to anyone. Now Potter had pulled Sectumsempra from a book that should not have left the bottom shelf of its cabinet, and Malfoy was dying.

His reaction the immediate one of a natural healer – take care of what most needs care – Snape pushed Potter aside without a thought and knelt beside Malfoy, his wand already in his hand. Quickly he began one of the chants his grandmother had taught him so many years ago. The blood began to clot, and its flow was stemmed.

His body rocking slightly to the rhythm of the chant, Snape projected some of his own energy, his own life force, into the knitting of sliced tissue, and the terrible gashes began to heal. Only then did Snape wipe some of the blood from Malfoy's face, concerned about the degree of shock the boy might suffer if he became aware enough to register the quantity of blood.

Another sequence of chanting, and Malfoy was whole enough to move. _I have to get him out of here, out before he looks around and realizes that this is his own blood._ Speaking in a low, soothing, matter-of-fact tone, he murmured, "You need the hospital wing. There may be a certain amount of scarring, but if you take dittany immediately we might avoid even that… Come…"

On his feet now, Malfoy was able to walk to the door. Only then did Snape remember the other boy, the one who was not slashed and bleeding. Turning at the door, he tried to control the fury in his voice as he said, "And you, Potter… You wait here for me."

Downstairs in the hospital wing, Snape tried to convey to Madam Pomfrey the seriousness of Malfoy's loss of blood without dwelling too much on the viciousness of the attack or the identity of the attacker. Luckily the two of them had a professional relationship of deep mutual trust, and she accepted that he had sound reasons for not going into detail.

Snape then returned to the sixth floor bathroom, where Potter was still waiting for him, though he'd expected nothing less. The ghost whose screams had alerted him was still there, now obviously enjoying the situation. "Go," Snape told her, and she left.

"I didn't mean it to happen," Potter protested at once. "I didn't know what that spell did."

_An Outstanding in Dark Arts, and he blindly uses spells of whose effects he is ignorant. What does this boy use for brains? Well, Mr. Potter, it so happens I know where you got that one._ "Apparently I underestimated you, Potter. Who would have thought you knew such Dark Magic? Who taught you that spell?" _Careful, Severus. This has to develop naturally. Gad! Why didn't I take that book away from him at once?_

"I… read about it somewhere."

"Where?" _Should I be pleased or angry that your ability to lie is so pathetic? What happens if you face the Dark Lord?_

"It was… a library book. I can't remember what it was call…"

"Liar." Potter had given him the excuse he needed, and both of them knew what would happen next. Snape focused on Potter's mind and called for books. The image of the sixth year text swam to the surface of Potter's thoughts with an ease that was discouraging. _I worked with you for weeks on this and you can't hide the title of a book from me for thirty seconds? What a waste of time._

The green eyes stared back into Snape's and this time they were not Lily's eyes, and it was not James's face. It was Harry's face and Harry's eyes, and Harry had been stupid enough to nearly kill a schoolmate because of carelessness that would shame a first year student.

"Bring my your schoolbag," Snape ordered in disgust, "and all of your schoolbooks. All of them. Bring them to me here. Now."

Potter returned gasping for breath as if he'd been running, and yet the amount of time he'd taken to go up one floor to Gryffindor Tower, up to his dormitory, and back down was what he'd need to calmly walk the distance. Snape already knew something was wrong before he silently held out his hand and received the schoolbag.

Each book was taken out and examined in silence, and in all that time Potter never once asked how Malfoy was. The last book was the Potions text with its deceptively new cover. Snape examined the outside, opened the cover, and flipped through the pages. It was, in fact, a new text – not his old book at all.

"This is your copy of _Advanced Potion-Making_, is it, Potter?"

"Yes."

"You're quite sure of that, are you, Potter?"

"Yes."

"This is the copy of _Advanced Potion-Making_ that you purchased from Flourish and Blotts?"

"Yes."

_I have given you three opportunities to tell the truth. You have refused all of them._ "Then why does it have the name 'Roonil Wazlib' written inside the front cover?"

The boy brazened it out to the end. "That's my nickname."

"Your nickname."

"Yeah… that's what my friends call me."

"I understand what a nickname is." Snape didn't really need to make eye contact to guess that R. W. was Ronald Weasley under any misspelling of the name, but he drew a fleeting image out of Potter anyway so that there would be no doubt between the two of them. Then Potter looked away.

"Do you know what I think, Potter?" said Snape after a pause. "I think that you are a liar and a cheat and that you deserve detention with me every Saturday until the end of the term. What do you think, Potter?"

Potter continued to look down. "I… I don't agree, sir."

_So now, facing punishment, you finally condescend to call me 'sir.'_ "Well, we shall see how you feel after your detentions. Ten o'clock Saturday morning, Potter. My office."

"But sir… Quidditch… the last match of the…"

_James surfaces at last. You cheat your way through the whole school year, seriously injure another student, about whom you have yet to inquire, nearly commit murder, and all is to be forgiven because you play Quidditch… Not this time._ Snape's voice became even more quiet. "Ten o'clock. Poor Gryffindor… fourth place this year, I fear…" _Which will teach you to place a sport above the life and health of another person._

Leaving Potter in the bathroom, Snape went immediately to McGonagall's office to inform her that he'd imposed detention on one of her students and why. She was horrified. "Is the boy all right?" was her instant reaction.

"He'll be fine. Another minute or two and he wouldn't have been. That's the truly frightening part, and Potter doesn't seem to get it. No one else came near that bathroom all the time I was there. No one else would have heard that ghost screaming. If I'd left Dumbledore's office five minutes earlier or later – Draco'd have died. Potter doesn't care."

"Well, he'll be hearing from me, and then he'll care. And you'd better get cleaned up or you'll be frightening the students."

Snape looked down at his robes and realized that they were soaked with drying, crusted blood from where he'd knelt to heal Malfoy. With a tired sigh he rose and left McGonagall to go downstairs to the dungeons and his office. He met no one on the way, since the whole school was now at supper.

It was only after he was alone that it came to him. He didn't have to invent a reason to collect a tissue sample from Draco for the DNA analysis. Very carefully, Snape scraped fragments of the crusted blood into a vial, labeled it for Yaxley, and sent it by owl to Birmingham to help calibrate the shields of the safe house in Oxford.

Snape and McGonagall went together to speak to Dumbledore, who'd already received Madam Pomfrey's report. Malfoy was on his way to a complete recovery, so the main problem was now Potter.

"I don't know where he could have gotten a spell like that," McGonagall insisted. "There's nothing like it in any book in the school."

"I would not say that, Minerva. There are many cutting spells that are mildly similar. I will agree that I have not before seen one quite so ruthless in its operation."

Taking a deep breath, Snape said, "He got it from me." He then went on to explain all about his mother's Potions book.

Dumbledore peered over his glasses. "I do not recall any student during your years here who was rushed to Madam Pomfrey bleeding to death."

"I never used it on anyone. Not at full strength. I tried it on a sapling and destroyed it. Then I spent months learning how to control it."

"And where is this book now."

Snape and McGonagall looked at each other. "We don't know," she admitted. "He's hidden it. But Headmaster, what is most distressing is that Potter shows no remorse for his deed. He hasn't expressed any concern about Malfoy at all. Not to me at any rate."

"This is gravely disturbing to me as well. There may at the moment be other pressures affecting Harry that impair his moral judgment. We must gently coax him to an understanding of the seriousness of his action. Meanwhile," Dumbledore peered at Snape again, "there is a book somewhere in this castle containing every spell, jinx, curse, and hex you ever cast as a student. If I should mention it to Professor Flitwick, he would not rest until he found it. That knowledge has been a dream of his for two decades."

McGonagall teased Snape with the specter of an inquisitive Flitwick all the way down seven flights of stairs until she finally left him for her own office.

xxxxxxxxxx

The first and foremost advantage of having Potter do detention from midmorning to mid-afternoon on Saturday was that Snape had an excuse not to attend the Quidditch match. Beyond that, he was at first at a loss as to what task to assign Potter. There were, unfortunately, no Potions materials that needed cleaning or sorting.

It was Filch who approached Snape, the story of Potter's transgression having spread quickly through the school. While all of the teachers sympathized with Snape and commiserated with him on having to deal with a traumatic situation, Filch actually came forward with work that needed to be done.

What it amounted to was school archives. Filch was responsible for keeping a file on student misdemeanors and punishments, and someone had to go through the boxes being sure that all the carefully lettered cards were still legible and in good condition.

It was a treasure trove. Snape spent a whole evening perusing the cards in one box, remembering when Evan Rosier had sprayed the Ravenclaw table with toad spawn in retaliation for having been locked in a broom closet on the morning of an important Charms presentation, or when Rabastan Lestrange had booby trapped a flagstone in front of the entrance to Hufflepuff house after the Hufflepuffs had celebrated a Quidditch victory by scrawling lewd graffiti all over the outer walls of Slytherin. It made Snape feel young again.

Interestingly enough, his own name appeared seldom, and then for minor infractions. Snape attributed this to the fact that he was always retaliating, never initiating, that he took special precautions to cover his tracks, and that his own transgressions were usually overshadowed by the enormities of others.

Two names that appeared continually, though, were Sirius Black and James Potter. They were the ones who bounced Wilkes down three flights of stairs, and covered the entire surface of the Dark Arts room in treacle? As he read card after card, Snape wondered where the two of them ever found time to study.

It was a perfect assignment for Potter. Potter was just as full of himself as James had been, and just as careless of the rights of others. Potter might even improve if brought face to face with the crimes of his father and Sirius Black. Snape decided to start Potter on a box that he, Snape, had not looked at yet. The dust and cobwebs were evidence that the cards had not been tampered with, and Potter would have no choice but to accept the reality of his father's and godfather's characters.

For the next couple of weeks the world was normal. Outside the walls of Hogwarts, Bella's field operations team continued with dementor and werewolf attacks, but inside it was all OWLs, NEWTs, and end of term exams. Snape had no more planning he could do for Draco since he'd finally worked out an escape route that took him from Oxford to Wiltshire, and from there to Paris.

Everyone who ran from the Dark Lord went north. Snape would go the other direction, from Paris to Bordeaux, Madrid, Rabat, the Canaries, and the Cape Verde Islands. Then came the longest and most difficult jump across the Atlantic to Fortaleza on the Brazilian coast. From there in easy stages, through Brazil to Trinidad and the Caribbean Islands, to the United States. The final destination, at least for a while, was Denver, Colorado.

That was assuming they could get out of Britain, of course. Snape was still hoping it wouldn't be necessary, that Dumbledore would see the necessity of staying in charge.

Then, the first week in June, Dumbledore sent for Snape right after supper.

"I need you to be available tonight."

"Available?"

"Where someone can find you instantly. Preferably in your office."

"I don't understand." In reality it was more a question of not wanting to understand, for Dumbledore's request was sudden, and took Snape somewhat off guard.

"I have a task to perform tonight. I may be in need of assistance when I return. I do not know how late it will be. Expect something along the lines of what happened last July."

"Sir, could you at least tell me…"

"No, Severus, I am afraid I could not. There are things you should not know unless there are no alternatives. Be ready for any kind of dark spell or potion."

"You're walking into a trap. The Dark Lord…"

"Just be ready, Severus."

"Yes… Sir."

Back in his office, Snape pulled out books and ingredients, trying to foresee all eventualities and possibilities. Not knowing if the headmaster would be able to come all the way up the hill to the dungeon, he had a kit ready with those items most frequently used.

Then, as the twilight deepened, a thought flashed across his brain. Grabbing an item from a jar in a cabinet, he rushed up the stairs to Dumbledore's office, but the headmaster had already left. Inquiring of the Bloody Baron in the entry hall, Snape learned that he'd headed down to Hogsmeade, and that Potter was with him.

Returning to his office, Snape looked at the bezoar in his hand and cursed himself for not having thought of it earlier. _Ah well. Maybe he won't need it._

Then began the long wait. Once, around ten o'clock, he went out into the corridor for a bit of air and to move around a bit, and caught a glimpse of Granger and Lovegood, who for some reason were loitering in the passage and fled at his appearance, but otherwise Snape waited at his desk for the message that would tell him Dumbledore had returned.

Snape never got that message. Instead, around midnight, he got Professor Flitwick pounding on his office door and screaming, "Severus! Severus! Come at once! There are Death Eaters in the castle, Severus! Come at once!"

Snape flung open the office door, and Professor Flitwick practically fell into the room. "Upstairs, seventh floor, we need you up there," Flitwick gasped, and suddenly for Snape the world was moving in slow motion.

_Flitwick! Why didn't we talk about the others? What if Dumbledore tells me to do something, and Flitwick tries to stop me? What if Flitwick is injured in the fighting? What if those silly girls outside are injured in the fighting? What if he tries to stop me from obeying Dumbledore?_

In a flash, Snape drew his wand and cast a Stupefying charm on Flitwick. Simple and crude, but highly effective.

Rushing out of the room, Snape ordered Granger and Lovegood inside his office to take care of Flitwick. Three birds with one stone. Then he ran for the entrance hall.

Seven flights of stairs. Snape was still young, but not that young. He forced himself to move, two steps at a time, though adrenaline surging into his system quickly made the physical exertion easier. _Seventh floor! How could Death Eaters have made it to the seventh floor? How could they have made it into the castle?_

The chaos on the seventh floor registered briefly. A spell made the area dark and the people hard to see, but he recognized a few. _Bella's people. Please don't let me find Bella here, too._ What struck Snape with the force of a blow was the shimmering of light at the staircase to the Astronomy Tower. _It's been shielded. By Yaxley. What the hell is Yaxley doing here?_

McGonagall was there, Lupin, Tonks, the two Weasleys and Longbottom. Killing curses were ricocheting off the walls, propelled by field operatives, and Snape managed to deflect one that nearly hit both himself and the Weasley girl. Then he was at the staircase, through the shield, and heading to the top of the Astronomy Tower.

Just as he neared the door, Snape heard Greyback's harsh snarl.

"I'll do it."

"I said no!" Yaxley yelled, and there was the sound of a stunning spell.

"Draco!" screeched a woman's voice, Alecto Carrow's, "do it or stand aside so one of us…"

And then Snape was through the door and standing once again on the Astronomy Tower, gasping for breath and taking everything in – Dumbledore wilting against the far parapet, Malfoy right in front of him, two brooms – so Potter was surely there as well, wrapped in his invisibility cloak. To Snape's right were Greyback, Alecto and Amycus Carrow and… Yaxley. Snape stared at him for a second, until Dumbledore's voice recalled him.

"Severus…"

His gaze snapping instantly to Dumbledore, Snape shoved Malfoy aside to get better eye contact. Once again the messages passed with the speed of thought.

_Do not speak. Listen. There was a trap. Take this memory. Analyze it later. Now get them out of the school. They will follow if they think you are with them. Appear to kill me. Throw me from the tower so they cannot examine my body. I shall do the rest._

_No! That will kill you!_

_You swore. Obey me. Fenrir intends to attack the students. I want no more deaths. Throw me from the tower and get them out now! Protect Draco._

_No…_

_Do not worry. I shall do the rest._

Looking past Snape's right shoulder, Dumbledore suddenly spoke aloud. "Severus… please…"

Hating the Dark Lord, hating himself, hating Dumbledore, Snape raised his wand. _"Avada Kedavra,"_ he intoned, and as green flame left the wand he thought _Levicorpus_. Even as the flame struck, Dumbledore's body was lifted into the air, hung suspended for a second then, with the nonverbal _Liberacorpus,_ plunged to the earth three hundred feet below.

The other Death Eaters stared at Snape in astonishment, shocked that the quiet lab technician could suddenly turn into a cold-blooded killer. Alecto's eyes were gleaming; she would follow him anywhere.

"Out of here, quickly," Snape commanded, seizing Malfoy and hustling him through the door and down the stairs without waiting to see whether the others followed. He knew they would. A wave of his wand and a silent command removed the shield.

Behind him feet clattered down the staircase. In front of him the fight still raged, but it was now clear that the Death Eaters controlled most of the area and were pushing the defenders back. The reinforcements from the tower would tip whatever balance was left unless Snape could make them break off the fight and leave.

"We have what we came for!" he yelled at them. "Merton! Wood! Head for the stairs. Greyback! Leave that and follow me! It's over, time to go!" Then, still pushing Malfoy ahead of him, Snape raced for the stairs himself. They had to get to where they could apparate. _What if the defenses are still up? How do we get out?_

Down the stairs, out the door, past the form on the grass that Snape's brain refused to identify, across the lawn – Snape was tiring now, only fear spurring him forward. Figures sprinted past him in the night, whooping and yelling as Hagrid charged out of his hut to intercept them. Snape couldn't stop. His sole concern now was Malfoy.

As they ran for the perimeter, Snape pointed his wand and the heavy gates began to swing open. _The defenses are down. Did Dumbledore do that now, or did he leave them open when he came in on the broom?_ There was no time to ponder. Safety lay on the other side.

A sudden shaft of red light shot past Snape's head. Screaming, "Run, Draco!" Snape whirled to cover the boy's retreat – only to find himself face to face with Potter. _Not you. Not you. Not now._

Potter's mind was forming the Cruciatus curse – Snape knocked him down before he could say the word. Beyond Potter, Hagrid's hut burst into flames, illuminating the scene with a hellish, dancing light. Potter tried again, and again Snape saw the curse before Potter could say it and parried it with ease.

_Fool! Why do you waste time with curses you don't know how to use? Fight your enemies with your strongest weapons, not your weakest!_ "No Unforgivable curses from you, Potter! You haven't got the nerve or the ability…" A binding spell came next, and Snape blocked that one, too.

"Fight back!" Potter screamed. "Fight back, you cowardly…"

"Coward, did you call me, Potter? Your father would never attack me unless it was four on one – what would you call him, I wonder?"

Next came a stunning spell. Someone needed to teach Potter how to duel. "Blocked again and again and again until you learn to keep your mouth shut and your mind closed, Potter." Silhouettes loomed against the lurid flames, forms Snape recognized as Merton and the Carrows. "Now come!" Snape yelled at them. "It is time to be gone, before the Ministry turns up…"

Yet Merton was not to be deflected. He hit Potter from behind with a Cruciatus curse, but as the boy fell writhing on the grass, Snape screamed, "No!" and blasted Merton's wand from his hand. "Have you forgotten our orders? Potter belongs to the Dark Lord… we are to leave him! Go! Go!"

Miraculously, they believed him and obeyed, thundering past toward the gate where Draco already waited on the edge of safety, unable to disapparate alone. Potter staggered to his feet, his face distorted with hatred. The spell that Snape tossed aside this time was Sectumsempra. Potter tried again – _"Levi-"_

"No, Potter!" It was the spell used to throw Dumbledore from the tower. Slamming Potter with an Impedimenta, Snape advanced on the now wandless boy in rage. "You dare use my own spells against me, Potter? It was I who invented them… I, the 'Half-Blood Prince.' And you'd turn my inventions on me, like your filthy father, would you? I don't think so."

Potter made a grab for his wand, but Snape saw it coming. "No," he said, and flipped the wand beyond reach.

The world was awash with darkness and flame, hell brought to life in a waking nightmare to torment the vision of souls already damned. In that nightmare, Severus Snape stared down at the darker mass that was the boy who had been the cause of all of this destruction.

"Kill me, then. Kill me like you killed him, you coward…" Potter yelled at him.

His once safe world shattered, his only refuge destroyed, torment and death waiting beyond the gate, Snape cracked. "Don't call me coward!" he screamed, and lashed out at Potter in fury.

What might have happened then he would never know, for Hagrid's hippogriff swooped down in Potter's defense, slashing at Snape's face and arm. Breaking away, Snape ran for the gate, grabbed Draco, and disapparated…


	60. Chapter 60 – Seeking Refuge

**What of My Soul, Dumbledore?: Seeking Refuge**

Snape and Draco arrived, in the dim light of the moon rising in its last quarter, at the foot of a long, curving driveway that led yew-lined through iron gates to the shadowy hulk of a great mansion. Snape dragged the terrified Draco to the gates.

"Open them!" he demanded.

Draco obeyed, raising his hand as the wrought iron barrier swung wide in recognition. His grip on Draco not relaxing for an instant, Snape hauled the boy through the gates and along the drive, fear bordering on panic giving urgency to his actions. The two had gone only a short distance along the gravel path when the sound of running feet approached out of the darkness.

"Draco! Draco!" Narcissa's voice, desperate with fright, came to them from a little distance ahead.

"Here, mother!" Draco cried. "Over here!"

"Oh, thank God! Thank God!" Narcissa appeared before them, shimmering in the moonlight, to seize Draco in a fierce embrace. "Severus! What has happened?"

"Draco can tell you," Snape replied, haste clipping his voice to little more than a whisper. "I must go. Now. Whatever happens, be obedient. Be loyal. It's your only defense." The mark on his left arm was already burning. Delay would be fatal. "Goodbye," was all there was time for, and then Snape ran back to the gate, into the lane, and apparated to the Dark Lord.

Hands grabbed him roughly at the entrance to headquarters, binding him, taking his wand, shoving him rudely down the stairs and along the corridor to the interview chamber. Snape didn't resist; his brain was now frantically sorting thoughts, trying to be ready for any question, any accusation, any demand… He was pushed into the tiny circle of light, unable to use his arms for balance, and fell forward, sprawling on his stomach, his head striking the floor with a dizzying thud. He lay very, very still… waiting.

"Where is the boy?" came the high, cold voice. "Where is young Malfoy?"

"With his mother," Snape gasped in reply.

"Why did you not bring him here to me?"

"I didn't want him to witness my punishment."

"Concern for the boy, or concern for your pride?"

"I'm his teacher. You may want me to be his teacher again. If you wish him to see this, he can be brought."

"Why will you be punished?"

"For disobedience."

"Indeed," said the Dark Lord.

The pain started in the pit of Snape's stomach, twisting and wrenching, till it seemed his body was full of malevolent serpents battling to escape through his flesh. He writhed on the floor in agony, his mouth and throat clamped shut by a silencing spell so that he was unable to scream. He shook in helpless convulsions, and then it was over. The pain receded, and Snape lay still again, whimpering on the floor.

"You knew the task was Draco's."

"Yes, Lord." Snape forced his mouth to move, forced the words out.

"You knew, and yet you usurped it for your own glory."

"No, Lord." Pain struck again, blinding fire melting his very bones. This time Snape did scream.

The pain abated, and the cold voice spoke again. "You contradict us?"

"Lord," Snape sobbed, "I did usurp the task, but for hatred's sake, not for glory." Around them a collective gasp revealed the presence of an audience of Death Eaters outside the circle of light.

"Hatred? Of Dumbledore?"

"Yes, Lord. When I came out on that tower and saw him, heard him taunting Draco and your loyal servants… Lord, I could not control myself. I lashed out in anger… and I killed him."

The Dark Lord was silent for a moment. Then, "Bring him to kneel before us," he said.

The hands that grasped Snape's bound arms were not gentle, nor were they as rough in their treatment as before. His handlers had clearly decided it was wise to be neutral. They dragged him forward and settled him on his knees before the Dark Lord, who cupped Snape's face in his hands, thumbs raising the eyelids to force contact.

"Show us," he demanded.

It was, mercifully, a scene that Snape could show in its entirety: his rush to the top of the tower, the circle of Death Eaters around Dumbledore, Dumbledore's plea, and the sudden, spontaneous movement of hand and wand that had destroyed the Dark Lord's great enemy.

"It is good," said the Dark Lord. "Others have shown us the same. Unbind him. Allow him to stand."

Snape stood shakily, rubbing his sore arms and twisted shoulders. He knew he would have bruises on his face from striking the floor, but now at least it seemed he would live. His nerves were strung taut, waiting for the questions.

"So, he is dead."

"Yes, Lord."

"And it was witnessed only by those loyal to us."

"Yes, Lord. I don't think anyone else knew that Dumbledore was on the tower." Snape locked away the knowledge of two broomsticks and an invisibility cloak. There was no reason why he would know about them and he could easily claim ignorance.

"Excellent. Then we may strike now while the enemy is in confusion. Amycus, Alecto, fetch the cabinet here. We are going to Hogwarts."

Snape felt his heart stop beating. He looked about at the circle of Death Eaters as the light grew around his punishment circle. "Cabinet, Lord?"

"So Draco did not tell you. He obeyed us and kept his secrets. It seems we have reason to be pleased with him after all. Severus, there is a Vanishing Cabinet in Hogwarts that is now linked to one in our possession, Mr. Borgin having been persuaded this evening to part with it. From here we may step directly onto the seventh floor of the castle and take over the school."

Snape's brain was racing, but he could think of no way out of the predicament. The twin of the familiar black and gold cabinet was brought into the interview chamber. The Dark Lord smiled. "Amycus, you know the way. You may lead us through."

The lumpy, misshapen Death Eater grinned hideously as he crossed the room to the cabinet, opened the door, and stepped inside. Everyone in the room watched eagerly, but nothing happened.

Amycus stepped out again. "It ain't working!" he exclaimed.

The Dark Lord's anger was not restrained, and Amycus dropped to the floor, twisting in pain. "Fenrir," commanded the Dark Lord. "Get into the cabinet."

One by one, each of the Death Eaters present, including Snape, tried the Vanishing Cabinet, but none was able to transport. "What has happened?" the Dark Lord demanded, his eyes sweeping the room and resting finally on Snape.

"Did anyone see your servants leave the cabinet the first time?" Snape asked.

"No," Fenrir growled after getting a nod from the Dark Lord. "We came out into a storeroom, and the Malfoy brat had a Hand of Glory."

"Did any of your servants fail to return?"

That caused a stir. "Gibbon was killed," Alecto admitted at last. "We don't know where Yaxley is."

"Yaxley was on the tower," said Snape, saying a silent prayer for the welfare of a man he had come to appreciate. "He should have followed us down. My guess is that they realized, or were told, how your servants entered last time, and have disabled the other cabinet."

Fenrir growled at this, but Alecto sidled a little closer to Snape. The mood in the chamber had swung around, especially since Snape, alone of the assembled Death Eaters, was patently innocent of this last blunder. Alecto seemed grateful that someone had provided a reason for failure that deflected the Dark Lord's wrath away from her and her brother.

"Well, well," interposed a new voice, a sultry, deceptively pleasant voice. "So puppy dog is still coming up with answers, even when he…"

"Silence, Bella," said the Dark Lord. "We did not request your opinion. Severus, do you accuse Yaxley of treason, or of cowardice?"

"No, Lord. I believe him loyal to you. But Hogwarts has supplies of Veritaserum, and Yaxley might have had no choice."

Nods around the circle showed the general appreciation of this theory, as it blamed none and even managed to shield the unfortunate Yaxley. Bella, aware of a slackening in her support, pouted and contented herself with glaring at Snape. He himself had no illusions about the fact that she was biding her time.

"Yes," intoned the Dark Lord. "That may be. Go now, all of you. We shall inform you when we have need of you."

They filed out, none daring yet to talk to Snape, but nodding and giving him weak smiles as they separated. Only Bella hung around to chat.

"So you just killed Albus Dumbledore," she said with mock appreciation. "You could have knocked me over with a feather. You could tell even he was pleased, though he couldn't overlook the disobedience. I'll bet Dumbledore didn't look so saintly and calm after a fall like that."

"I don't know," said Snape. "I didn't hang around to look."

"Cleared out as fast as you could, eh?"

"I'd be a fool not to."

"And foolishness is something I'd never accuse you of."

"I think I'll go lie down. It's been a long night." Snape started for the stairs.

"Where will you sleep, puppy dog? You don't have rooms here, you can't go back to Hogwarts, and how soon will it be before they're all over your little hovel in that filthy town?"

Up until that point, Snape had been so concerned about surviving the Dark Lord's wrath that he'd given no thought to anything else, pushing it back into the furthest recesses of his mind. But now, at Bella's prodding, the full import of what had happened that night returned with the force of a sledgehammer. He could never go back. He pushed the thought behind a door and affected calm. "There are emergency quarters for just this kind of situation. Upstairs near the infirmary. I'll use them for the time being."

"Sleep tight," Bella said as he left her and wearily climbed the stairs.

Once in the room, Snape had trouble settling his thoughts, though he knew he had to get some rest or he would never have the strength or the sharpness to continue. _I've known for a year it would come to this. I've had a year to get ready. It was what he wanted. Why can't I accept that and live with it?_ It wasn't that simple, though. It would never be that simple. _We weren't ready. For all the talking, arguing, and planning, we weren't ready. When it came right down to that moment, it happened too fast. What am I going to do now?_

Knowing that sleep was impossible, at least for now, Snape lay staring at the ceiling of the little bedroom trying to put his thoughts into some kind of order.

_Do I regret what I did tonight? I regret, I resent, having been forced to do it, but do I regret having obeyed him?_ There, at least, Snape could honestly say no. He did not regret having obeyed Dumbledore. The result of his obedience was catastrophic. The result of disobedience would have been worse. Dumbledore still dead, himself dead, Potter probably dead, members of the Order dead, the cabinet pathway to Hogwarts open, Greyback and the Carrows loose in the dormitories of the houses attacking students… It would have been much worse.

The other question returned – _What am I going to do now?_ only this time it was focused on the right place. _Dumbledore never told me everything. Worse, he never told Potter everything. The only one who knows what Potter has to do when he faces the Dark Lord is me, but I can't tell it to Potter. Even at the best of times, Potter would never believe me. Now that he watched me kill Dumbledore, he'll be even less likely to. Dear Harry, the man who blasted your mentor off the Astronomy Tower is now asking you to passively allow the Dark Lord to kill you. I know the reception that idea will meet with!_

_And what about here? My greatest value to the Dark Lord was as a spy. I'm no longer a spy, I have no information to give him. All I'm fit for is slave labor in the potions laboratory and self defense lessons. Even if Potter would believe me, how am I ever going to get out of here to tell him?_

After a while though, exhaustion won, and Snape drifted into an uneasy sleep.

xxxxxxxxxx

"_Here, boy!" she called, her loved voice sultry and enticing. "Want to go for a walk? Does Mommy's puppy dog want to go for a walk?"_

_He ran to her, quivering with excitement, unable to control his wiggling and squirming as he yearned for the door while she patiently fitted him with collar and leash. "There now, all ready. Let's go play a nice game of fetch."_

_The grass was green and cool, and she had so many toys for him to chase and return to her – balls and sticks and magical birds. After a while she pulled another out of her pocket, a thin, straight stick with a long white beard and half-moon spectacles. "Here you go, boy. See if you can bring this one back to Mommy." And she threw it for him, calling out "Fetch!" as her arm went forward._

_But the stick didn't want to be caught. It swirled through the air while he chased it, teasing him, evading him, luring him away from the grass and from her while she cried, "Puppy dog, come back! Come back! You don't belong to that old thing, you belong to me!"_

_The house was ancient and decrepit, full of dust and strange things crawling under the carpets. "Mongrel!" a fierce voice screamed at him as he entered, still looking for the stick. "Filthy dog, dirtying the rugs! Wanting to sit on decent people's furniture. Get out, you cur!" He almost turned and left, but he had to fetch the stick._

_He sniffed through the different rooms, but the stick was hiding. A hand parted a veil over one of the pictures, and a sneering voice said, "You housebroken yet, Sniffellus? Or do I have to lay down newspaper?" He tried to escape the voice in the painting, but it followed him all over the house, upstairs and down, flitting from frame to frame. "I don't want you in my house, Sniffellus. I don't care what the stick says."_

_Then he saw the stick. It was in a painting now, too, a painting of a pig on a cliff. And then it was gone. He tried to enter the painting, but it closed around him like jaws, biting, enfolding, suffocating…_

Snape jerked awake to discover that the blanket had twisted over his face giving him the suffocating feeling that had awakened him. He glanced around the room, remembering where he was and why. A feeling of despair washed through him, and then he thought of the dream.

_Grimmauld Place,_ he thought. _The Order never uses it anymore. Kreacher's working at Hogwarts. I might be able to get in and out safely. Maybe there's something there that'll give me an idea of what Dumbledore would want me to do now._

It was around noon. Snape thought about his options, then decided to see if he could just walk out the door. The clerk on duty pushed the ledger book toward him and handed him a quill to sign out.

"What are my restrictions?" Snape asked.

"Didn't know you had any," said the clerk, checking his registers just to be sure. "Nope. You're clear." He frowned and fingered the quill. "You think he might want to find you, sudden like?"

"It's possible," said Snape.

"Where're you planning to go, and for how long?"

"Just getting some air, so some place where there are no wizards. Maybe the Zoo. I can be back immediately if he calls."

And that was it. That simple. Snape walked out of headquarters, into a sheltered doorway, and apparated to within a few streets of Grimmauld Place. A short walk, a few unlocking spells, and then he opened the door and stepped inside. The house was deserted, the air inside it heavy and oppressive with age and mold. It was utterly silent. Snape slipped quietly past the niche where Mrs. Black's portrait hung, tripping over an umbrella stand that he caught before it made any noise. She didn't wake up, and he was relieved. He wanted it to stay silent.

Not knowing where to look or what he was looking for was a problem, but Snape had had enough experience with his dreams to know that one part of his mind was trying to say something important to another part of his mind, and this house had something to do with it.

He started downstairs in the kitchen, then worked his way up to drawing room and parlor. On the way he opened drawers and cupboards, sifted through papers and examined trinkets. He had no idea what he would find, only that when he found it, he would know.

The next place was the bedrooms upstairs. He paused at the first landing, a voice in the back of his brain telling him that Regulus had once mentioned being in a bedroom on the top floor. He decided to try there first, then do the bedrooms on the first landing.

Sirius's room was a shock and a revelation. Motorcycles, Quidditch, and girls seemed to occupy most of his thoughts as a teenager. The place was a riot of posters and photographs with a handful of books and a few papers. Snape began to check all the books, shaking them to see if they contained loose bits of paper between the pages. That was how he found the letter.

It fluttered, both pages of it, from the book in Snape's hand. He bent to retrieve it from the floor and recognized the handwriting instantly. It was like a punch in the stomach. He held a letter to Sirius Black in his hands, a letter that ended with the words 'Love, Lily.' He couldn't breathe. His legs buckled under him and he slipped down awkwardly to his knees on the floor.

After a moment, Snape's breathing returned and his pulse began to slow. He was finally able to focus on the fact that the piece of paper in his hand said something about Grindelwald. It was beginning to sink in that maybe this was not a love letter. That realization made him want to see the rest. The first page had drifted under a chair, and there was a photograph.

It was a thank-you note. Thank you, Sirius, for the birthday present you sent to Harry. Short but chatty, it spoke of Harry's delight with his gift, James's frustration at being pent up, tea with Bathilda Bagshot, and even some news of Dumbledore. Just a simple, friendly, thank-you note.

Grief rose up then for all the little things that Snape could never have. He had said goodbye to Lily on their last day at Hogwarts and had never after been privileged to see or speak to her. Never owned a single photograph of her or heard her light news of tea and birthday presents. Instead he had been led blindfolded into a building in London and had a brand burned into his arm, and all chance at tea and birthday presents ended. He had tried. He had risked death for her, suffered pain for her – it was not enough. She had died not knowing the things he was doing, and today he continued doing them, and she would still never know.

It was with some shock that Snape realized he was crying. That brought him up short in panic and dread. What if the Dark Lord wanted him now? Now while he wallowed in grief and heartbreak. There was no way at this moment that he could completely cover his emotions, and the Dark Lord would read them and know, and everything that had been sacrificed to Lily would from that moment be worthless.

But he couldn't give them up. Having found these precious mementos, he could not force himself to give them up. They belonged to Sirius, but Sirius was dead and no longer needed them. Snape needed them and, remembering his last conversation with Sirius, he sincerely doubted that Sirius would object. The page with the word 'love' and Lily's signature he folded and put into his robes. The picture was of Harry, James, and a laughing Lily. He tore off the image of Lily and tucked it away, too, letting the rest of the picture fall to the floor.

Now Snape began to hurry. He was no longer sure how long he'd been gone from headquarters, and how much time he had before his absence became overlong. He made a quick check of Regulus's room, then hurried downstairs to the bedrooms on the first landing, rummaging in wardrobes and pulling away bed linens. He was interrupted.

"Hey! What are you doing here? This is my family's house, you ruffian!"

Snape jumped, wand instantly in hand, his back to a wall. There was no one there. He glanced around, knowing he was not alone, expecting attack at any moment.

"You sneak thief! You're as bad as that Fletcher person, coming into this house to rob us blind!"

This time Snape got the direction of the voice and looked over to the side of the room. The remonstrations were coming from a portrait of Phineas Nigellus. Carefully he put his wand away. "I'm not stealing," he said. "I'm looking for something."

"A likely story," Nigellus huffed. "What?"

"I don't know. I'll know when I find it."

"Wait a minute…" The portrait was peering at him. "Aren't you the Potions instructor? You are! Wait here, son. Don't go anywhere. I'll be right back." And the portrait walked into the right side of its frame, already calling as it disappeared, "Albus! Albus! I think I found him – the one you want to talk to."

Snape froze, a great sense of release and hope beginning to flood through him. _The portraits! The portraits of the headmasters! Of course. He's still here. Part of him is still here!_

Nigellus returned after a few minutes and Snape demanded, "Where's Dumbledore?"

"Don't talk to me in that tone, young man! Dumbledore can't come here. There's no portrait of him in this house. He does want to talk to you, though. Now listen carefully. His funeral's on Sunday morning. Everyone will be out of the castle. You are to come to the acting headmistress's office on Sunday morning because then you'll be able to talk. Do you understand?"

Snape nodded. "Oh yes, I understand. Tell him I'll be there. I'll definitely be there."

Nigellus left his portrait to return to Hogwarts, and Snape started to straighten the room a little, knowing that he'd found what he'd been looking for. He felt suddenly so buoyant that he was not paying enough attention to the sounds of the house. It came therefore as another great shock when he again heard, "What are you doing here?" Only this time he recognized the voice.

Wand in hand, Severus spun, knowing himself ambushed and unlikely to get off a spell. He found himself with a wand pointed directly at his heart, a wand held firmly in the hand of Alastor Moody.

"You got a lot of nerve coming here," Moody said.

"Don't be too hasty," said Snape, lowering his wand and placing it on the bed, then stepping away from it, hands raised, palms open. "You might not have all the facts yet."

"Let's see if I do," Moody grunted. "Did you kill Albus Dumbledore last night?"

"Yes," Snape replied quietly.

"Seems to me like I got my facts. Can't think of any I'm missing. There's a lot of people want you dead, you know, and while I might not be right at the top of the list, I'm not very far down."

"What are you going to do?"

"The thought had occurred to me to take you to Hogwarts, string you up by your thumbs in Dumbledore's office, and let Harry practice his Unforgivables on you. He's beginning to express a fondness for the Cruciatus curse. I'd be worried if I were you."

"You haven't thought of any more questions?"

Moody cocked his head to one side and let his enchanted eye examine Snape. "Why'd you do it?" he asked finally.

"Dumbledore ordered me to."

Moody barked a short, harsh laugh. "You got to come up with something better than that, Snapey old boy. That's not going to buy you one minute…"

"He also says you have to bring… What do think you're doing?" The portrait voice of Phineas Nigellus rang through the room. "Put that wand down this instant! Albus needs that boy!"

"Who are you?" Moody thundered.

"Who am I? I'll have you know I am Phineas Nigellus, former Headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and emissary from Albus Dumbledore to this young man here."

"I don't believe you, you lying Slytherin sneak!"

Nigellus drew himself up in righteous indignation. "We shall see about that!" and he stormed out of his portrait.

A moment later he was back again. "On the day Albus rescued your sorry hide from Barty Crouch Jr.," he announced, "the first thing you said when you woke up in hospital was 'Constant Vigilance,' and Albus told you that sounded pretty foolish coming from a man who let a second rate wizard catch him with his pants down."

There was a moment of silence, then, "Where's Albus?" Moody shouted. "You tell him from me that it's a cheap trick to pretend to be dead and let other people take the fall for it."

"Albus," said Nigellus with great dignity, "cannot leave his portrait in the acting headmistress's office because there is no portrait of him in this house. Now control your temper."

That stopped Moody cold. "You're talking about his portrait in the office? Then he is dead. But you said…"

"He wishes to speak with this young man on Sunday, during the funeral. There is, I take it, unfinished business, and it is the young man's duty to respond and follow instructions. Albus says he has been quite dependable so far."

Moody looked at Snape. "Put your hands down. I'd appreciate it, though, if you let me have a look, and don't go slamming every door you got."

Snape nodded and stood quite still, his eyes open and fixed on the door. Moody came and stood in front of him, the enchanted eye whirling in his head. It wasn't easy to stand passively and allow himself to be probed, but at least this time Snape didn't have to concentrate on what to hide and what to reveal. He just forced himself to stay open, though it was hard.

After several minutes, Moody backed away. "Damn, boyo, I wouldn't have your job for all the tea… He did that to you after you killed Dumbledore?"

"You don't disobey."

"You handed him what he wanted on a platter!"

"You don't disobey. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to get back. He might send for me, and I want to be able to come when he calls."

"You got any reason you want to come back here?"

"Not that I'm aware of." Snape was puzzled.

"It's just that Fidelius Charms are tricky things, and Moldywart might get ideas that you can lead him places you couldn't lead him before. I want to booby-trap this place against you." At Snape's look of dismay, Moody shrugged. "Look at it this way. You'll have an ironclad reason for not being able to bring him here."

Nothing bad came of Snape's excursion, for the Dark Lord seemed not to have desired to speak to him during all the time he was out, and so never inquired as to his whereabouts. Nor did Bella. Snape was unsure what to make of this, whether it meant he was trusted, or that when the Dark Lord didn't need him, he didn't spare him so much as a thought. In any case, over the next couple of days Snape went out to wander about on more than one occasion, hoping that Sunday morning his foray into the world would meet with no suspicion whatsoever.

It did not. The funeral was at ten o'clock, and by nine Snape was inching his way through the low, narrow tunnel between the Shrieking Shack and the Whomping Willow. At the entrance to the Willow, he looked around carefully, checking particularly that there was no one on the hill. All were, apparently inside. Near the lake, chairs had already been set out for the crowds of mourners.

Slipping from the base of the Willow, Snape scurried into the Forbidden Forest. There he moved north, keeping well in from the edge of the trees, until he was past Hagrid's hut. Then he waited.

He didn't have long to wait. Shortly after nine thirty, the procession started down from the castle. Professor McGonagall led the staff, all in dress robes. The guests from the Ministry of Magic came next, then the students, and then the rest – parents, friends, well-wishers. It took them half an hour to descend the hill and take their places.

When he was certain no one was looking in his direction, Snape left his place of concealment and headed up the hill. The castle was deserted, and Snape's footsteps echoed in the silence. He took the stairs two at a time. On the seventh floor, the gargoyle sentinel let him up the staircase without a password.

Headmasters and headmistresses slumbered peacefully in the dim office. Even though it was what he sought, Snape still felt a pang of shock when he saw Dumbledore's portrait behind the desk – McGonagall's desk now. He coughed slightly. The portrait opened his eyes and looked at Snape.

"Ah, Severus. Punctual as usual, I see," and the sound of the familiar voice lifted Snape's heart as few things had in many long years.

"Yes, Headmaster. You wanted me."

"Indeed. First and foremost, I wanted to thank you for acting your part so splendidly a few days ago. It was hard for you, I know, and yet I also knew that in the moment of crisis you would do what was necessary."

"Thank you, sir."

"Time is brief, Severus, so I must get quickly to the point. Has Voldemort… Oh, I am sorry. Has Riddle filled you in on his plans?"

"No, sir."

"Pity. Listen carefully. Harry has been asked to cooperate and give information both by Professor McGonagall and by Rufus Scrimgeour. He has refused. This means he will be alone through most of his trials, but it also means that what happens in the Ministry or here at this school will have limited power to affect him or alter his course. This is a good thing."

"Sir, if I recall, his course is to die."

"His course is to bring about the defeat of Vol… of Riddle. Do not lose sight of that, Severus."

Snape contemplated the portrait for a moment. "Sir," he asked, "why did you want to talk to me? How does my being here right now help this cause? Do you think I can still pass information on to you?"

"That, unfortunately, will depend upon the course of events. I am a former headmaster, and as such I am bound to assist the current headmaster. Right now it seems I have a great deal of freedom because there is no current headmaster. The Board of Governors should get around to choosing one in July or August."

"What about Professor McGonagall? Doesn't she count?"

"Well yes, of course Minerva counts, but she is not the headmistress. She is acting, but not confirmed. It is a different relationship."

"It doesn't solve anything," Snape muttered. "As soon as there's a new headmaster, I won't be able to see you anymore. Come to think of it, unless there's another funeral to empty the building, I won't ever be able to see you again."

"Which is exactly the position you thought you were in a few days ago. At least this way I was able to express my gratitude. Now, you must go before the ceremony breaks up. No one must see you here. Oh, and before you go, there was a much more important reason for you to come. There is something in the desk drawer for you."

A little while later, Snape was back in the Forbidden Forest waiting for a chance to reenter the Whomping Willow. Tucked into his robes was a locket containing a miniature portrait of Dumbledore.

Within a few days it was clear that something was happening at headquarters, and that whatever it was, was on a strict need-to-know basis. Bella was licking her whiskers like a cat on a constant diet of cream, and on June tenth Snape got the list of potions for Operations and the Infirmary. Suddenly everyone had a task. Suddenly headquarters was humming like a well-oiled machine. Suddenly Snape could no longer get out.

"What do you mean, restricted?" he demanded of the clerk with the ledger.

"Sorry, sir. You're down as residing here. Personnel that reside here can't come and go."

"So the fact that I sleep in a miserable cot on the second floor means I'm less trustworthy?"

"I couldn't say, sir. I just have your name on the list."

Snape stormed away, his anger as much an act for the benefit of the clerk as anything. Internally he was scared. Back in his laboratory, for the first time, he took out the locket with its miniature portrait while inside headquarters. Up until this point he had only used it outside.

Dumbledore appeared within a minute. "Yes, Severus…" he began, then looked around. "So this is where you work. Do you think this is wise?"

"Sir, they're restricting our movements. Those outside are being told to stay home. Those inside aren't being allowed out. He's done this before. Something's happening."

"When did he do this before?"

"Almost a year and a half ago. When Bella and the others escaped from Azkaban."

"Dear Lord," said Dumbledore, "he's making his move. I'll see who I can alert. You put this thing away and lie low. If there's anyone we can't afford to lose right now, it's you."

'Lie low' was an order Snape could cheerfully obey. For the next two days he was the perfect little potions brewer. In the evening of the second day, a messenger came to the laboratory with an order to report to the interview chamber. He went at once.

The chamber was crowded. The first person Snape noticed was Bella, her face radiant with pride, and with joy. The second person he noticed was Rodolphus, hanging on his wife's arm, trying to kiss as much of her in as short a time as he possibly could. Locking down his sudden horror, Snape looked around.

Rookwood, Nott, Mulciber, Jugson, Avery, they were all there. Once again, a mass escape had been engineered from Azkaban. The only good thing was that for once Bella was ignoring Snape entirely. Her attention was all for her husband.

"Well, well," whispered a voice at Snape's ear. "So the Potions professor is still with us. Haven't slipped yet, Severus, or were you saving yourself for me?"

Snape turned to find himself face to face, eye to eye, with Walden Macnair. He feigned a lighthearted attitude. "Welcome back, Macnair. The dungeons haven't been the same without you."

"Have you been keeping them for me? My portrait on the wall and the chains all polished? How devoted. How touching."

"I don't know about polishing chains. I did leave you a gift, though. A Devil's Snare, right next to your desk. Don't move it now before it flowers. Bad luck you know."

Macnair grinned. "Always my best interests at heart. There was a rumor… Did I hear correctly that you burnt your bridges and will be gracing us with your company on a daily basis?"

Snape paused, the not-quite-a-smile frozen on his lips. Now, more than anything, he longed to be able to return to the safety of Hogwarts. "That will depend on the Dark Lord and what he wants me to do. You know that Macnair. Not even you take precedence."

"Such loyalty. Such devotion. To place duty above self like that. I'm going to make a plea to the Dark Lord to allow you some much needed diversion. To allow us both some much needed diversion. You'd like that, wouldn't you?"

_And if I ever find myself alone in a room with you, I'll commit suicide._ Snape thought, but openly to Macnair said, "Don't get your hopes up. He has plans. None of us is getting in the way of his plans."

"Pity," said Macnair. "And I was so looking forward to this."

Much later that evening, Snape again risked taking out the miniature in its locket. When Dumbledore appeared, he said, "It was true. They're all out of Azkaban."

"So far as I know," replied Dumbledore, "it has not hit the news yet. It will be very interesting if it never does. How are you doing?"

"Walden Macnair is after me again."

"You poor boy," said Dumbledore, though Snape suspected he was grinning internally. "We must assist you as best as we can."

There was no mention in _The Daily Prophet_ the next day of the Azkaban breakout. There was, however, a tiny notice that Snape's former colleague, the Muggle Studies teacher Professor Burbage, had resigned from Hogwarts. Of more interest was a lengthy memorial piece on Dumbledore written by Elphias Doge.

_I didn't know Dumbledore and Doge were the same age,_ Snape thought, and then paused to ponder which of the two he'd assumed was the elder. He couldn't answer the question, but it brought up a new question. _Why is it that so many pureblood witches and wizards either die very young or live to be very old? It does seem to be the half-bloods and muggle-borns who have the more stable life span. The Dark Lord is what? in his seventies? Of course, with the Horcrux business, he hardly counts as an example._

A messenger stuck his head into the laboratory. "He wants you," was all he said, but Snape was out of the laboratory and heading for the interview chamber in a flash.

This day, the chamber contained a long table, and looked for all the world like a conference room. Snape stopped in the doorway and stared around, uncertain where to go. The others already in the room apparently felt the same reticence. The massive chair at the table's head was clearly for the Dark Lord, but it would be a foolish Death Eater who presumed to guess who would sit at his right hand. Except, of course…

Bella strode into the chamber, her heavy-lidded eyes glittering and her raven hair falling in waves around her shoulders. Behind her came Rodolphus and Rabastan. She went directly to the place of honor and sat there, Rodolphus next to her on her right, and Rabastan to the left of the Dark Lord's seat. Snape raised his eyebrows slightly in surprise. He rather hoped the Dark Lord would take her down a peg for her presumption.

Then the Dark Lord was in their midst. Bella and the Lestrange brothers rose, and all bowed to him as he took his seat at the head of the table. Bella resumed her seat, but as Rodolphus and Rabastan moved to do the same, the Dark Lord stretched out a long, thin hand.

"No," he said quietly, and there was menace in his cold voice. "We think not." He motioned to the others. "Augustus, here beside us. Severus next to Bella. The rest it matters not except… Lucius." Malfoy stepped forward, his face waxy and his eyes frightened. "You," the high voice went on, "will sit next to Augustus, for we may have need of you."

The sharp, soft hiss next to him told Snape that Bella did not like this arrangement at all, but she held her tongue. With a tight smile around his thin lips, the Dark Lord surveyed them all, his crimson gaze resting on each in turn, his lieutenants arrayed around him, free from prison at last.

"We are now poised," said the Dark Lord, "to take command in the wizarding world. One obstacle, the old fool Dumbledore, has been removed from our path thanks to the actions of our good servant Severus."

The Death Eaters glanced at each other. They had, those just out of Azkaban, all heard of this, but so far only as a rumor. It was something else again to have it confirmed by the Dark Lord himself. Snape looked down at his hands, not wanting at this moment to meet anyone's eyes.

"We must now," the Dark Lord continued, "concentrate on the acquisition of power and an unassailable position. We must control the Ministry of Magic. The Minister of Magic must obey us. Augustus?"

Rookwood cleared his throat. "The new Minister is Rufus Scrimgeour. He seems to have taken over a year ago from Cornelius Fudge after we, well… Yes. Scrimgeour comes from Law Enforcement. He was Head Auror before he became Minister and he's… well, he's about as stubborn and bullheaded as they come, and…"

Snape was beginning to feel sorry for Rookwood, having to report on a situation that came into existence only after he went to Azkaban. Rookwood was clearly foundering.

"Will he obey us?" the Dark Lord asked.

"No," said Rookwood. "And he can resist Imperius curses."

"Then he will die," said the Dark Lord. "Who will replace him?"

Rookwood glanced around, sweat beading his forehead. "Usually the Head of Magical Law Enforcement is next in line for the post," he said. "That would be…" he looked down at a small piece of paper that he pulled from his robes, "Pius Thicknesse."

"What of him? Can we control him?"

"It would be easier. He doesn't have Scrimgeour's strength of will."

"You will begin to work on it. Next, the control of information. Rabastan?"

"We're working on infiltrating the _Prophet_ and other news sources, Lord," Bella's brother-in-law replied. "Two bits of excellent news. There has been no general statement or release of the information that Severus here was connected to the death of Dumbledore. There's a rumor that the Potter boy is accusing him, but that information is confined to a limited number of people."

"What say you, Severus?" the Dark Lord asked. "Could you return to Hogwarts?"

"Lord," Snape replied. "There were many who saw me that night. Senior members of the staff and members of the Order of the Phoenix saw me go up to the tower and saw me return with young Malfoy. Even if this rumor is not general public knowledge, these people would have to be taken into account before I could go back."

The Dark Lord returned to Rabastan Lestrange. "What is the second piece of good news?"

"The Skeeter woman is doing an exposé on Dumbledore. Soon his name will be discredited again, together with all his unwizardlike ideas."

"Excellent. If it turns out so, she will be rewarded. Lucius."

"Lord," responded Malfoy, and his voice trembled.

"You were once on the Board of Governors of Hogwarts. What now will happen there?"

"Lord, there is no hierarchical ascension to the position of Headmaster. While it is true that Professor McGonagall, as Deputy Headmistress, is now Acting Headmistress, it is not automatic that the permanent position will go to her. The Board will meet this month to discuss the matter and propose candidates, who must be examined and interviewed. The results will be reported back to the Board at its July meeting. They'll then review the candidates and confirm a new Headmaster in August. Meanwhile, Professor McGonagall is in charge."

"What chance is there that we could put one of our own people into this position?"

"Small to none, sir. The candidates must have academic credentials and teaching experience."

All eyes turned to Snape, who shook his head. "Even the Hogwarts Board of Governors would be reluctant to replace a dead headmaster with the man who killed him," he said.

The Dark Lord drew in a deep breath through his slits of nostrils. "Still, it would be to our advantage to have our own servant in the position. So much easier to control the parents when you control the children. And we could eliminate the poisonous courses that have been weakening our world. We shall make this one of our goals. Severus…"

"Yes, Lord."

"What of the headquarters of this Order of the Phoenix now that Dumbledore is dead?" Are its defenses weakened?"

"I don't know, Lord. I haven't tried." It was the first out and out lie that Snape had told the Dark Lord since his return to headquarters, but the Dark Lord did not notice. Instead he turned his head to look at Snape.

"You will try," he said.

"Yes, Lord," Snape replied.

Snape's attempt to get into 12 Grimmauld Place was a spectacular failure. With Dumbledore dead and the charm unraveling, he was able to take a small group of Death Eaters to the little square, but when he walked up to the house and tried an unlocking spell, he was slammed by several curses at once.

Knocked off his feet by a stunner, he was unable to respond to the Confundus, the Tongue-Tying, and the Obliviate curses that followed, all administered by an apparition resembling the long-decaying corpse of Albus Dumbledore. The Death Eaters in the square watched in horror, then rushed forward to pull him away, and apparated with him back to the Dark Lord's headquarters.

"Meant just for him," Snape heard the healer in the Infirmary say as he slowly wakened. "I'd say it was adjusted to respond to his body and no one else's. Powerful little combination. There'll probably be an echo of it left in the house for a long time to come."

Snape opened his eyes. His tongue felt like it was twice its normal size and made of concrete. Sparks were dancing in front of his eyes, and when he tried to remember his own name, a bomb went off in his medulla oblongata that made him feel like the back of his head had just come into forceful contact with a Patton tank. His heart started racing, and he leaned over the side of the bed and began to vomit.

"Now, now," said the healer brusquely. "We can't have that." He began a low chant, and soon Snape was feeling about twenty-five percent human again.

The upside of all this discomfort was that Snape could no longer remember the location of 12 Grimmauld Place. He couldn't find it, he couldn't visualize it, and of course he couldn't take anyone else to it. The Death Eaters who'd been with him could go back to the square, but they couldn't see the house.

Miserable as he felt for several days, Snape had to admit that Moody 'd done a fair job with the protective curses at Grimmauld Place.

At the end of June, they got Yaxley back. By this time Bella's Operations department was targeting lower level operatives and clerks of Law Enforcement, and all they had to do was stamp his release papers. A new guard on the evening shift simply followed orders, and Yaxley was back at headquarters.

Yaxley, with his newfound understanding of the inside workings of Law Enforcement and its personnel, was put in charge of recruitment, with a special emphasis on the Ministry itself.

As July neared the end of its first week, the Dark Lord sent for Snape. They were alone in the interview chamber, where light spread around them in a wide arc. Snape was allowed to stand.

"Tell me again, potions master, the old magic that protects the boy, when does it end?"

"When he comes of age, on his seventeenth birthday."

"The dying day of this month."

"Yes, Lord."

"We shall take him then, he and those muggles he lives with. They will make good sport for us."

"Forgive me, Lord, but it's more likely they'll move him somewhere more protected before then."

"Who will move him, and where? There is more than one who would be the master of the Chosen One." The Dark Lord's sneer was almost a snarl. "If the Ministry pulls one way, and this Order pulls the other, they may well tear the boy in two and spare us the trouble."

"If Potter has his way, it will be the Order, not the Ministry. He has no love for the Ministry, and will flout its authority."

"You know this for a fact?"

"Yes, Lord. It has been so for at least two years, when the Ministry was calling him a liar and wanted to expel him from Hogwarts for defending himself from dementors. It got worse when the Umbridge woman attempted to undermine Dumbledore and has never improved."

"So our control over the Ministry would give us no advantage in dealing with Potter."

"No, Lord."

"Why did you not tell us this before?"

Snape froze, his heart beginning to hammer in his ears. And yet he had not been ordered to his knees or tickled with the promise of pain. Perhaps, this once, it was only a question. "Forgive me, Lord. I thought, in my ignorance, that you wished control of the Ministry for its own sake. And the topic of Potter didn't come up at the last meeting."

"It is unfortunate you no longer gather information from either the Order or from Hogwarts."

"Then I have failed you, Lord?" Snape modulated his voice carefully to reflect the combination of disappointment and fear he wanted the Dark Lord to think he felt. The truth was, he was becoming more and more puzzled by the moment. If the Dark Lord was displeased, why was he – Snape – still standing and free from pain?

"Do you retain any contact that might be a source of intelligence for either of these institutions?"

Snape's mind raced through images of people. _Who can I name that I can protect from harm?_ The Dark Lord waited with unusual patience. Finally Snape said, "Yes, Lord. There may be one who could inform me of the doings of the Order. But he's shifty, a coward, and quick to run. The others don't trust him, so he would only be valuable if handled gently at a distance. As long as he himself remains unaware of our interest as we pluck his knowledge, he may be good for much – at least about their outside operations. But bring anyone heavy-handed into it, and we lose him."

The Dark Lord chuckled. "Bella will never learn his name. Who is this unlikely spy?"

"You already know of him. He's the thief named Mundungus Fletcher who was arrested briefly this spring. The Order only uses him for routine work, but he'd probably be a party to plans to move the Potter boy."

"Very good, Severus. We had not believed you had failed us. You will cultivate this Fletcher, and you will inform us, and us alone, until we instruct you to inform others. We shall not remind Bella of the disappearance of her property."

"Yes, Lord." Snape thought again. "Lord, it would be better if I were in London. It is where he chiefly operates. Would you permit me to draw funds and reside outside for a week or two?"

"Yes, Severus. You have our permission."

Snape drew per diem from Operations, to Bella's great indignation, and apparated to London. Once settled in rooms in Chelsea (he was supplementing the Operations money from his own bank account), he shut himself in and took out Dumbledore's portrait.

Dumbledore's appreciation was evident. "Riddle has a more upscale establishment than I imagined," he said, looking around the comfortable bedroom.

"I'm in Chelsea," Snape admitted. "I've done a bad thing."

"And he punished you by sending you to Chelsea? He is slipping."

"No, sir. The two are only marginally connected. I suggested something to him, and he ordered me to proceed, and I just thought I would like to stay in Chelsea, but it's still bad."

"Very well, Severus, if I must be your father confessor, you may tell me what you did."

"I told the Dark Lord I could get information from Mundungus Fletcher."

"Well, that is not necessarily truthful, but I do not know that I would characterize it as bad. Not wise, certainly. Not for you at any rate. Have you planned your escape route?"

Snape twisted his mouth ruefully. "He said it was 'unfortunate' I couldn't gather information anymore. Then he asked if I still had contacts. To say no at that particular moment could have been… unpleasant. I need to get something from Fletcher."

"What is Riddle interested in, specifically?"

"Plans for moving Potter before the end of the month."

"Dear me. Maybe you were right after all. This is rather bad. How soon do you need this information?"

"No deadline. Well, before they make the actual move, naturally. Of course, I could always tell him Fletcher wasn't in on the plans."

"True, and you may have to. Above all, we must keep Harry safe."

Three days later, the situation had changed completely. When Snape looked at his small portrait, Dumbledore was already there. "Severus, what organizations are they targeting for Imperius curses?"

"The Ministry, all levels, the _Prophet_…"

"The Board of Governors for Hogwarts?" Dumbledore was not really asking a question.

"No, I didn't… Wait. Lucius Malfoy did explain to the Dark Lord the procedure for selecting a new headmaster. He seemed interested, and not too concerned about things like credentials."

"Three members of the Board have just proposed Amycus Carrow."

"That's ridiculous!"

"I agree," Dumbledore said, "but if the Board confirms him, even under the Imperius curse, then he will be the current headmaster of Hogwarts. All of us, Nigellus, Dippet, me, would be constrained to assist him in any way we could."

Snape sat back. Outside his window was a quiet, peaceful street, sunlit in the July afternoon. A tenuous and illusive peace. "What are we going to do?" he asked the portrait.

"Severus, why did the Board members not propose your name?"

"I'm not sure, sir. It seemed to be on everyone's mind at the meeting – that I was a possibility, I mean – but I've been away from headquarters for a few days… Maybe because of you… what I did… it wouldn't be tenable."

"Normally I would agree. The situation is bizarre. But we must at all costs ensure that the post does not go to a real Death Eater, or I shall no longer be able to maneuver. Worse, I may have to give information to Riddle. Could you return to your headquarters and lobby for the job?"

Snape shook his head. "How am I supposed to explain how I know about Carrow's nomination? There has to be another way."

Dumbledore disappeared for a moment. When he returned, he looked irritated. "You need to come to Hogwarts again, Severus. I shall see if I can get Alastor as well, but we need to keep it small and close. Minerva is having violent hysterics right now, but by this evening she will probably have calmed down. Let no one else see you."

Snape closed the locket on the now empty portrait. He felt sick. Amycus Carrow in charge of Hogwarts? In charge of what was left of Dumbledore? Disaster piled on disaster, and if the Dark Lord called now, Snape had nothing to give him. He had not yet spoken to Mundungus Fletcher.

Snape reached Hogwarts shortly before nine o'clock that evening and once again made his way through the tunnel to the Whomping Willow. This time he had only to worry about Hagrid since neither students nor staff were in the school in July. The sun had still an hour to go before setting, so Snape was wary as he circled through the forest around Hagrid's hut, hoping the gamekeeper wouldn't accidentally look toward the hill while he was climbing it. He made it through safely, and even managed to avoid ghosts and poltergeist on the way up to the gargoyle staircase on the seventh floor.

The passage to the Acting Headmistress's office was open and waiting for him.

The only people in the office were Professor McGonagall and Alastor Moody, who had clearly been talking and now lapsed into silence as he entered. McGonagall stood, turned her back on him without a word, and walked across the circular room to look down from the window onto the lake below. Moody leaned forward, hands on knees and a scowl on his face, but said nothing. Dumbledore slumbered in his portrait.

Snape paused on the threshold, uncertain how to proceed. Seconds ticked into minutes, but neither of the other two invited him to enter or sit down. Neither spoke a word. When the wait became painful, Snape said, "Excuse me, I seem to have mistaken the appointment. I'll not trouble you further," and himself turned to go back down the stairs.

Dumbledore stirred. "Come back, Severus, please. None of us must act too hastily now. There is far too much at stake."

Snape paused. "Did you explain the situation, or are we going into this cold?" he asked.

The portrait Dumbledore sighed, "I have told Minerva the events of the night on the tower. I understand that you have shown Alastor what transpired there. There is a certain reluctance…"

"Reluctance!" McGonagall exploded, wheeling to face into the room. "I'd like a bit more reluctance when he aims killing curses at old and trusted friends! How hard was it for ye, Snape? From the ease ye got that curse off, I'll be wagering ye 'd had some practice. Could ye do for me as smoothly?"

Moody was already on his feet, and Dumbledore had risen in his portrait with a crisp "Minerva!" Snape stood rigid in the doorway, every vestige of color drained from his face, black eyes locked and sealed. He was trembling.

"Minerva, I have explained that I requested…"

McGonagall didn't allow Dumbledore to finish. "And he should ha' refused! He should ha' fought back! D' ye no understand, Albus? Ye dinna know what would ha' happened! Maybe ye ha' the right o' it and ye would ha' died anyway, but maybe he'd ha' taken them by surprise and ye 'd still be with us. Ye dinna know! But he took tha' chance away, now didn't he, and now none o' us will ever know, and ye'll ne'er come back! But tha's the way of it when killin's been the answer before, so simple to let it be the answer again! I'll no work with a murderer!" She spun again to the view of the lake, her back stiff with anger and grief.

Snape's pallor began to crimson now, points of color appearing in his cheeks as rage rose in him, rage against McGonagall, rage against Dumbledore, rage against fate.

"How dare you," he hissed. "How dare you look down on me from the safety of your fortified tower and the luxury of six weeks of hindsight and tell me what I should have done with two seconds to decide and an order to obey. In case you hadn't noticed, we're still fighting a war. Maybe I should have died on the tower with Dumbledore, but then I'd miss the pleasure of watching you take orders from Amycus Carrow…"

"Severus!" Dumbledore thundered. "Both of you! Silence!" In the deceptive calm that followed, his voice became gentler. "Alastor, please sit down. Severus, come into the room as well, and sit, it does not matter where. Minerva, I beg of you… This was not Severus's decision to make. He was in a difficult position, but the decision was mine. Because of his sacrifice, Hogwarts is still safe, Harry is still alive…"

"Sacrifice!" McGonagall advanced into the center of the room, an avenging fury. "What sacrifice did he make but to cushion his nest with… with… Voldemort!" And her face glowed with cruel satisfaction when Snape winced and clutched his arm.

"Professor McGonagall." Moody finally spoke. "I think you should know that Professor Snape's reception by Voldemort was not pleasant. He was punished…"

"Good!" McGonagall spat out. "There is some justice in the world, then."

Dumbledore started to speak again, but Moody raised a hand to silence him. He walked over to where Snape still stood defensively in the doorway. "Severus," he said, gruff but with an underlying gentleness, "there is no one among us who has a job as difficult as yours. We all live in danger, but at least our paths are wide, straight, and well lit. If any one of us dies, we die knowing that our sacrifice was recognized by others. Your paths are narrow and twisted, dark and hidden, and if you go, all the people you died to save 'll vilify your name. I couldn't do that, boyo. I don't have the courage to do what you do."

Moody faced McGonagall across the room. "I won't tell you to give up your anger. You've got to deal with it on your own. But as I understand it, this lad's going back into the lion's den tonight, and there're some things we need to discuss. You owe him at least the courtesy of sitting in the same room and hearing what we have to say."

"Now," continued Moody after McGonagall and Snape were both seated. "What's this about Amycus Carrow?"

Dumbledore explained what he believed to be the result of combined Imperius and Confundus spells while McGonagall listened aghast. "How could they ever get away with proposing a known Death Eater," she exclaimed at last, "even if some of the members of the Board are Imperiused and Confunded?"

"He isn't a known Death Eater," Snape said quietly. "Not him, and not his sister Alecto. When the Dark Lord fell the first time, they escaped the roundup, and no one ever implicated them. Not only were they never found guilty, they were never tried. In fact, they were never accused. Never been to Azkaban, never been in a Ministry holding pen… They have a cleaner record than I do."

"Oh," said McGonagall sharply. "I see. Then the Ministry must be warned that they and the Board are targets for Imperius curses. They must take steps."

"They know, Minerva," said Moody. "But these spells can be very subtle. You don't know who to trust. I'd bet my life they'll never put an Imperius on old Rufus, but I wouldn't trust anyone around him. Rufus is our best bet. He's strong, independent, hates Death Eaters… As long as he controls the Ministry, I think you're safe from the Board and Mr. Carrow. Wish he could get along with Harry, though."

"We need contingency plans," said Dumbledore. "If we reach the point where we no longer trust the Ministry, we have to be sure Riddle – that's Severus's Dark Lord, Minerva. We do try to avoid distressing Severus unnecessarily – doesn't get control of this office. If he can put someone like Carrow in here, Hogwarts is doomed. Every student and every staff member will be in danger. In that contingency, we would need someone Riddle thinks he controls, but who is really ours."

"So," said McGonagall acidly, glaring at Snape, "that's where you come in."

"Yes, Minerva, that is where Severus comes in. While the Ministry is safe, we wait for the Board to make its choice. If the Ministry falls, we must be sure the choice is Severus rather than Amycus. It is a delicate operation, and I fear there is a possibility that some of us may get hurt."

"Us?" Moody raised his eyebrows.

"It was a collective pronoun, Alastor. I still feel part of things you know. The one person we must keep safe at all costs, at the cost of every single other person if necessary, is Harry Potter. Severus, what will assure your status?"

"Information," Snape replied immediately.

"And what information does Riddle want above all else?"

"Information about when Potter is leaving his uncle's house."

"Then we must be prepared to provide him with that information if it becomes necessary."

"Hold on!" Moody was on his feet now. "How does that save Harry?"

"We will arrange to protect Harry," Dumbledore assured him, "but we must also protect Hogwarts. We must be prepared, as a last resort, to give Riddle the information he wants."

"And if that isn't enough?" Snape asked. "Or if your plan goes awry?"

"We must take that risk. Not to take it if we have to is to surrender everything. Alastor, what are the plans for moving Harry from the Dursley house?"

Dumbledore's request was greeted with stunned silence from all three. Then Snape rose and faced the portrait behind McGonagall's desk. "I don't want this information," he said. "I don't want the Dark Lord to have it."

"Severus," said Dumbledore, and it was a measure of his fear that he forgot Snape's mark, "if it becomes necessary, you will have to give Voldemort the correct date of Harry's departure from his aunt and uncle's. Not to do so will raise suspicion, when Voldemort believes you so well informed. However, you must plant the idea of decoys; that, I think, ought to ensure Harry's safety. Try Confunding Mundungus Fletcher. And Severus, if you are forced to take part in the chase, be sure to act your part convincingly… I am counting on you to remain in Lord Voldemort's good books as long as possible, or Hogwarts will be left to the mercy of the Carrows. Now, Alastor, what is the plan."

"Why Fletcher?" Moody asked. "Why don't I suggest decoys?"

"Because Severus has already told Riddle he can get information from Fletcher. If anyone is questioned about this in the future, it will be clear that Fletcher was, indeed, the source of his information."

Moody grunted. "The twenty-sixth," he said. "We're moving him Saturday the twenty-sixth at nightfall. We're getting the Dursleys out earlier in the day."

"There you are," Dumbledore told Snape. "Prepare your Mundungus cover, but don't say anything to Riddle unless we are unable to avoid it."


	61. Chapter 61 – Out of the Depths

**What of My Soul, Dumbledore?: Out of the Depths**

Snape did return to the lion's den that evening. Taken straight to the Dark Lord, he reported on his task.

"Fletcher frequents certain taverns south of the Thames. I'm going to try to contact him tomorrow evening and start cultivating him. It may take a few days to build up his confidence in me enough to start pumping him for information."

"Do not let it take too long," the Dark Lord warned. "We should not like over-caution to defeat us of our victory."

Snape did indeed locate Mundungus Fletcher in a nondescript tavern and, after a moment of consternation on Fletcher's part, bought him a pint. The Confundus charm was fairly easy after that, except that Snape had to concentrate to be sure Fletcher understood.

"You will suggest to the Order of the Phoenix that they use decoys," Snape planted in Fletcher's brain. "Polyjuice Potion. Identical Potters. It is the only thing that might work. You will forget that I have suggested this. You will present it as your own idea. You understand?"

"I understand," Fletcher murmured, and Snape left him to his pint.

After that came the waiting. Nothing much happened for a week and a half except that the Death Eater debate over blood purity became a public topic. On the sixteenth, while enjoying a cup of coffee in a Chelsea shop, Snape noticed in the _Prophet_, which he had concealed behind a copy of the Guardian, that his erstwhile colleague, Professor Burbage, had written a rather impassioned plea for tolerance and wizard/muggle cooperation. The thought _I wonder if she knows how brave that is?_ flitted through his mind, and then the article was forgotten.

On the twenty-first, it hit. That evening the locket Snape carried began to vibrate, and he opened it as soon as he could find a guarded spot. "Severus," said the tiny portrait of Dumbledore, "you must act at once. Law Enforcement is taken. We got a report two hours ago that Pius Thicknesse began acting strangely during the afternoon, and now our informant has disappeared. We can only assume that Thicknesse has been Imperiused. Moody is trying to contact Scrimgeour, but no success so far. It is imperative that you move now to secure your position."

Snape apparated at once to headquarters only to find that the Dark Lord was not there. "You," the register clerk said, looking relieved. "I'm supposed to contact you. There's a meeting – he just called for it now, not ten minutes ago – at the Malfoy mansion, and he wants you…" Even as they spoke, the mark on Snape's left arm began to tingle.

The sun had already set and the moon, ripe in the third day of its cycle of fullness, was rising, when Snape apparated to the lane that ran next to the grounds of the Malfoy mansion in Wiltshire. The 'pop' of his appearance was echoed by another 'pop,' and Snape let his wand slip into his hand from the loop in his sleeve, knowing that the other wizard was drawing his wand, too. They paused, and in the moonlight Snape recognized Yaxley. He put his wand away.

"News?" Yaxley asked.

"The best," Snape replied, not one hundred percent certain he'd understood the question. Was Yaxley referring to Snape's news or the Dark Lord's news?

"Thought I might be late," Yaxley confided as they approached the driveway. "It was a little trickier than I expected. But I hope he'll be satisfied. You sound confident that your reception will be good."

Snape contented himself with a nod. As they approached the iron gates, Yaxley raised his arm in salute, and Snape did likewise, realizing the gates had been calibrated to recognize the marks on their arms. The wrought-iron barrier shimmered and let them pass.

Yaxley was clearly more nervous than he wanted to admit, for he suddenly whipped out his wand and pointed it – straight at an albino peacock – then laughed a little at his own jumpiness. "He always did himself well, Lucius. Peacocks…" In the stillness, Snape could hear the trickle of a fountain.

The wheels and gears were spinning in Snape's brain, trying to cover every possibility. Yaxley was in charge of Ministry recruitment, so his presence might have something to do with Thicknesse. But then why was Yaxley worried about being late? Wouldn't he have been one of the first there? _Confidence, Severus. Above all you must show confidence. If this isn't about Thicknesse, it could be about anything. Don't let the sharks smell blood in the water._

The two men crossed the darkened entry hall and paused before a heavy wooden door. Then Snape reached forward, turned the bronze handle, and they entered.

A split second of overwhelming shock and fear, and then Snape mustered every ounce of control he possessed to maintain the look of calm that had been on his face when he entered the room, the crowded room where every person was watching him and his reactions. He did not look to the center of the room again. Affecting indifference, he waited until the Dark Lord should speak his name. And he tried to lock from his mind the images of the friendly cheerful face of the woman whose body now hung suspended head down from the ceiling above the long meeting table, the woman who for the past ten years had been a coworker, a colleague – the former Hogwarts Professor of Muggle Studies, Charity Burbage.

"Yaxley. Snape. You are very nearly late." The serpentine face shone in the moonlight that now floated through the high windows. The cold, high voice beckoned, no more than the barest hint of a threat behind it. The long, thin hand pointed to the chair on the Dark Lord's right. "Severus, here. Yaxley – beside Dolohov." Then, looking directly at Snape, the Dark Lord said, "So?"

_What game is this?_ Snape thought. _He summoned me last. I was meant to arrive late. Even Yaxley knew he should have arrived earlier. Is this about Potter? Or about the Ministry? Or am I being tested now that he's captured Charity? Henry VIII honored those he was about to execute – is that why I sit at his right hand?_ Snape kept his face blank and cold.

"My Lord, the Order of the Phoenix intends to move Harry Potter from his current place of safety on Saturday next, at nightfall." It was news. The others at the table shifted and stirred. Snape noticed Draco Malfoy in the middle of them, under the suspended form of the woman who had never taught him. _The boy must be terrified._

What came next was not unexpected. Murmuring "Saturday… at nightfall," the Dark Lord fixed his red eyes on Snape's black ones and probed, probed deeply and intrusively, and Snape almost defiantly gave him the comfortable rooms in Chelsea and the coffee shop. He also gave him Mundungus Fletcher, but not Dumbledore, Moody, or McGonagall, nor the plan to have multiple Harrys, and the Dark Lord did not see the omission.

"Good. Very good. And this information comes…"

"…from the source we discussed," said Snape. _But you knew that. Yet you chose to demonstrate to everyone at this table that I share confidences with you not shared by anyone else. Does this honor reassure or terrify me?_

Yaxley seemed suddenly to realize he was losing his chance. "My Lord," he said, leaning forward, "I've heard differently. Dawlish, the Auror, let slip that Potter won't be moved until the thirtieth, the night before the boy turns seventeen."

Snape allowed himself to smile, a sign of confidence for the benefit of the others. "My source told me that there are plans to lay a false trail; this must be it. No doubt a Confundus Charm has been placed upon Dawlish. It would not be the first time; he is known to be susceptible."

Yaxley pushed onward. "I assure you, my Lord, Dawlish seemed quite certain."

Relieved beyond measure at the opening Yaxley had unintentionally given him, Snape replied, "If he has been Confunded, naturally he is certain. I assure you, Yaxley, the Auror Office will play no further part in the protection of Harry Potter. The Order believes that we have infiltrated the Ministry."

"The Order's got one thing right, then, eh?" joked one of the wizards, and though others echoed his jibe with smirks and giggles, Snape marveled at his courage – or foolishness.

Yaxley would not be still. "My Lord, Dawlish believes an entire party of Aurors will be used to transfer the boy…" The Dark Lord stopped him.

"Where are they going to hide the boy next?" he inquired of Snape, and Snape knew the largest barrier had been crossed, for he was being addressed as the expert in the matter. Beyond him Professor Burbage swung, unconscious and helpless, but to notice her now was to court death and the destruction of all hope.

"At the home of one of the Order. The place, according to the source, has been given every protection that the Order and Ministry together could provide. I think that there is little chance of taking him once he is there, my Lord, unless, of course, the Ministry has fallen before next Saturday, which might give us the opportunity to discover and undo enough of the enchantments to break through the rest."

The Dark Lord looked down the table. On his command, Yaxley confirmed Dumbledore's suspicions about Pius Thicknesse, spoke of isolating Scrimgeour within the Ministry as the next step in taking over, and added information about the Department of Magical Transport that Snape would pass on at the earliest opportunity. Information that also gave Snape a way to strengthen his position with the Dark Lord.

"The Order is eschewing any form of transport that is controlled or regulated by the Ministry; they mistrust everything to do with the place," Snape told the Dark Lord, and the Dark Lord accepted the statement as true and was pleased. He himself, he told the company, would be there that night to capture Harry Potter.

That was not good news. If the Dark Lord intended to battle the Order in person on the twenty-sixth, then Snape would have no choice but to be there, a prospect with several disadvantages, not the least being the possibility of his own death, ending Dumbledore's plans to protect Hogwarts and any chance of passing his information on to Potter about battling the Dark Lord. And, though he did not intend to harm any of his former colleagues, he was sure that in the confusion of a battle he might have to fight Lupin, or Moody, and while Moody knew, Lupin did not, and Snape would have to fight in earnest. Too, the Order would see him in the Death Eater army, and would know Potter's story to be true – regardless of what the _Prophet_ might say – that he, Snape, had indeed killed Dumbledore.

And the Dark Lord was also telling the assembled company that he would have to kill Harry Potter personally.

Snape glanced quickly at Greyback, the Carrows, and Yaxley. Who else had been at Hogwarts that night? Rowle? He fervently hoped they didn't put two and two together and wonder why he, Snape, had told them that same thing nearly two months before the Dark Lord made his decision known.

Two things happened next, both of them shocking though in different ways. The first was a scream, a wailing, that came up through the very floorboards. Snape did not jump or startle as the others did. Being locked down as tightly as he was gave him an advantage there. The Dark Lord sent Pettigrew to silence this second prisoner.

The next was that the Dark Lord demanded Lucius Malfoy's wand, saying he would use it to battle Potter. It was painful to watch the once-proud Malfoy forced to surrender his only weapon and submit to sneers against his loyalty like a disobedient child. _He will humiliate me the same way if ever I fall from grace._

The great snake Nagini had entered the room (or had it been watching all the time from the shadows?) and slithered its way to its master. Snape was suddenly, if possible, more alert. _Something is happening. He's leading up to something. It's like a play. The first important business, the first act, is over, and here we have a humorous interlude before beginning the second act. Is this about Charity – is it about me, after all?_

It unfolded as if scripted – the impugning of the Malfoy family's devotion and then Bella, predictable, dependable Bella, jumping into the fray to defend the loyalty of her house only to be slapped down with the news that her house had been defiled by the admission of a werewolf into the family. _Blood purity. This is about blood purity. But why is he taunting Bella? No one doubts her loyalty. Why humiliate Bella?_

And then it came, the theme of the second act – "Many of our oldest family trees become a little diseased over time. You must prune yours, must you not, to keep it healthy? Cut away those parts that threaten the health of the rest… cut away the canker… only those of the true blood remain…"

Snape knew. He knew why he'd been informed last to arrive last, knew why the body of Charity Burbage hung over the table, feared that the unseen, wailing prisoner might also be a colleague, a friend – the second act was about him. Snape was being tried, and could not be found wanting.

What had not been sealed before was sealed now. No feeling, no emotion, no hesitation, could be allowed to surface. Snape shut himself utterly down, as cold now as the man testing him. With a tiny movement of Malfoy's wand, the Dark Lord brought Charity Burbage back to consciousness.

"Do you recognize our guest, Severus?" the Dark Lord asked, as all eyes turned to the hanging, twisting prisoner. All eyes but the Dark Lord's, who was staring fixedly, calculatingly, at Snape.

Before Snape could answer, Charity blinked, focused, and recognized him. "Severus! Help me!" she cried as she slowly revolved in her bonds above him.

_I cannot help you. I cannot pity you. I cannot feel the smallest spark of sympathy for you, for he would know instantly. I must find within myself some moment of cold satisfaction to offer up to him, and you must die alone. May it at least be quick._ Snape forced himself to gaze coolly at Charity. "Ah, yes," he replied, and left it at that.

"For those of you who do not know," the Dark Lord said, "we are joined here tonight by Charity Burbage who, until recently, taught at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry… taught the children of witches and wizards all about muggles… how they are no different from us…"

There were taunts and laughs from around the table now as almost all eyes were on the despairing Charity, who again pleaded, "Severus… please… please…" Almost all eyes, but not those of Draco Malfoy, who kept his locked on the surface of the table, nor those of Bella Lestrange, who was now staring at Snape, too. And not those of the Dark Lord, who continued to scrutinize Snape's impassive face with unwavering attention as he detailed Charity's 'crimes.'

Charity was weeping now, her pleas silenced, her fate sealed. Snape watched her, icy and calm. The Dark Lord raised his newly acquired wand, hissed, _"Avada Kedavra,"_ and Charity's body was allowed to fall to the table. Her ordeal was over.

But not Snape's, not quite, for now the Dark Lord stroked the great snake and murmured, "Dinner, Nagini," and Snape continued to watch, still icy and calm, as Nagini coiled its way to Charity's body, seized her in its powerful jaws, and dragged her from the room. Then he turned in his seat to meet the Dark Lord's red eyes.

"Am I just, Severus?" the Dark Lord whispered, and Snape knew he was meant to be aware of the probe.

"Such should be the fate of all who share her traitorous views. She was a disgrace to the name of witch."

The Dark Lord searched deeply and found no contradiction. He smiled and finally released Snape, addressing the whole group. "Our plans near fruition. The Ministry is under siege, and will soon be ours. The Potter boy will fall into our hands Saturday night. One bastion remains, and it will be ours within the month." He gestured toward Snape. "Tonight I would have you meet and congratulate the next headmaster of Hogwarts."

The hubbub that greeted this announcement almost drowned Bella's anguished cry of "No!" Witches and wizards pressed forward to shake Snape's hand in a general air of celebration. Snape did not celebrate. No smile touched his lips. He was sealed, locked down, and no feeling, no emotion surfaced to mar the impassiveness of his features. No emotion at all.

After the meeting, Snape requested and received permission to return to Chelsea and resume contact with Mundungus Fletcher just in case the plans of the Order changed. He apparated into the Chelsea bedroom and stood there, absolutely still, for several minutes. He had to contact Dumbledore, but struggled for the words to explain what had just happened. Deciding finally that the words would come of themselves once he began talking, he took the locket with its miniature portrait out of his desk drawer. He had not taken it to the meeting, lest it be discovered.

Dumbledore appeared at once. "You are safe," he said, clearly pleased. "What news?"

"Sir, you were correct about Pius Thicknesse. He has been Imperiused. They are planning to control everyone around Minister Scrimgeour first, and then make their move."

"And what else?" asked Dumbledore, a note of suspicion now in his voice.

"The Dark Lord has decided that the best person to propose for Hogwarts would be me."

"Severus, what is wrong? What has happened?"

"I don't understand, sir. Why are you concerned?"

"I have not seen you locked down this tightly since… Severus, I have never seen you locked down quite this tightly. What happened?"

Snape stared into the portrait. Then, his voice cold and withdrawn, he said, "Charity Burbage is dead."

"Merlin! Did you have to watch it?"

"Sir, what would be the point of encompassing such a death and then not avail yourself of the strategic value of having others watch?"

"Severus! Severus, listen to me! I want you to come to Hogwarts at once!"

"That would be unwise, sir. It could jeopardize all our plans."

"I am going to contact Alastor…"

"Also unwise, sir. Such contact, if it became known, would make my position highly unstable."

"Severus…"

Snape closed the locket and placed it back in the desk drawer. Then he removed his shoes and lay down, fully clothed, on top of the bed, his hands folded lightly above his stomach, one ankle crossed over the other. He lay there for some time, eyes open but not really seeing the ceiling above him. There were no images floating in his brain to distress him. He had taken care of that.

_I cannot lower my guard. He can come at any time of day or night, and I have to be ready. I'll never be able to lower my guard again._

Snape rested, unmoving, through the night, but he did not sleep.

Saturday afternoon found Snape back at headquarters, where he reported to Operations along with the rest who'd been assigned to accompany the Dark Lord.

"What's this?" he asked Bella, examining the piece of cloth she thrust into his hands.

"Hood," she replied. "Standard issue." Then she looked at him with something close to disgust. "You've never gone out into the field, have you? Pathetic."

"Never. My services were needed elsewhere. Why the hoods?"

"To hide our identities. It's more frightening to be faced by an anonymous force than by people you know from other contexts."

"Less likely to be turned over to the Aurors, too."

"Are you questioning my courage?"

"No, of course not. Why ever would I do that?" _And yet_, Snape thought as he fingered the hood, _it does solve one of my problems. With this on, the members of the Order won't be able to identify me. It will make the Hogwarts business easier to deal with._

They apparated, about thirty of them with the Dark Lord, to Little Whinging in Surrey. There, above the Dursley residence, they were stopped by a force like a wall surrounding the house. The Dark Lord motioned to Snape, and he went at once to his lord's side.

"Why can we not enter?" the Dark Lord inquired, and his tone said that he was not pleased.

Snape looked around at the wide circle of Death Eaters, and then down at the house far below them. "It is not yet Potter's seventeenth birthday," he said. "Prior to that, I believe the protection only ceases the moment he ceases calling the house home. That can't happen until he actually leaves it. At least that is my understanding. Dumbledore never totally confided in me about this aspect of it."

"So we wait, and if you are right, we shall be able to attack after he leaves."

"I believe so, my Lord."

They waited. The sun had set around nine o'clock and the moon would not rise until after midnight. The only light came from the street lamps and the windows of the row upon row of identical houses. Minute after minute ticked by, and Snape could see that some of the others glanced at him, knowing who he was even under the hood, maybe from the unfamiliar and slightly awkward way he sat on his broom. _They suspect I've given them false information. I pray that they're wrong._

Then they were engulfed by a roar, and Hagrid appeared in their midst astride a motorcycle with a sidecar in which sat Harry Potter. But before anyone could move, others appeared as well – on brooms, but also on thestrals, and everywhere there were Harry Potters. There was a moment's pause as each side recovered from the shock, and then the members of the Order were scattering, speeding for the different points of the compass, and the circle of Death Eaters was forced to split up as well, to give chase.

Snape paused for a second to choose. He was fairly sure that Hagrid would guard the real Harry, for Hagrid was immune to a wide variety of curses and the sidecar was extra protection. The Dark Lord, on the other hand, focused at once on Moody, and though Snape would have liked to watch the back of the only member of the Order who could protect him from the others, he did not want to be near the Dark Lord where the need to show his zeal would be greatest. He chose instead to follow Lupin, and watch Lupin's back. Even though Lupin had never watched his.

They sped upward into the night, and Lupin's 'Harry' feinted and dodged with a familiar skill. _A Quidditch player_, Snape thought. _Who might that be? A Weasley? Charlie, Fred, George, and Ron all played Quidditch. Ginny, too, as I recall._ He tried to keep up, but the broom work was hard. As wind and backwash swept over him, the Death Eater hood blew away from Snape's face, but he was enough of an amateur in Operations, that the import of this never occurred to him.

Then another hooded Death Eater swooped by, quicker and more maneuverable on his broom than Snape. His wanded hand came up, and Snape realized he had a clear aim at Lupin's back. He pointed his own wand at the Death Eater's hand and thought, Sectumsempra!

He missed. His familiarity with brooms, or lack of it, nearly proved fatal. The cutting curse flew cleanly past the Death Eater and struck 'Harry' in the side of the head. "Good one!" cried the Death Eater next to him, revealing by his voice that he was Rookwood. "Did you get him?"

"Flesh wound, I think," replied Snape, then slowed, for Lupin and his 'Harry' were now moving beyond Snape's capacity to follow, and he wanted to get back to the starting point to find out what was happening with the others. He let his companion race ahead without him.

Back at the Dursley house, not all was calm and peaceful. A form, a shadow, a body, kicked and twisted in the yard. Snape lowered his broom and dismounted, glancing up at the sky around him to see if any Death Eaters were coming back. Then he approached the struggling body.

It was Moody. It took only the lighting of a Lumos spell to show Snape that Moody had been hit in the face by an Ignis curse. The right side of his skull was charred, the hair singed away. The rest of Moody's body had been broken by the long fall, and yet he was still alive. Barely, but still alive. As Snape dropped to his knees, the enchanted blue eye swirled, made contact, and communicated in silence.

_Get off me, you… boyo?_

_It's me. Can you move?_ But Snape already knew he couldn't. Broken bones, ruptured organs – the fall had been cruel.

_Where are they?_ There was a desperation in Moody's unspoken voice that Snape had never heard before.

_They'll be back soon. Let me help._

_No, no. I just always thought I'd go fighting, a wand in my hand. Not Moldyvort's plaything._

_Tell me what you want, and I'll do it._

_I couldn't lay that burden on you, boyo._

Snape let the tip of his wand slip under Moody's jacket, an inch now from Moody's heart. _And watching them kill you wouldn't be a burden? If you wish it, I'll do it._

_Bless you, boyo. I'll speak a good word for you when you come to the veil._

The words of the killing curse were nonverbal, the tiny flash of green light hidden by the fabric of Moody's coat. The physical wounds were enough to explain the event, and Snape rose slowly, calm and cool, to await the return of the other Death Eaters and his Lord.

xxxxxxxxxx

"Dead?" the Dark Lord hissed. "It should have lived to repay the defiance it has shown us."

"Had he fallen from a lesser height, Lord," Snape assured him, "it would have been different. As it was…"

The moon had by now risen, and its light reflected off the blue eye as the Dark Lord sneered down at his fallen enemy. "Bring it, in any case. It can still provide sport, and we know the Lestranges, especially, will be amused." As a precaution, however – or maybe it was a trophy – he took the enchanted eye, leaving an empty socket in its place.

Snape was in charge of the removal of Moody's body, and watched with a bemused smile as the Death Eater operatives bounced it against sidewalk, tree, and stone, then played a modified hoop-and-stick game with the stiff, cartwheeling corpse. He did not try to imagine what they might have done with a live Moody. Such mind games were unnecessary, and interfered with his ability to shut down. Back at headquarters, the body continued to be a foil for fun and entertainment until the naturally progression of decay impaired its integrity. When that happened, it was thrown into the garbage. Snape did not interfere. It was not really Moody, only the house he had once lived in.

Meanwhile, Potter's birthday came, and the Dark Lord eagerly sought the boy's hiding place. Snape, in a less dangerous world, would have wagered his eyeteeth that it was the Weasley home, but nobody pressed him. At least nobody he was interested in wagering with.

But other things were happening as well, and the evening of Potter's birthday coincided with another important staff meeting. Only this meeting turned at once into an Operation as Bella's people handed out hoods and potions. There was plenty of Veritaserum, and other brews to impair will and ensure cooperation. In case the Imperius spells didn't work.

Their destination and their goal was the Ministry of Magic.

That very afternoon, the last cord of the net had been woven into place, and now the head of every department, and every bodyguard that surrounded the Minister, was Imperiused or bribed into the hands of the Dark Lord. Scrimgeour was ripe for plucking, and the Dark Lord wanted to be there for the harvest.

They arrived after midnight at the start of Friday, August first. Snape had no opportunity to contact Dumbledore since he didn't carry the locket with him at all times, and he'd had no chance to return to his laboratory to use it. Scrimgeour would get no warning at all.

The Imperiused heads of departments were called in. Snares were laid for Ministry officials who might try to interfere. Snape spared a brief thought for Arthur Weasley and Nymphadora Tonks, and then remembered this was the day of Bill Weasley's wedding. They would not come in to work, and were therefore safe. It was a small mercy.

Everything had long been in place when Scrimgeour arrived at eight o'clock with his bodyguard. They led him right to the trap in his office, and the doors sealed him from all possibility of aid before he was even aware he was caught.

Scrimgeour's sharp intake of breath was the only satisfaction the Dark Lord got from the Minister's surprise. "I have brought some old friends to visit you, Minister," the Dark Lord sneered, and one by one the circle of Death Eaters pushed back their hoods. Bella and the Lestrange brothers, Dolohov, Mulciber, Rookwood… face after face, and every one had been a prisoner in Azkaban under the care of dementors. Every one except…

"You!" Scrimgeour bellowed as Snape, too, lowered his hood. "You filthy little…" And he lunged for Snape's throat, to be brought up sharply by a casual wave of the Dark Lord's wand.

"You know each other?" The Dark Lord's voice dripped sarcasm as well as surprise. "My, my. Such a small world." He seized Scrimgeour by the hair and forced his eyes around. "Incarceration, shackles, a trial… our poor little potions brewer? Minister, he was barely more than a child. Those who abuse children should be punished. We shall allow Severus first blood, in a manner of speaking."

Snape was locked down and icily calm. "Lord," he said quietly. "I hope I do not disappoint you. You recall I was never in Operations and have never…"

Bella threw back her head with a howl of laughter. "Never?" she shrieked. "Never cast a Cruciatus curse! That'll go high on my list of things you've never done. Almost as high…"

"Bella," the Dark Lord remonstrated with the air of a kindly father, "there is always a first time. We are certain Severus will not disappoint us. Severus?"

Snape drew his wand and stepped forward. His face betrayed no more emotion than if he were about to cast a Wingardium spell on a feather. Scrimgeour followed every move with a look of pure hatred. "You little piece of owl dung," he growled. "You cockroach. And to think a decent man like Albus Dumbledore would ever consider you worth even one hair of his beard."

Snape's wand moved up, almost of its own accord, level with Scrimgeour's heart. _"Crucio,"_ Snape said softly, and Scrimgeour dropped to the floor, writhing in pain, for softness can still carry intent.

After several seconds, while Scrimgeour fought to keep from screaming, the Dark Lord raised his hand. "Thank you, Severus. And now it is Bella's turn."

For the rest of the session, stretching into hours, Snape only watched. The survivors of Azkaban were far too greedy for revenge to even notice he wasn't participating. Not content with the simplicity of the Cruciatus curse, they danced Scrimgeour around his office, their curses like knives, whips…

After the first minutes, the Dark Lord began his interrogation, and it centered on one question: Where was Harry Potter? What blood traitor's hovel concealed the Chosen One? Scrimgeour roared his defiance and scorn and refused to answer. They continued. The office was spattered with flecks of blood; the Dark Lord's ire mounted until he joined his Death Eaters and added his power to Scrimgeour's torment as afternoon melted into evening.

And then it was over. Suddenly and unexpectedly over. "NO!" the Dark Lord screamed. "Bring him back! We are not done!" Scrimgeour's limp body lay on the rug, unmoving. "Bring him back! Severus, tell us he is not dead!"

Snape knelt by the fallen Minister. To him it was obvious, but not something that would occur to a Death Eater. "It was his heart," he said. "His heart gave out. He is dead, Lord."

The Dark Lord drove a fist into the top of the desk. "He cheats us! Even now, when his Ministry lies helpless in our hands, he cheats us! Where is Potter?"

The Dark Lord stormed to the door of the Minister's office, his team of Death Eaters fearfully watching him. "Bring them!" he cried to the Death Eaters who came running from different offices. "All the Ministry traitors not already on our side, bring them!"

"Sir," said one Death Eater who had not been with the group questioning Scrimgeour, "most of the rest aren't here." He was trembling in terror, but had to answer. "We wanted to… You said you were not to be disturbed."

"Not here! Not at their posts on a Friday! Where are these slothful, slovenly excuses for workers?"

"Sir, they took the day off. To go to a wedding. Arthur Weasley's son got married today."

"Then take a force to the Weasley home and bring them here!"

All eyes were focused on the Dark Lord. Only Snape, emotionally cut off from the scene because of his defenses, noticed the flicker of movement in a painting on a side wall. A painting he'd thought was empty. The portrait of a little wizard with a toadlike face and one of the long formal wigs of the seventeenth century peered from behind the chair it usually sat on, then scurried back out of the frame.

_Good_, Snape thought. _I don't know whose office he connects with, but this day's work is no longer secret. People who might have been trapped will be warned._

The Dark Lord was calming now, his face shrewd as he planned the next moves. "We must find Potter," he said, "and we must take care not to lose sources of information through carelessness or anger. We have lost this one," – he nudged Scrimgeour's body with his foot – "we shall lose no more except by deliberate choice. Interrogate all as to Potter's whereabouts, but do not kill. And do not," he looked significantly at Bella, "drive insane."

Parties of Death Eaters – Death Eaters and tame Ministry workers – were sent out, not just to the Weasley home, but to homes of others known to be associated with the Order of the Phoenix. Still the Dark Lord pondered. He questioned his new servants. "How can we locate one wizard among many?" he asked. "The Ministry does it all the time. How?" He was talking now to Pius Thicknesse, head of Magical Law Enforcement.

"We have dossiers on most people," Thicknesse responded. "The easiest way is a Taboo, if you know a unique habit the person has. Let's say you want a wizard and know he puts treacle in his coffee. That's a very uncommon habit. You place a Taboo on flavoring coffee with treacle, and the next time he does it, the Ministry knows where he is."

"What does Potter do that no one else does?" the Dark Lord asked, then answered his own question. "The boy is arrogant, defiant, insulting. We understand that he commonly speaks our name, which none in the wizarding world do. We shall punish his arrogance. Place a Taboo on the speaking of the name Voldemort."

The Taboo worked. Rowle and Dolohov thought they had Potter cornered in London, but he slipped through their fingers. They were reminded of the consequences of disappointing the Dark Lord. Then the Dark Lord's name was mentioned repeatedly in Grimmauld Place. Potter had fled to Number 12.

Snape was questioned again about how to enter the headquarters of the Order. Thanks to Moody's curses, he could give no information. The Dark Lord scanned and probed him for long, exhausting hours, and was satisfied that the information was no longer there. A guard was set in the square to catch Potter should he ever appear in front of them.

With the Ministry in their hands, the Dark Lord ceased using headquarters, taking up more or less permanent residence in the Malfoy mansion, taking pleasure in toying with Lucius's fears. Snape kept up constant attendance either on the Dark Lord in Wiltshire or at the Ministry. He no longer had the opportunity to be alone in his laboratory where the locket with Dumbledore's portrait remained concealed.

And all through August, the Dark Lord's plans for Snape and for Hogwarts unfolded.

One Ministry employee who came into the Dark Lord's camp immediately and eagerly was Dolores Umbridge. Her obsession with blood purity was as intense as the Dark Lord's and it was a wonder that she'd not been a Death Eater before.

"Good morning, Professor Snape," she said cheerfully when he arrived at the Ministry on the fifteenth, exactly two weeks after the coup. The Board of Governors for Hogwarts was now required to hold its meetings in a Ministry conference room, and Snape was there for his formal interview. Clearly Umbridge intended to sit in on the meeting.

"Good morning," Snape replied. "I trust I am not late."

"Very punctual, in fact. Shall we?"

They entered a wood-paneled room with a long, wide table. The twelve members of the Board looked around when the door opened. They had been standing or sitting in small groups, but now went directly to their seats, ranged along one side of the table. Umbridge marched to a chair at the head and settled into it.

"Professor Snape," said the Chairman of the Board, a stout, businesslike wizard named Sandro McPherson, "there is no need for you to stand. Please, be seated." He indicated a chair that stood alone on the other side of the table where every member of the Board would be able to see Snape's face.

"You come very highly recommended, Professor," McPherson continued. "We have most of the information from your file, though we'd appreciate hearing some of it in your own words. You attended Hogwarts as a student, no?"

"Yes, Mr. Chairman, from September 1971 until June 1978."

"OWL results?"

"Outstanding in Potions, Charms, Herbology, Astronomy, and Defense against the Dark Arts. Exceeds Expectations in the others."

"Electives?"

"Arithmancy and Ancient Runes."

"Did you ever take Muggle Studies."

"No. I had no interest in Muggle Studies."

A stylishly dressed younger witch, closer to Snape's age, leaned forward. "What is your blood status, Professor? I hope you don't mind my asking."

"Not at all. It is a matter of the gravest concern to anyone who cares about the education of young witches and wizards. I am a half-blood."

"Dear, dear. And which parent was the… you know?"

"My father was a muggle. My mother was pureblood."

"And the bloodlines, both sides if possible."

Snape didn't flicker an eyelash. "Prince, Rossendale, Hewitt…" he began, and continued with a list of pureblood names – provincial, but pureblood. "I fear I cannot do the same for my father's side, which never interested me much. My father and I had a rather strained relationship."

"How many years have you been teaching at Hogwarts?" inquired an older woman.

"September will begin my seventeenth year."

"What administrative experience have you had, Professor?" asked a white-haired wizard.

"I have been head of Slytherin house since my first year. In addition, I was usually the one assigned to familiarize new staff with their duties."

"Why you? Why not the Deputy Headmistress?"

"I presume because Headmaster Dumbledore considered me competent for the task. It always coincided with that period of the year – August – when the Deputy Headmistress had the most work to do concerning the incoming students. Headmaster Dumbledore felt it better to split the labor rather than impose it all on one person."

There were nods around the table. McPherson asked, "Why were you never given the job of Deputy Headmaster?"

"Hogwarts already had a Deputy Headmistress of great administrative competence, a trait common to persons of her cultural background, I have heard. There was never any need to look for another Deputy. The matter never came up." There were smiles then, as it was well known that McPherson was deeply proud of his own Scottish heritage.

Umbridge coughed slightly. "But does Professor McGonagall respect the new laws. It was my understanding she promotes the welfare of… well, mudbloods."

"Professor McGonagall," said Snape carefully, "has great respect for the Ministry, for the Board of Governors, and for the law. She obeys the rules and the law. She does not presume to question or second-guess them. Both the Ministry and the Board told her that it was her duty to integrate persons of muggle background into the school. She followed instructions and did not allow her own prejudices to interfere with her duty. Now that the rules and laws have changed, Professor McGonagall will continue to do her duty."

"Well-spoken!" cried the white-haired wizard, and McPherson looked immensely pleased. Umbridge did not, but she had no vote on the Board. _She has to support me in any case, _Snape thought._ She knows I'm the Dark Lord's choice, even if these others don't._

"Tell us your understanding of the new laws, Professor," said the younger witch.

"They are there to protect the rights of persons of magical blood from persecution by the nonmagical world. They wish to destroy us, and we must protect ourselves. Persons of nonmagical blood who have usurped the power to perform magic must be identified so that they can be controlled. They must not be allowed to increase their powers, and so must be denied a magical education. Because the wizarding world outside Britain, and unfortunately some of our own magical families, are still wandering in the errors of the past, all children of magical families must be educated at Hogwarts to ensure they learn the truth about muggles. I wish I had known the truth about muggles when I was young. My own witch grandmother was murdered by a muggle mob."

It was done. The rest of the interview was pro forma and involved only the confirmation of small details. McPherson was confident as he shook Snape's hand when it was over. "We have three others to interview, and then the formal review. We'll probably make the decision on the thirtieth and announce it on the thirty-first, but I don't think you have much to worry about. I don't see that any other candidate has your qualifications."

Umbridge waited in the corridor. "I would love it, Professor, if you'd come up to my office for tea and a little chat. You don't have another appointment anywhere, do you?"

Snape did not, and took the elevator with Umbridge up to the first floor. The atmosphere in the Ministry was strange, and many of the workers they encountered seemed anxious and worried. They passed through the waiting room where Umbridge's secretary told her, "No messages," and then Snape got a shock so powerful that it almost broke through his barriers, the barriers that were weaker today because he didn't want to shut down completely in front of the Board. The shock came when he realized that the door to Umbridge's office was decorated by Alastor Moody's enchanted blue eye.

Umbridge followed his gaze, but didn't understand his surprise. "Yes, unusual, isn't it? If someone's in my office, I can look through it and tell immediately if they're hiding something. Very useful. The Minister gave it to me. He said it comes from… him. A token of appreciation for my dedication to the cause."

"And no one deserves it more," said Snape, wondering how it was possible for the Dark Lord to give up his trophy of Moody's death. There had to be more to it.

He watched Umbridge carefully as she put down the cups and poured the tea, and was reasonably satisfied that she hadn't put anything into his. As he sipped the tea, he waited for her to begin. After a moment of silence, she cleared her throat in that irritating way he remembered so well.

"It seems you are the preferred choice of the Board. I think it's not too early to offer congratulations. I wanted to talk to you about the staff at Hogwarts."

"What about the staff at Hogwarts?"

"Well… oh, dear… they're not all exactly, well, reliable, are they?"

"I am afraid I don't know what you're talking about." Snape was not about to let Dolores Umbridge dictate his duties to him. The Dark Lord did that, Dumbledore did that, not her.

"Think, Professor. McGonagall and her streak of rebelliousness, Sprout and her disrespect, and that little Charms teacher… what is he, anyway? And the giant?"

Snape put his cup down and leaned back in his seat. "Of course you faced opposition. When you were there, the Ministry was breaking the law."

"Breaking…? How could you? How dare you?" Umbridge was sputtering, she was so shocked.

"I must ask you to listen, and to listen carefully. By law, Hogwarts operates under its own charter. It answers to the Ministry in areas where the writ of the Ministry runs, and to the Board for what is under the Board's control. That charter can be changed not by the Ministry or by the Board, but only by decision of the Wizengamot. When the Ministry passes laws concerning the extension or restriction of magic, that is its prerogative. When it tries to control staffing and administration, it is acting illegally. Two years ago, our world was in confusion, no one knew if the Dark Lord was back or not, the Ministry was in conflict with the Headmaster, and the Board was neglecting its role. But the Ministry was still acting in violation of the charter, and the teachers were defending, as best they could, the charter rights of the school. Today there is no such confusion. We're all on the same path, and the path is clear. You and the Ministry control the restriction of magic, and Hogwarts will obey you. But the Board controls administration and staff, and unless and until I receive orders from a superior authority to the contrary, I will be duty bound as Headmaster to uphold and defend the charter of the school."

Snape rose, turned on his heel, and strode from Umbridge's office.

True to McPherson's prediction, the Board of Governors of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry voted on Saturday, August 30, 1997, to appoint Severus Snape Headmaster of the school. He was invited to the Board's chambers in the Ministry at nine o'clock the next morning for the ceremony of instatement and the swearing of his oath, followed by a reception. It was a little rushed, doing it on a weekend, but they wanted him to be able to go to Hogwarts before the students arrived on the Express.

Snape did not look at Umbridge as he raised his right hand and swore to uphold the ancient charter of the school, though he was sure she was seething. He endured the reporters from _The Daily Prophet_ with their cameras and predictable questions. He chatted stiffly yet politely at the reception and responded properly to the expressions of congratulation and good wishes for the future. He had one more task appointed to him by the Dark Lord, and near the end of the reception asked McPherson if he might speak briefly to the whole Board.

They adjourned to a conference room where Snape explained that Hogwarts was still short two staff members, a Defense against the Dark Arts instructor and a Muggle Studies teacher. Since the opening of school was the next day, he wanted an emergency confirmation of the appointment of Amycus Carrow to the first job and Alecto Carrow to the second. Since three of the members of the Board had actually proposed Amycus as headmaster not two months earlier, Snape had no trouble getting the confirmation.

At one o'clock that afternoon, Snape and the Carrows apparated to Hogsmeade.

Filch was at the gate to take the little baggage they brought, and then Snape, followed respectfully (for they were under very strict orders from the Dark Lord) by the Carrows, climbed the hill to face the staff, all lined up on the lawn to greet him.

McGonagall, confirmed in her position as Deputy Headmistress and obviously remembering her last meeting with Snape, Moody, and the portrait of Dumbledore, stepped forward.

"Headmaster Snape," she said, stiffly and formally, "on behalf of the staff of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, permit me to offer our congratulations on your appointment, and to welcome you back to the school. We stand ready to work with you for the good of Hogwarts, its staff and its students."

"Thank you, Professor McGonagall. I'm pleased to be here, and I know we'll all get along fine." He could tell from the guarded expressions on the faces behind her, especially Hagrid's, that they were not going to get along fine, but that everyone had, for the moment, agreed to follow McGonagall's lead. He felt pressure in the sealed places in his brain, pressure behind the locked doors.

"I know you're all very busy getting ready for the students to arrive tomorrow, and I don't want to waste any of your precious time. I'd like to have our first staff meeting, a brief one, right after dinner. Professor McGonagall, would you please show Professor Carrow and Professor Carrow to their rooms and explain tomorrow's duties to them. I'd like to go upstairs. I'll be in my office if anyone needs me."

McGonagall nodded, knowing what he wanted in the office. She and the other teachers dispersed, and Snape climbed slowly to the seventh floor, relieved that it had been easier than he'd feared.

"Password," said the gargoyle.

Snape stopped. He'd never heard the gargoyle speak before. "I'm the Headmaster," he said.

"Set the password," responded the gargoyle.

"Oh. Sorry. The password is…" Snape wanted something Dumbledorish, but he was still locked tightly down, and no thought would come. "The password is Dumbledore," he said finally, resolving to change it to something less obvious when he had the chance. The gargoyle staircase opened and he went up to his office. The pressure in his head was building. He needed to be alone.

It hadn't changed. The desk, the chairs, the strange instruments and contraptions on the tables. It was as if Dumbledore might walk back in at any moment. Except that Dumbledore slumbered in his portrait behind the desk. Snape walked to the desk. With it between them, it was as if the portrait was the headmaster behind his desk and Snape still the teacher.

"Ah," said Dumbledore, blinking his eyes open. "There you are. And about time, too."

"I got here as quickly as was possible."

Dumbledore cocked his head at Snape's tone. "Dear me, Severus, I was not blaming you. You have been doing an excellent job. Excellent."

"Yes," Snape echoed dully. "Excellent." His head throbbed with the pressure.

"But Severus, you should be pleased, proud of what you have accomplished. You have taken the most important step toward protecting the school, the staff, and the students. You have removed every barrier, overcome every obstacle…"

"One of those obstacles was Rufus Scrimgeour."

"I am sorry to hear that," said the portrait of Dumbledore.

"I'm sure you are." The pulse in Snape's temples was like a drumbeat.

"He was a good man. He had his faults of course…"

"The Dark Lord gave me the privilege of starting. I used a Cruciatus curse on him."

"You did what you had to do."

The dam burst. "I did what you made me do!" Snape screamed, and around him astrolabes and globes swept to the floor in a great crashing of copper and crystal. "I watched Charity beg for help, and didn't lift a finger!" Books hurled against the walls and shattered two mirrors. "I killed Alastor Moody, did you know that! I laughed when they disgraced his dead body!" Chairs smashed into the fireplace and the door. "I let them take twelve hours to kill Scrimgeour! Twelve hours!" Chandeliers swung wildly, portraits sprang from the walls, windows burst open, twisting their hinges. Snape grabbed the edge of the heavy desk and upended it, lamps and quills scattering on the floor. Kicking a lamp out of the way, he flung open Dumbledore's wine cabinet and began pitching the bottles at the fireplace with every ounce of strength his thin body could muster. Glass shattered, mead splashed, and when the bottles were gone he started on the glasses. By this time he was screaming again, "Murderer! Murderer! You've damned me! Damned me! I hate you! Damned… damned…"

A large hand took the last glass away, and suddenly Snape was sobbing, his body wracked with pain and grief, and for some reason it was quite natural that Hagrid would be there, easing him to the floor and supporting his shoulders. He buried his face in the sleeve of Hagrid's jacket and continued sobbing, his whole body shaking with the force of the thoughts, the feelings, the memories, that exploded through the locks and seals of his mind.

"Thank you, Hagrid," said Dumbledore calmly. "Was the storm audible outside?"

"Could anyone hear him, you mean? No. I didn't catch what was happening 'til I got t' the office door. I sorta got the feeling it might happen, though. Done it before, once or twice. Never quite as bad as this, I reckon."

"He has been under considerable strain."

"Professor Dumbledore, you got a talent for understatement…" Hagrid looked down at Snape, whose trembling was beginning to weaken, who seemed to be relaxing, going more limp. "I guess you better sit down." To Dumbledore he said, "I'd pour him a glass o' firewhisky, but he seems to have done for the entire stock."

"You may repair some of the damage, if you wish, Hagrid. There is no one here to see but myself."

"Just like you, Albus, to forget everyone else!" exclaimed the portrait of Armando Dippet. "My gracious! Is he always that temperamental?"

Dumbledore sighed. "He swings to extremes. It is a problem both of heredity and nurture, though today it is more a reaction to what he has been through these last two months."

Hagrid helped Snape stand, then guided him to an overturned chair, which Hagrid righted before settling Snape into it. He pulled his ever-present pink umbrella out of his pocket and began clearing up the mess, even able to return most of the liquid to repaired bottles. He poured a rather large amount of firewhisky into the glass his presence had spared.

"You drink this now, lad," he told Snape. "It's medicinal."

Snape did as he was told, then leaned back in the chair, breathing quickly and softly. "Hagrid," he gasped finally. "What brought you here?"

"Impending nuclear meltdown," said Hagrid. "Remember, I was there for the first one when you was thirteen. I can read the signs."

"Thank you," Snape said, beginning to recover. "Does anyone else know?"

"It appears not," said Dumbledore, "shielded as you were from the rest by about seven floors of solid masonry. If it were to happen again during the school term, however, up on the seventh floor like this, Gryffindor house would have a field day with the story."

Snape cradled his forehead with a hand. "It won't happen again," he stated.

"I dare say not. You are now at Hogwarts. You are no longer under the daily control of Riddle. You will no longer be forced to watch or participate in torture and murder. You have a place of your own to go to, and others you can turn to for support. Your situation is now utterly different." He nodded to Hagrid, who took the hint and left them alone in the office.

"You're right. I'm sorry."

"No need to be sorry. I imagine it was even therapeutic. Did you know that all this past month, Harry Potter and his two closest friends have been at 12 Grimmauld Place? Phineas has told me all about it."


	62. Chapter 62 – The Conspiracy of the Sword

**What of My Soul, Dumbledore?: The Conspiracy of the Sword**

Shifting the topic from himself to more tactical matters helped Snape focus through his stress and exhaustion, and he stirred with more interest now. "Yes, and we've been watching it. There are people out there every day, but so far Potter's been careful and they've seen nothing. It's because he set off the Taboo."

"What Taboo would that be?" Dumbledore asked.

"The Ministry's put a Taboo on saying the Dark Lord's name. It was picked up the first night. Quite ingenious, really. I couldn't imagine Potter going for any time at all without using the name in conversation with his friends."

"It is indeed ingenious. I, however, have even more information about what is going on inside. Phineas? Phineas!" The portrait of Phineas Nigellus did not stir. Dumbledore looked over his spectacles at Snape. "He is taking advantage of the fact that he can ignore me now that we have a headmaster. Do you think you might wake him, Severus?"

"Eh, certainly. Excuse me, Headmaster Nigellus. Could we… could I have a word with you?"

Nigellus shifted and blinked his eyes. "What a polite young man!" he exclaimed. "Why weren't you ever that polite to me, Albus?"

"I suppose because we were both of an age to call each other Phineas and Albus. Severus here is only thirty-seven. Why, you must be the youngest headmaster in… in… Phineas, was there ever a younger headmaster?"

Nigellus chose to ignore the question since Snape did not ask it. "What did you wish to ask me, young man?"

"You've been in contact with the Black residence, haven't you? What's Harry Potter doing?"

Puffing out his chest with importance, Nigellus said, "They chased the werewolf away, and they are trying to get into the Ministry of Magic. They are not having great success."

"The Ministry of Magic!" Snape exclaimed. "Are they crazy? And what werewolf? Greyback?"

"Well now," Nigellus admitted, "I don't hear everything. I'm in the one bedroom, and I do visit the other portraits in different parts of the house from time to time, but they spend a lot of time in the kitchen with the house-elf – more like servants themselves, really – so I don't get everything. They were talking about a locket in Regulus's bedroom the day after they got there, but then they went downstairs and to the kitchen. The werewolf came on the fifth. They talked in the kitchen, then there was a bang, and the werewolf stalked out. He was angry about something. Yes, and the house-elf was gone for three days, and after he came back they started trying to find a way into the Ministry. The house-elf has gone crazy, by the way. He's cleaning everything, and he's changed into a new towel."

Dumbledore chuckled. "That sounds like a happy house-elf. Harry and Kreacher, together at last. I wonder what happened. It also sounds more like the werewolf was Remus Lupin."

"Well, at least it's something," said Snape. To Nigellus he said, "Please keep me posted if anything happens. It could be important."

Nigellus agreed and immediately left for his portrait in Grimmauld Place.

"A lot is going to change," Snape said to Dumbledore after a moment. "The new laws…"

"Yes, Minerva has told me. She has been quite incensed about it. What will the Ministry do with Hogwarts now?"

"Dolores Umbridge has already started. She wants me to sack people, McGonagall, Flitwick, and Hagrid for example. I threw the charter in her face and hid behind the Board of Governors. Oh, and we have two Death Eaters on staff. Amycus and Alecto Carrow. Amycus is Dark Arts, and Alecto is Muggle Studies. The Dark Lord warned them to start out smoothly and not cause trouble, at least at first. He's been preoccupied with something, and I had the feeling he was hinting that he was going somewhere and didn't want his plans disturbed by petty problems."

"Hmm," said Dumbledore. "Now where would Riddle go?"

They talked for a couple of hours more, and then Snape made his way downstairs to the Great Hall for dinner. He felt exhausted, physically, mentally, and emotionally. This meeting was going to be a short one.

In the Great Hall, no one had taken a seat. Snape immediately decided to follow Dumbledore's old custom of not sitting at the high table when school was out of session. Instead they sat around a table in the middle of the Hall McGonagall at Snape's right, and the Carrows on his left – where he could control them better.

Food came first; the meeting was after dinner. The staff was reserved and quiet until Alecto tried to say something about the new laws. Snape stopped her. "We do not discuss business during a meal," he said. "That's for later." That broke the ice a little and the teachers chatted with each other about other things.

"You have a strange way of taking charge," Alecto said to Snape in a low voice.

"You need to learn to adapt to different situations," Snape replied, noting that McGonagall had not missed the exchange.

Dinner over, McGonagall, as Deputy Headmistress, called the meeting to order with a tap of her spoon against her glass. Everyone was silent at once. She looked at Snape. "Headmaster?" she said.

Snape was immensely grateful to his old colleague for treating this whole situation as if it were even marginally normal. The last time he'd seen Flitwick, he'd stunned him. McGonagall had watched him flee the school in the company of Draco Malfoy and a party of Death Eaters. Every one of them had heard Potter's story of how he'd murdered Albus Dumbledore. McGonagall did have the word of Dumbledore's portrait that he, Snape, was on the side of the angels, but there was also so much for her to be angry at.

"First, I have introduced them already, but I should like again to present the newest members of our staff. Amycus Carrow has a very well-grounded practical experience in the Dark Arts, and will be able to impart that experience with considerable success to our students. Alecto has been specifically suggested as someone particularly suited to implementing the new Muggle Studies curriculum created by the Ministry of Magic and approved by the Board of Governors. They both come recommended at the highest level, and I know everyone here will do everything possible to make them feel welcome at Hogwarts." Snape started the polite little round of applause, and the others joined him – politely. Amycus and Alecto looked astounded. It was a milieu outside their experience.

_And of course, neither of you has the slightest clue that I just warned the whole staff that Amycus is an active Death Eater who is going to try to recruit the students, or that Alecto is a muggle-hater. And that you are both here because the Dark Lord wants you here._

"I wish," Snape continued, "that I could have been here earlier. Arriving the day before the students hardly gives us any time, but I am confident that you do not need my supervision to accomplish the routine business of preparing for the coming year. Everything tomorrow will be run according to long-standing tradition."

The teachers nodded, for now Snape had told them he would not be watching them every minute, and he did not come to make drastic changes.

"One thing that will make a dramatic difference is the change in the student body. All of our former muggle-born students will no longer attend Hogwarts. This is in compliance with the new laws regarding the restriction of magic. In their place we will receive all the pureblood, half-blood, and part-blood students who previously were home schooled or attended other schools. In fact, it is apparent that the size of the school will increase dramatically from its previous number of two hundred eighty students to four hundred – Professor McGonagall, do you have an exact number?"

"Four hundred thirty-nine," stated McGonagall crisply. The teachers shifted and looked at each other in dismay.

"All of these new students, regardless of age and year, will have to be sorted. Heads of houses, have you prepared extension spells for the dormitories and common rooms? The bathrooms and lavatories?" They nodded. Snape did not probe or question, assuming they told the truth.

"The bad news is that staffing will not increase. I have discussed it with the Board of Governors and they have decided that, despite the Ministry's desire to supplement staffing, it would be less disruptive if the changes were implemented by a staff that is experienced and used to working together." And the translation of this was that no Ministry watchdogs would be spying on the staff. They had to deal with the Carrows, but not with anyone else.

"Your class sizes and your workload will increase. Extracurricular supervisory duties will increase. I apologize, but it can't be helped. I guess that's all I have to say. A lot of the future is a question mark. Some of that will be resolved tomorrow when we see who the train brings us. Any questions?"

Slughorn raised a hand. It was strange for Snape to have his old Potions teacher deferring to him. It was strange to have any of them deferring to him, but especially Slughorn, Flitwick, and McGonagall, who had watched him being sorted when he was eleven years old. It was like supervising your parents.

"Headmaster," said Slughorn, "I don't have any of my supplies. We submitted the orders at the beginning of August, but nothing's here yet."

Snape turned to McGonagall. "We sent them in as usual," she said, "and the orders came back with instructions to resubmit them on Ministry requisition forms. They want to examine everything we order. I've tried to get them to hurry. No one listens to me."

"I'll contact the Ministry myself, first thing in the morning. Have contingency plans ready, though. It's Potions that's affected the most. Can you give me a list of the ten things that have highest priority? I can make a special plea for those." Snape looked around. There were no other questions.

"Good. Tomorrow is our last chance to relax until the Christmas break. Make the most of it. Be at your stations by six-thirty. When the Express hits Hogsmeade, fun and games are over."

As they walked together to the marble staircase, McGonagall said, "Nicely done. You can be almost personable when you try. How long d'ye think the honeymoon will last?"

"I honestly don't know," said Snape. "With all the new laws and the Ministry breathing down my neck. If I make it through the school year at all, I'll be extremely grateful."

_Monday, September 1, 1997_

Breakfast was served late the following morning to allow the staff one more chance to sleep in before the Christmas break. Snape was up earlier, talking by Floo network with the supply liaison at the Ministry, trying to get Slughorn's Potions ingredients. He was bounced from clerk to clerk for nearly an hour before he finally got someone who promised to get back to him with a report. It was the best that could be done for the moment.

Snape did have the feeling that those he spoke to were treating him with… not respect, exactly, but a certain respectful fear, as if they knew by whose order he was at Hogwarts and passed him from colleague to colleague more because none of them wanted to be the one responsible for telling him 'no' than for any other reason.

_Great! Now it's common knowledge that I'm a Death Eater and work for the Dark Lord. If Potter ever manages to defeat the Dark Lord, I'd better be as close to Dumbledore's portrait as I can get, or I'm going to be lynched._

Most of the staff had started breakfast by the time Snape came down. They were scattered in small groups around the Hall rather than at one table, but that was normal. Snape took a seat at what was usually the Slytherin table and helped himself to toast, kipper, and coffee.

Alecto slid onto the bench next to Snape, her brother beside her. "When are you going to whip these muggle-lovers into line, Snape? You're supposed to be in charge here."

Snape looked around the Hall. "Everyone seems to be doing exactly what they're supposed to be doing. I'd say they were in line and I am in charge. Would you kindly tell me who has been talking to you about loving muggles?"

"They taught muggle-borns!" Alecto spat out. "They're contaminated!"

"I shall inform the Dark Lord you question his decision. I'm sure he'll be pleased to have your opinion on the subject."

Alecto drew back, her eyes wide. Amycus leaned forward. "She's not questioning anything, Snape. Why'd you say a thing like that?"

Snape turned to face both of them. "This is an unfamiliar world to you, and you'd better learn the rules. If you want to undermine the Dark Lord's plans, just keep on doing what you're doing." He could see that most of the teachers in the Hall were now surreptitiously watching the three of them, but they were isolated enough on the Slytherin side of the Hall that no one would be able to hear.

"First," Snape continued, "I am Headmaster of Hogwarts. You will call me Headmaster, or sir, at all times. The Dark Lord has placed me in charge. If you don't treat me with respect, the others will doubt my authority, and he will not be pleased with you. Second, up until two months ago, I taught muggle-borns. Am I contaminated? He clearly considers me the best choice for the job or he would have picked someone else. Do you want to tell the Dark Lord he made a mistake?"

Both Alecto and Amycus now looked slightly cowed.

"We've been here less than twenty-four hours," went on Snape. "You know nothing of the school. Didn't Bella teach you anything? You have to lay the groundwork for a successful operation. The first step is to establish your own credentials. You will call everyone here Professor, or Madam, and by four o'clock I want to know what you intend to do in every class you have scheduled for the rest of the week. I want to know that you actually opened and looked at the texts you're supposed to be teaching from."

"Excuse me, Headmaster." McGonagall had approached them quietly, unnoticed, from behind Alecto and Amycus. "If it's convenient for you, I am prepared to go over the lists of the incoming students and brief you on all the preparations that have been made. Perhaps after breakfast?"

"I think I'm finished here, Professor McGonagall. If you like, I can come now." Snape nodded to the Carrows. "Professor. Professor. Thank you for your company." He rose and left the Hall with McGonagall, heading up to her office on the first floor.

During the inspection of the students' files, McGonagall's behavior was professional but cool. _How much of that conversation did she overhear, I wonder,_ Snape thought, _and did it make her trust me less rather than more?_

There were so many students who could not return. Just among the seventh years there were Hermione Granger (of course), Hannah Abbot, Justin Finch-Fletchley, Sally Anne Perks, Terry Boot, Kevin Entwhistle, Lisa Turpin… Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw were the hardest hit. Interesting, too, that most of the newcomers were purebloods or half-bloods with old wizarding names. The thought crossed his mind that their families had kept them out of Hogwarts for the same blood purity reasons that inspired Umbridge and the Dark Lord. The school was turning into quite a little hothouse of the wizarding elite. _Who'll they go after next? Half-bloods like me? Hagrid and I are the only half-bloods on the staff._

Snape spent the afternoon arguing with the Ministry, reviewing the events of July and August with Dumbledore, and revising the Carrows' lesson plans. At six-thirty he went down to join the others in the final preparations for the arrival of the Hogwarts Express.

The welcoming feast was a nightmare. To begin with, for the first time in its hundred year history, the Hogwarts Express left King's Cross station nearly an hour late. The arrival of so many students, almost fifty percent of whom had never been in a muggle train station before, or through the barrier to Platform 9 3/4, or on a train, had resulted in complete chaos and the need for the Ministry to alter the memories of one hundred seventeen muggles.

Next, all of these new students had to cross the lake on boats to be given the Secret, for while Hogwarts was not exactly protected by a Fidelius Charm, its defenses were similar. The boats had to make the trip five times.

Needless to say, the Sorting also took nearly five times as long, though Snape was beginning to get the feeling that the Sorting Hat toward the end started calling out "Slytherin, Slytherin, Slytherin… just to get the whole business over with. Slytherin house ended up twice as big as any of the others, and they had to magic in another table to go across the rear of the hall. Slughorn was having fits trying to make his extending spells more powerful, and the house-elves insisted that they really had run out of treacle tart, and please give them more advance warning in the future.

Snape kept his welcoming speech to the bare minimum. Most of the students already knew of his appointment since it had been in that morning's _Daily Prophet._ There were cheers from Slytherin, boos from Gryffindor, and polite neutrality from Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff. Snape ignored them all, introduced the Carrows, set out the most basic of the rules, and dismissed everyone to their houses. It was ten minutes before midnight.

Up in his office, the portrait of Dumbledore was considerate enough to allow Snape to pour himself a goblet of mead and sit comfortably before his fire for a grand total of fifty-seven seconds before announcing, "Phineas has been sacked, you know. Bagged. Pouched."

"Poached?" said Snape.

"No. Pouched. Locked in a lady's reticule."

"The mudblood," broke in Nigellus, "has placed me in her purse."

"Don't say mudblood," warned Dumbledore.

"You no longer give me orders," Nigellus replied.

"Don't say mudblood, please," said Snape. "I presume you're speaking of the Granger girl and your portrait in Grimmauld Place. However could she put a portrait into a handbag?"

"She has Extended it. It is horrible what that poor picture is forced to cohabit with – books, clothing, food – I shudder at the thought of returning."

"Wait a minute. This doesn't make sense. Why would she put your picture into her handbag?"

"She thinks she is being clever," Nigellus sniffed. "They read in the _Prophet_ that you'd been named Headmaster, and they want to prevent my overhearing them and reporting back to you."

"Did it work?" Snape asked.

"After a fashion. I cannot see them, but I can hear them every time she opens the bag. When she put me in, she tossed the bag aside without latching it properly. I have actually learned more in the past couple of hours than in all of last month because I am now with them in the kitchen."

There was a long pause. "And…" Snape prompted at last.

Nigellus sniffed again. "You wish me to tell you?"

"Of course," said Snape. "Do go on."

"They have been observing the entrance to the Ministry for the past month, collecting information so that when they go inside, they won't be detected. They plan to use Polyjuice Potion. They are after the Umbridge woman, or rather they are after something she possesses. They plan to go tomorrow. There is something wrong with the Potter boy, who left at one point. The others followed him and they were away from the kitchen for a while. It had something to do with the scar he bears."

Snape looked at the portrait of Dumbledore. "What can we do?" he asked.

"Nothing," said Dumbledore. "Nigellus cannot warn them; they would assume he came from you. Neither you nor I can warn them. Naturally we cannot warn the Ministry, nor do we have any means to warn the Order that would not be counterproductive. We must wait and see what happens. Phineas, yesterday you said they spoke of a locket in Regulus's bedroom. I know of a locket, but Harry already has it. What were they talking about?"

Nigellus thought for a moment. "It made very little sense. There was something about a basin in a cave, and the initials R.A.B. – which was my young kinsman Regulus – and finding a locket that could not be opened, but they threw it away – Oh, but they think that what the Umbridge woman has cannot be opened either! Maybe they think it is the locket they are seeking."

"It cannot be," Dumbledore repeated. "Harry already has that locket."

They were silent. Then Dumbledore turned to Snape. "R.A.B.," he said softly. "Severus, how did Regulus Black die?"

Snape was surprised by the question. "We didn't know. One day he was there, and then he was gone. The Dark Lord summoned him, and there was no response. We always assumed he'd been caught and killed by… by the Order. To be honest, it was one of the reasons I accepted the story that Sirius had betrayed Lily and James – because he went over to the Dark Lord's side after the Order killed his brother."

"No, Sirius always thought Riddle had Regulus killed. Strange. And they know of Regulus because of R.A.B., which has something to do with the locket."

"Albus," Nigellus said, "the house-elf started wearing a locket right after the Potter boy arrived."

"Really!" exclaimed Dumbledore. "What did it look like?"

"Gold. Not very valuable. Rather plain… I think it was in the house long ago…"

"I am a fool," said Dumbledore. "Of course, that is understandable, since I had just drunk a basin full of poison. It was not the same locket. Regulus must have somehow switched them and then disappeared. The real one was at Grimmauld Place all these years. How on earth might Umbridge have gotten it?"

"Mundungus Fletcher," said Snape with a sigh. "He robbed the house after Sirius died, remember? When he sold that Death Eater a box with a Black emblem and Bella nearly strung the poor man up by his thumbs?"

"Ah, yes." Dumbledore paused. "You know, this means that we want Harry to get into the Ministry and take the locket back. It will be an excellent thing if he achieves it."

"Headmaster Nigellus," Snape asked the portrait. "Would you continue to find out as much as you can about what Potter and his friends are doing? I know it might conflict with your own sentiments…"

"Conflict with my own sentiments!" Nigellus exclaimed. "I know you cannot possibly understand all of this, young man, because you are yourself a poor, benighted half-blood – though from what I hear, of respectable provincial wizarding stock – but the wizarding world is falling into the hands of an upstart half-blood madman spawned in the despicable, ignorant, lunatic house of Gaunt – a blight on us all, that the blood of Salazar Slytherin should have sunk so low – and I for one consider it my duty to help expunge him from the pages of history."

Snape froze in shock, but Dumbledore chuckled. "Phineas can talk like that," he said, "because he has been dead for more than seventy years. It is easy to be brave when one cannot be harmed."

"Humph!" said Nigellus, and left his portrait to stand watch in Grimmauld Place.

Thus it was that the following morning, as staff and students breakfasted and then made their way to the first classes of the school year, the little group of headmasters in the tower office followed the exploits of the Potter gang.

"They have the Polyjuice Potion and the Invisibility Cloak," Nigellus reported, "but what in the name of Merlin are Decoy Detonators, Puking Pastilles, Nosebleed Nougat, and Extendable Ears?"

Dumbledore laughed heartily, and even Snape smiled. "Fred and George Weasley," Snape said, though that was hardly an explanation.

Dumbledore sobered. "That was unfortunate about George Weasley," he said, "though I know that you did not mean to do it."

Snape was horrified. "What did I do to George Weasley?" he demanded.

"Oh, my. I thought you knew. He was one of the many Potters. It seems you cut his ear off."

"Great," said Snape. "Something else to add to my load of crimes. How long and how heavy will the chains be before you're done?"

"I beg your pardon, Severus."

"Jacob Marley," said Snape, and declined to explain further.

Nigellus told them when Granger, looking now like another witch, fed Puking Pastilles to a small wizard, and when Granger gave larger robes to Potter so that he could transform with his Polyjuice Potion, too. And even the enchanted bag could not entirely mask the sound of toilets flushing as Granger entered the Ministry.

"You should know," said Dumbledore, "that Headmistress Dilys Derwent has a portrait in the Ministry of Magic, as does Everard over there."

At Snape's request, both hurried to the Ministry to see if they could discover what was happening to Harry Potter.

Derwent was back in a few minutes. "Everard is keeping an eye out, but we really don't know who to watch. They're Polyjuiced, and we don't know who they've Polyjuiced into. It could be anyone. Everard is going to visit Faris Spavin. He has a portrait in the waiting room outside Umbridge's office as well as the Minister's antechamber. Maybe Everard can see them go into her office."

They waited. It seemed an eternity, but was really only about half an hour. Then Everard returned, rather precipitously. "Explosions!" he yelled as he raced into his frame. "Oh my goodness! I saw the Invisibility Cloak! Or rather I didn't see it! You know what I mean! He stole her peephole!"

"Who was he, Everard?" Derwent asked.

"Don't know. He took off the cloak while he searched the office. Tall, very tall, strong, bearded…" He described the Ministry official whose form concealed what they all knew was Harry Potter. The two returned to the Ministry.

"Well," said Snape. "I confess to being impressed. He got to her office. That is something."

"I wonder," mused Dumbledore, "what Everard meant by 'stealing her peephole.' It is an odd expression."

Snape looked up, fighting to keep his emotions down. Dumbledore saw this and held up a hand. "There is grief here, Severus, is there not? Do not hide it from me. Do not hide it from yourself. In this office, you are lord. Everything is allowed."

Turning to the window to look down on the lake for a moment, Snape let his mind fill with the memory of Alastor Moody. After several minutes he was able to control his voice, and not because he had locked the moment away. He held Moody in front of his mental vision.

"After Moody… died… the Dark Lord took his enchanted eye from its socket. I learned later that he'd given it to Umbridge in reward for her zeal, and she used it to spy on her secretary."

"And Harry has taken it back. That was well done."

There were a few more minutes of waiting, and then the fat hit the fire, the two spying wizards bouncing in and out of their portraits to report.

"Something's happening in the criminal court area!"

"There's an order to lock down the main entrance!"

"Fight in the Atrium! Fight in the Atrium!"

Derwent brought the last report. "Albert Runcorn just helped nearly a dozen accused muggle-borns escape from the Ministry through the Atrium itself!"

"Excellent!" cried Dumbledore. "Were there any other odd pureblood wizards with him?"

"Mafalda Hopkirk and Reg Cattermole."

"There you are, Severus! They got in, and they have escaped! Well done, Harry! Well done!"

Dumbledore's joy was interrupted by the sudden reappearance of Phineas Nigellus, who was breathing hard. "Don't ever… Don't ever ask me…" he gasped. "Albus, it was never this chaotic while you were headmaster. This boy has got to go."

"This boy, Phineas, is living in dangerous times. Do not blame him for the times. It is not Severus's fault."

Nigellus didn't reply for a moment. When he'd recovered somewhat, he told them, "They've left the Black home. They're on the run."

"How?" Snape exclaimed. "How do you know?"

"We apparated, and then suddenly, practically in the middle of the apparation, the mud… the Granger girl switched direction. Then, a few minutes after we stopped, someone opened her bag and summoned Essence of Dittany."

Snape paled. "Essence of Dittany is to stop copious bleeding and mend torn tissue," he said. "Someone's been injured."

"Where are they?" Dumbledore asked Nigellus.

Forgetting that he was not obeying Dumbledore anymore, Phineas Nigellus looked around at the attentive portraits and the Headmaster. "I do not know," he said. "Some place quiet. Very quiet. Like a forest or a moor. No people at all."

They all were silent, and then Snape looked at an antique clock on the mantelpiece. "It's lunchtime," he said wearily. "I'm supposed to go down and find out how the morning classes went." He rose and, bracing himself for the transition between the world of his office and the world of the school, he crossed to the door and left.

On his way down, Snape pondered the strange alteration in his existence. Dumbledore had always, almost always, kept him in the dark about his plans. Now he, Snape, had access to information beyond his wildest dreams. No wonder Dumbledore had spent so much time secluded in his office, leaving the running of the school to McGonagall! The secrets of Ministry and home were open to him as long as someone there had a portrait of a former headmaster. How many wizards today guarded a secret portrait of Dumbledore hidden behind…

Snape stopped. It could not be. It was impossible. He turned and sprinted back up the stairs and into the office, quivering with the idea. The portrait of Dumbledore was so surprised that he didn't even pretend to be sleeping.

"Where can you go?" Snape demanded.

"I do not know, Severus. I have never been a dead portrait before, and no one has yet asked me to try going anywhere. Is there somewhere you want me to go?"

"Not yet," said Snape, "but does it work with chocolate frog cards?"

"I do not know." Dumbledore looked around. "Very few headmasters ever made it onto a card, maybe none, in fact. Armando! Armando you are on a Famous Wizard Card, are you not? Can you visit your cards?"

Headmaster Dippet yawned and stretched. "Of course I can," he said grumpily. "How do you think I keep up with the antics of my great-grandchildren?"

"Well, there you have it, Severus. I suppose I can."

"What a minute!" Nigellus was awake and alert. "Why am I not on one of these cards! I'm famous!"

Dumbledore glanced at Snape. "I think I shall let you answer that one," he said.

"It's very simple, Headmaster Nigellus," Snape replied, glaring at Dumbledore. "The cards aren't really a catalog of fame or importance. They're for children. Half of them are popular singers and Quidditch players. The only reason Professor Dumbledore is on one is because the children know him personally from school."

Nigellus seemed mollified. "Thank you, Severus," said Dumbledore, but his heart was clearly not in it.

Snape went back downstairs and into the Great Hall. The teachers were there, arrayed down the high table as they had been at the feast the night before, as they would be every day until Christmas. Flanking the center chair were McGonagall on the right and Alecto Carrow on the left. Snape approached the table. This had to be handled carefully. At any moment the Carrows could become dangerous if the Dark Lord's mood swung their way.

"Ah, Professor Carrow," he said, pointedly ignoring McGonagall. "May I speak with you for a moment? I have need of your advice." He circled the table and led her into the little room off the dais.

"What do you want, Snape?" Alecto asked as the door closed behind them. Snape drew himself up and simply looked at her, unwavering, until she dropped her gaze. "How can I help you, Headmaster," Alecto said, a note of resentment in her voice.

"You and Amycus are unfamiliar with custom here. You should probably ask if you're uncertain about something. We're supposed to be trying to win support for the Dark Lord, not alienate people. I know you didn't mean to…"

"What did I do now?"

"The seat to the left of the Headmaster is reserved for the senior Head of house. That's Professor Flitwick. Flitwick taught Charms when the Dark Lord was at Hogwarts, and may have influence…"

"The Dark Lord went here?"

_Of course_, Snape reminded himself. _Very few of the lower level Death Eaters know anything of the Dark Lord's past. Mulciber and Avery know – their fathers were at Hogwarts with him. But not Macnair, or the Carrows…_

"This is what I mean, Professor Carrow. Until you learn the lay of the land, there are pitfalls you can only avoid by being cautious. I, for one, would hesitate to show disrespect to Professor Flitwick without knowing the Dark Lord's will in the matter."

Alecto left first. Without drawing attention to herself, she joined her brother further down the table. Only then did Snape leave the room and take his place in the center chair, beckoning Flitwick to his side. Aside from the routine questions about how the morning had gone, however, they didn't talk. Snape didn't want Alecto to think he'd made the switch so that he could share confidences with Flitwick.

The Headmaster's office was a haven, but the Hall and the Staff Room were a maze of snares and quicksand. A long road stretched ahead of him, and Snape needed to tread carefully.

The afternoon was spent in a headmasters' conference.

"They are camping," was the first thing Dumbledore told Snape when he reentered the office. "Phineas heard them take a tent out of the bag." They waited, but there was no more information. In fact, though they didn't know it at the time, there would be almost no information about Potter other than the daily stowing and unpacking of the tent for several weeks.

That same afternoon, Dumbledore tried his first foray into a Famous Wizard card. He was back almost immediately. "The inside of a footlocker," he explained. "I could not even tell where, though I suspect one of the houses of Hogwarts."

A quick succession of similar trips earned mediocre results. Most of the chocolate frog cards were in desk drawers, photo albums, or shoe boxes. Occasionally they were on display in a bedroom. After many tries, Dumbledore returned from one excursion looking concerned.

"The Creeveys are in hiding," he told Snape. "The card belongs to Dennis, and he carries me in his pocket. They were ordered to report to the Ministry, and Colin and Dennis have taken their family into hiding."

As it turned out, after many more tries, a significant number of the students at Hogwarts carried Dumbledore's Famous Wizard card in their pockets. It was an encouraging discovery. Snape had no intention of doing anything at the moment, but at least they could get some idea of which and how many students were still loyal, in their own fashion, to Dumbledore.

Snape went to bed that night after a tiring day. A routine day, but a tiring one. The headmasters had learned nothing more about Potter and his friends.

Within a very short time, Snape realized that removing the muggle-borns from Hogwarts was probably a good idea. Alecto's curriculum in Muggle Studies turned out to be a hate-filled maligning of everything the muggle world had to offer, and Snape couldn't stop her, since the curriculum was approved by the Ministry. The only thing he could do was keep her from using the term 'mudblood' in class.

"Why can't I say 'mudblood?' It's what they are!"

Snape sighed. "Alecto, we are trying to convince the undecided of the wizarding world that these restrictions against muggle-borns are based on fact and on science. In order to do that, we must present our argument in a dispassionate and scientific way, with rhetoric devoid of the trappings of prejudice or racism. It must be presented as a logical, scientific position. Saying 'mudblood' undermines our efforts."

Alecto shrugged, and Snape doubted she understood words like 'dispassionate' and 'rhetoric.' "All right," she said, "but they're still mudbloods."

_And why_, Snape thought later, _did I do that? Don't I want to undermine our efforts?_ And yet the greater part of himself was repulsed both by the word and its memories of Lily's shocked face, and by the idea that he was expected to drive a wedge between the supporters of the Dark Lord and those who would oppose him given the chance. Wasn't it good to have a supply of undecideds? Especially since now, with the Dark Lord in ascendance, to be undecided really meant to be on Dumbledore's side?

Amycus, meanwhile, was running into the brick wall of McGonagall, Flitwick, and Sprout.

"He's handing out detention right and left!" McGonagall was pacing Snape's office in high dudgeon. "Not just writing lines or cleaning desks, but canings! And for things he should simply be deducting points for, if anything. Gareth Armitage was given detention because he couldn't Imperius Florence Murphy on the first try! Imaging punishing students for not casting Unforgivable Curses!"

"I'll talk to him, Professor McGonagall."

"You had better! You had better start acting like the headmaster of this school instead of letting those two run roughshod over it." She nodded towards Dumbledore's portrait. "I know he and Alastor thought you were in their camp, but Albus would trust a ferret in a hen house, and I haven't heard anything from Alastor since the beginning of July. So I'll reserve my judgment until I see a bit of action."

"Thank you, Professor McGonagall. I shall take your remarks under consideration."

"Under consideration!" McGonagall approached Snape, trying to meet his eyes. "We used to have a wee bit more of a personal understanding than you just taking my remarks under consideration. Have ye lost your heart, lad? Have ye given them your soul?"

Snape did not, could not, reply. McGonagall marched to the door, turning to face him with her hand on the handle. "I'll no be giving Gryffindor students over to the mercy of Amycus Carrow. If you can't stand up to him like a man, I'll look for help elsewhere." For a moment she seemed to melt. "Och, Severus, what path have ye chosen to walk down? Can ye no turn around and choose another?" Then she steeled herself. "I'll fight ye, ye know. For the students' sake, I'll fight ye. If they take Hogwarts, it'll be over my dead body."

Snape watched her stomp away, and made no effort to call her back.

In the days that followed, Snape was faced with new challenges. These were generally of an administrative nature – the imbalance of class sizes, scheduling conflicts, unstable extending spells that were trying to fit eight students into dormitories meant for five – and with McGonagall teaching a full load of Transfiguration courses, it all fell on Snape.

After two weeks, most of the problems of opening school had been straightened out, and Snape decided to pay a visit to the Ministry of Magic to make a more immediate and personal plea for Slughorn's still missing supplies. On the way he stopped at headquarters.

"I'd like a meeting with the Dark Lord," he told the clerk as he signed in. "Can I do that here, or do I need to go to Wiltshire?"

The clerk looked nervous. "He's not seeing anyone, sir. He hasn't granted an interview since the last week in August. I'm sorry… I…"

"That's all right," Snape reassured him. "I can be patient."

"Well look who's here!" exclaimed a familiar voice, and Snape turned, his face already set into an artificial smile (more of a grimace, really) to greet Bella.

"A pleasure, as always, Mrs. Lestrange."

"I want to talk to you, Snape. It's about Alecto and Amycus. I hear you're restricting their actions and authority."

"I wasn't aware they had any authority outside the classroom, and I have been acquainting them with normal school procedures."

"Well, you need to give them more room, more scope. They have to be able to impose the Dark Lord's will…"

"How modest of you, Bella, to be willing to accept the menial role of messenger boy."

Bella colored, her face flushing a dangerous red. "Watch your mouth, puppy dog. I'm giving you orders."

"You don't give me orders. Hogwarts isn't Operations, and you're not part of its chain of command. The Dark Lord gives me orders."

"I'd think twice before taking that tone with me," Bella retorted. "As close as I am to the Dark Lord…"

"When was the last time you spoke to him, Bella?" Snape was pleased at the confusion on her face. Clearly she hadn't seen the Dark Lord since the end of August either.

"I know his mind," she countered. "I know his will."

"Can you stand here," Snape asked, his voice soft and threatening, "and tell me that you're relaying the Dark Lord's exact instructions? Because the first time I speak with him, I shall remember to ask. And if he finds out you're using his name to feather your own nest…" Snape didn't finish the sentence. Bella could work that out on her own.

Bella glared, but backed down. "Have a nice year at Hogwarts, puppy dog," she said as she walked away, down the corridor that led to Operations.

_Why is the Dark Lord missing?_ Snape thought as he left headquarters and found a secluded spot from which to apparate to the Ministry in London. _It isn't like him to leave things to run themselves. Gives too much leeway to the mice._

Solomon Whitgift of Personnel Administration and Supply was waiting to greet Snape at the public entrance to the Ministry of Magic. It had changed – the telephone booth was gone. Snape looked around as he shook Whitgift's extended hand and noticed unusual numbers of people heading down two flights of stairs to visit what his muggle father had called 'public conveniences,' and for some reason no one was coming back up. "You've remodeled," he commented to Whitgift.

"Had to expand the entrance," said Whitgift apologetically. "They've restricted Floo entry to the upper echelon, and we needed something that could accommodate more people."

When Snape entered with the token Whitgift gave him and saw that the Ministry workers were required to flush themselves through toilets to get inside, he knew at once whose idea it was. _The Dark Lord does have a rather pedestrian sense of humor. There are more subtle ways to humiliate your fallen enemies, but I doubt he could think of them. A little ham-handed for my taste._ Snape suddenly realized he was thinking highly disparaging thoughts about the Dark Lord. _Is that what happens when he leaves us? We start chipping away at the bars? Or is it the influence of Dumbledore and Nigellus? I need to be more careful about my thoughts._

Snape spent a very unsatisfactory hour going from desk to desk and office to office trying to break the supply logjam. He did finally get the release forms for the animal parts by threatening to leave several cases of eyes in the Ministry to putrefy. The herbs and minerals were still on hold.

As he was leaving, he was hailed from across the Atrium. "Headmaster," the man called. "I'm so glad I caught you. I'm Forbes from Law Enforcement – Deeds and Wills. I'm sorry to trouble you, but we need to do some more tests on that sword."

xxxxxxxxxx

"He's off somewhere doing something," Snape said that afternoon as he finished telling the portrait of Dumbledore about the Dark Lord's mysterious absence. "I'm sure of it."

"A brilliant deduction," said Dumbledore. "Most people are somewhere doing something."

"You know what I mean." Snape was beginning to realize that being in constant contact with Dumbledore wasn't as wonderful an experience as he'd originally thought. "If even Bella doesn't know where he is, who does?"

"Harry might," said Dumbledore, "but only because you could not teach him occlumency. It was," he confided to the other headmasters, "one of Severus's more spectacular failures."

"It wasn't my fault!" Snape exclaimed. "It was…"

"Of course it wasn't your fault, Severus. Nothing ever is."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"I mean that there are things you chose to do…"

"Name one."

"Very well, the prophecy, for example. You gave Riddle the prophecy."

"I was nineteen. I was being tortured. It wasn't a moment conducive to clairvoyance."

"Granted there were extenuating circumstances…"

Snape changed the subject. "I went to the Ministry, too. It was more obvious there. Thicknesse hasn't had any orders, and since he's Imperiused, he has trouble thinking of things on his own. His underlings don't understand why this is happening, but they're all rushing to fill the void. Supply hadn't completed our order for the Fall Term yet because they're trying to hoard everything they can. Magical Transportation wants to license broomsticks. And Law Enforcement wants to run some tests on Gryffindor's sword. 'More' tests he called it, so I thought it might be something you were already aware of."

"They want to look at the sword again?" said Dumbledore, puzzled now. "I was under the impression they checked it thoroughly in July."

"Why did they do that?" Snape asked, puzzled himself now, too.

"I left it to Harry in my will."

"You can't do that!" Snape almost laughed, he was so surprised. "That's not your personal property."

"I was rather hoping no one would notice," the portrait of Dumbledore sighed. "Harry must have the sword, you see. It is the one sure way of destroying the Horcruxes that I can give him. It is what I used to destroy that ring."

"The one that created this whole mess because you had to go and put it on? That ring?"

"Yes, Severus. That ring. There are other things that must be found. Harry must destroy them, and for that he needs the sword. Unfortunately, everything I left to Harry and his friends was examined by the Ministry, and they would not release the sword. And now that their attention has been drawn to the sword, it will be hard to get it out of Hogwarts and into Harry's hands without endangering you. They will notice it is missing, you see. They already want to look at it again."

"What can we do?" Severus asked, and the question was addressed to all the headmasters, who had shared all of Dumbledore's quests and his explanations to Harry Potter over the last year and more, and who knew as much about Horcruxes by now as anyone living.

It was Headmaster Fortescue who suggested a decoy sword. "A good replica to put in the case if anyone comes, and no one will know the real one is missing," he insisted.

"Don't be a jackass," Nigellus responded. "They want to test it. They've already tested it, and they want to test it again. If they ever test the replica, they'll know it's a fake. It won't work. It will just get poor Severus here into more trouble."

"At least someone," Snape remarked, "is worried about me."

"Still," commented Dippet, "the idea of a decoy could be used in other ways."

They hashed this around for a while. Headmistress Derwent sighed. "It's a pity you couldn't convince them that the sword had to be locked away somewhere safe. Then you could lock up the fake and hide the real one. Everyone would think the real one was out of reach and you could do what you want with it. But what's safer than the Headmaster's office at Hogwarts?"

The utter silence that followed this statement made Derwent look around nervously, as if they might all be laughing at her suggestion. Then Snape and Dumbledore said together, "Gringotts."

The first step was a delaying tactic. Snape got back to Forbes via the Floo network and said that since the time period for probating a will was long past, his request to run more tests on Gryffindor's sword could no longer be considered an extension of the original request, and he had to resubmit it in quadruplicate and present his case before the Board of Governors at their next meeting on October first.

That gave them barely two weeks to work on the replica, a job that Snape had to perform, as he was the only living wizard among them. He was carefully coached by the others, and though there were a few false starts, by September twenty-seventh he had produced a sword that would pass all but the most expert examinations.

"They'll know," Severus said morosely as the headmasters congratulated him on his achievement. "The goblins at Gringotts will know."

"Ah," said Dumbledore smiling, "this is true. But they will consider it a huge joke at your expense and will say nothing."

"Great!" replied Snape. "Every goblin in Gringotts, maybe in all of Britain, will be laughing at me."

"In a good cause, Severus. In a good cause."

Then came part two of the plan. Dumbledore had spent much of the same two weeks flitting through Famous Wizard cards. After four days he'd found the cards belonging to the second of Potter's trios – Neville Longbottom, Ginny Weasley, and Luna Lovegood. He reported back that the three of them were malcontent, convinced that Snape had murdered Dumbledore, and aching to do something to disrupt the new regime. They had just not yet figured out what.

"You are closer to these students than I, Severus," the portrait of Dumbledore admitted. "You taught them in close proximity for five, six years. Pick one."

It was an important decision. "I'd go for the Weasley girl as the leader," Snape said, "but I think she's too level headed to take advice from a chocolate frog card. Longbottom is too much of a self doubter to pass on what he heard. Lovegood, on the other hand, accepts the strangest things as true, so that she'll probably regard it as quite natural that chocolate frog cards are conspiring against the Dark Lord. Do you know that she once told me in front of an entire class of Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs that the key ingredient in Pepper Up Potion was the powdered cartilage from the septum of a kangaroo?"

"Lovegood it is," said the portrait of Dumbledore.

By great good fortune, October first was also the new moon. It was thus a simple thing for Dumbledore to persuade Lovegood that the night for her and her companions to make their attempt was the night after the Board of Governors granted permission to the Ministry to reexamine the sword. Snape would be taking the sword to the Ministry the following day.

Any real thief would have been alerted at once by the ease with which the students got into the Headmaster's office and opened the glass case. Lovegood simply assumed it was the assistance of her chocolate frog card guide. The three were caught with the sword on the stairs between the fourth and the third floors by Amycus and Alecto Carrow, who were on patrol that night. The following late night session in the Headmaster's office was a stormy one, with the Carrows pitted against all four Heads of houses, the frightened students by the fireplace waiting for their fate to be decided, and Snape in the middle.

"They're in league with Potter!" Alecto screeched. "They've been in contact with Undesirable Number One and they were helping him! That's not just a breech of school rules! That's a criminal offense!"

"It was a prank, Professor Carrow," insisted McGonagall with fierce dignity. "If you cannot tell the difference between a child's prank and a crime then you should not be teaching in a school."

"They're conspiring against the Ministry of Magic," Amycus shouted, "and they'll go to Azkaban for it!" He smiled. "Though I'd rather handle the punishment here myself. I can get them to tell me where Undesirable Number One and his gang are."

"I have been in emergency contact with the Board," said Snape, and they all turned to him. "The Governors agree that in light of this serious, serious attack against the school, the sword of Godric Gryffindor will be taken tomorrow to a place of greater security, and the offenders need to be punished." He had not dared to confide any part of the plan to the Heads, and he prayed fervently that they would understand.

"In light of the gravity of their offense, they will be placed on detention and required to go into the Forbidden Forest to assist Professor Hagrid in his nonacademic duties."

McGonagall recoiled in surprise, and Flitwick and Sprout exchanged astonished glances. McGonagall recovered first and dove into her role with intense fervor. "Ye cannot send the poor children into the forest! 'Tis inhuman! Severus Snape, we do not punish children by sending them out as bait for wild animals, werewolves, and vampires! If you've a feeling heart in you, please give them some other punishment." Behind her, Weasley was clinging to Longbottom, and Lovegood was sobbing ostentatiously into the sleeve of her robes.

Snape was unmoved. "What I have decided," he said, "I have decided."

Alecto and Amycus wore expressions of glee. The students appeared terrified. Slughorn, Sprout and Flitwick followed them out in stunned silence, and McGonagall managed to flash Snape a wee smile and a quick wink as she, too, left the room.

The very next day, Snape apparated to the Ministry of Magic, Office of Deeds and Wills. He brought with him several things: the Sword of Godric Gryffindor; a Letter of Authorization from the Board of Governors permitting the Ministry of Magic to perform certain tests on the sword; an amendment to the authorization that stated that due to certain recent circumstances involving the safety of the sword, all tests were to be done in the physical presence of Hogwarts's Headmaster, and that the sword was to remain in the Headmaster's custody during the periods of time when the Ministry was not actually testing it; an order for a high-security vault at Gringotts Bank; and a small bag, altered by an Extension Charm, containing the replica sword.

It went like clockwork. The Ministry needed two days for its tests, so Snape got a room at the Leaky Cauldron and took the sword back there with him at night. The morning of the third day, the tests on the real sword now complete, Snape switched swords, putting the real one in the extendable bag and taking the replica to Gringotts. On leaving the Leaky Cauldron, he was met by Forbes from the Ministry, who accompanied him into Gringotts and watched as he handed the sword to the goblin clerk. The goblin smiled slightly as he lifted the sword, but said nothing.

On his return to Hogwarts, Snape placed the real sword in a newly made compartment behind Dumbledore's portrait. There was no way to get at the sword without Dumbledore knowing.

"Now all we have to do," sighed Dumbledore, "is find a way to let Harry know the importance of the sword, then plan how to get it to him." They briefed Nigellus on things he could say that would impart the necessary information and yet not appear that it was from Snape. "Harry, I fear," said Dumbledore, "would never act on information he thought originated with Severus. Are you certain, Phineas, that you cannot tell where he is?"

"I told you," grumbled Nigellus. "It's always the same. Quiet and rural. I can't learn anything except they're having trouble finding enough to eat and the… Granger girl is a terrible cook."

"Keep trying," said Snape wearily.

In the days that followed, Weasley, Longbottom, and Lovegood did their detention and returned from the Forbidden Forest, properly cowed and refusing to discuss what happened to them there. The Carrows went around looking pleased with themselves, and the rest of the staff treated Snape with guarded respect. Phineas Nigellus continued with his dull, unchanging reports until the moon had gone full cycle and was once again new and dark. Then, on the night of October twenty-eighth…

"She's calling me! The mudblood's calling me!" Nigellus suddenly screamed in the middle of an otherwise boring meeting, and before Snape could scold him, he was gone, but not before Dumbledore managed to yell, "Tell them about the sword!"

They waited. It seemed an hour, but it wasn't. Then Nigellus was back. "The mudblood blindfolded me!" was the first thing he said. "That wicked, disrespectful girl…"

"Phineas," Dumbledore asked patiently, "do they know about the sword?"

"Well, of course they know about the sword. Do you think I'm an idiot? Funny, I don't know why, they actually asked me about the sword. I didn't have to bring it up. I told them how it got its strength, and that Albus destroyed the ring with it. They wanted to talk to Albus, but I disabused them of that notion quickly enough. They were also worried about the three who stole it, and then they asked if I told Headmaster Snape about Albus using the sword. The girl thinks she's so clever, but she didn't notice that I didn't really answer the question. Ha!"

"Were all three of them there?" Snape asked.

"A girl and two boys," said Nigellus. "One of the boys was Potter. I recognized his voice. I ought to, I've heard it enough."

"And we still do not know where they are," said Dumbledore. "But at least we know that when we figure out how to get the sword to them, they will understand how to use it."

It was about the same time, just when things seemed to be going well concerning Potter, that Snape began to reap the harvest of his leniency with Weasley, Longbottom, and Lovegood. Apparently in the belief that they wouldn't be severely punished, students began rebelling all over the school. It was directed chiefly against Amycus and Alecto, but also against himself, and as October waned, Snape found himself with a real problem on his hands.

"Look at this!" Alecto shrieked, waving a copy of the Muggle Studies text, teacher's edition with curricular guidelines, in Snape's face. "They glued the pages shut! They damage my equipment! They erase the notices on the board! They post drawings of me all over the school!"

Amycus burst into the office then, for it was Snape's regular office hours, and the gargoyle could let anyone pass. Amycus's eyebrows were growing at an alarming rate. "Cursed!" he bellowed. "Cursed in my own classroom! I have the culprits, Snape, and they're going to be caned for this!"

"I think a lesser punishment…" Snape began, but Amycus strode behind the desk, practically toe to toe, a sneer on his lumpy face. They were not the same height, and Snape had to look up to meet Amycus's eyes.

"You know what I think, Headmaster," Amycus spat out. "I think you encourage them. I think you want us to look bad so you can shine. I've been talking to Bella, and she's making up a little list to give to Him when he gets back. How you're taking all the power to yourself and keeping Hogwarts out of the control of the Ministry or his people. You know what Bella thinks? She thinks you'd like to be the Dark Lord yourself."

The situation was now dangerous. Not knowing where the Dark Lord was, or what his mood would be on his return, knowing only from the mark on his arm that the Dark Lord was still alive and strong, Snape began to crack down on Hogwarts.

The students who'd cursed Amycus were caned, Snape insisting, however, that their Head of house (in this case McGonagall) be present to ensure that the punishment did not go beyond the allowed bounds. At dinner that evening, McGonagall refused to sit next to him, moving down the table to join Sprout and Sinistra instead. Part of Snape sympathized with, and part of him resented, her judgmental position.

_I know you think I have choices, Minerva, but if the Dark Lord pulls me down, then Amycus Carrow will be in control not only of Hogwarts, but of Dumbledore, too, and everything will be lost. I don't see the choices. I only see consequences that I can't live with._

And then it was Halloween. Snape ordered all the trappings: the cats and bats, the candles and jack o' lanterns, the apple and pumpkin pie, but his heart was not in it. For the first time in several years he truly felt the despair Lily's death had brought him sixteen years earlier, and realized it had never left him, just remained quiet and hidden, ready to return at any moment.

In the hours before the feast began, Snape retreated to his office, trying to sort out his position and his path, to deal with the isolation he felt, to deal with the pain of having to lose McGonagall, unable even to explain to her.

_What is the nature of choice? When I choose to do one thing instead of another, what is the basis for my choice? Is it inwardly centered? Do I choose because I have to weigh the morality of one of my own actions against the morality of another of my own actions? Or is it outwardly centered? Do I weigh the outcome of one of my actions against the outcome of another of my actions?_

_Look at the tower, at Dumbledore begging me to kill him. If my basis for action was inwardly centered, I would not have killed him. I would have refused. In that case, Dumbledore would still be dead, and I would be dead. Potter would be dead and the forces of the Dark Lord would have taken over, then and there. But I would have salvaged my own soul. At the cost of everyone else, I would have saved my soul._

_But I looked away from my soul and chose to kill Dumbledore, and that has altered everything. Dumbledore is still dead, but I live, Potter lives, and I still stand between the forces of the Dark Lord and his total dominance of Hogwarts. Is that a bad thing? Dumbledore does not think so. Perhaps I do not need to think so either._

_It is a most important question. Save my soul and lose the world, or lose my soul and save the world? I wish I could be sure that by losing my soul I really was saving the world. McGonagall disagrees. She thinks I'm presumptuous to believe that I can predict the outcome of my actions._

_Two and a half years ago, Dumbledore as much as told me he thought I should have been sorted into Gryffindor rather than Slytherin. 'We sort too soon,' he said. Did I have a choice there? I don't recall being given one. How would my life be different with no Bella or Rabastan, no Rosier, Wilkes, or Mulciber? Branded for life at the age of eleven, and McGonagall prats of choices._

_Maybe she expects me to act nobly, like some pasteboard hero in a book or a play. It would be so easy if the Dark Lord had to follow the same script. I could behave as recklessly as I wanted because no matter what I did, we'd all reach the predetermined end anyway and take our bows after the curtain closed. But I do not have the luxury of a self-indulgent morality. I have been assigned to walk through a mine field, and if I deliberately step on a mine to prove how brave I am, then I desert my post._

The Halloween feast passed without incident. The students were laughing, fooling around, and demolishing treacle tarts. If Snape could have ignored the silent disapproval of the teachers, it would have been like every other Halloween feast (minus trolls, of course). He affected not to notice that he was being ostracized, and sat quietly back in his center chair, arms folded across his chest, watching the activity at the house tables, preferring isolation to the company of the Carrows.

As November progressed, the Carrows brought more and more accusations of conspiracies against themselves, the Headmaster, and the Ministry. Snape ordered a ban on the meeting of groups of more than three students, partly to prevent students from plotting, but equally to give the Carrows nothing that they could point to and use against the students. Snape knew perfectly well that the ban would never prevent the students from talking, especially when they slept eight or ten in a dorm room, but the Carrows didn't, and for a while things calmed down.

For some reason, Potter and his friends started talking to Phineas Nigellus more and more, and the portrait of Nigellus was permitted to feed them information in the hopes of extracting some from them, though Nigellus did tend to get huffy when they insulted Snape, knowing both sides of the situation as he did. After a while he reported a curious absence.

"I wasn't sure at first," Nigellus told Snape and Dumbledore, "because of course she continues to blindfold me, but I haven't heard the voice of the other boy at all. It seems like just Potter and the girl."

Which left them wondering what had become of Ron Weasley.

At the beginning of December, the Dark Lord returned. Snape and the Carrows were summoned to Wiltshire where the Dark Lord imposed his presence on the luckless Malfoys. It was no surprise to Snape that when he, Amycus, and Alecto entered, they were greeted by Bella Lestrange.

"There you are, Headmaster," Bella cooed. "I hope you have a wonderful report on Hogwarts. He isn't in the best of moods."

Snape gave her a mock smile. "I'm sure you've been busy paving the way for me."

"Don't I always?"

Bella entered the drawing room – where Charity Burbage had died – along with the three from Hogwarts, apparently secure in the knowledge that she was permitted to hear what Snape had to say. After a few minutes' wait, the Dark Lord entered from the far side of the room. He said nothing.

Faced with silence, the three immediately knelt on the carpet at his feet. Something was wrong, and Snape prayed it was not directed at him. "Tell us of Hogwarts, Headmaster," the Dark Lord said at last, and Snape was instantly wary. The use of the title was a sign of displeasure.

"Lord, everything goes according to plan. There are no muggle-borns at the school and enrollment has nearly doubled with all the pure- and half-bloods that now attend. The new curriculum is well received…"

"Why did you remove the sword of Godric Gryffindor from the school?"

Snape stopped. It was not the question he expected, and his answer was a split-second too late.

"Lord, the sword…" and then the pain hit. When it abated, Snape had fallen forward on his knees so that his hands touched the floor as well. His breath came in sharp gasps, and he dared not move or look around, though he was certain Bella would have an expression of pure delight on her face. A shark, circling in bloodied water.

"Do not consider your answer," the Dark Lord said. "Speak quickly and without guile."

"Lord, two things happened at the same time. First, the Ministry asked to reexamine the sword, a request approved by the Board, and then a small group of students attempted to steal the sword. They were caught in the act, but we felt it best to give the sword better protection."

"Why did they want the sword?"

Snape guessed that the Dark Lord was talking about the students. "They were once friends of Potter's," he said. "Their imaginations were overwrought."

"Were they punished?"

"Yes, Lord."

"And the sword?"

"Now lies in the vault of the Lestranges in Gringotts."

"So Bella assisted you in this?"

"Yes, Lord."

"You have been called over lenient."

"Forgive me, Lord, if I have erred. I understood that willing obedience was preferred to grudged coercion that might break out later in rebellion."

The Dark Lord turned his red slitted eyes to Bella and the Carrows. "This is no question of disobedience, but of subtlety," he said. Then to Snape, "Is it true you refused to accept Bella's advice and guidance, Severus?"

On surer ground now, Snape replied. "I asked her if her instructions came from you. She was unable to assure me that they did."

"It is well." At the Dark Lord's gesture, Snape rose to go, relieved it had not been worse. As he opened the door and stepped back into the foyer, he heard, "Bella, we leave again for a few days. Our path is obscure. It may be that in that time that you will hear from Nagini. If so, you will assist her at once. There is nothing else so important as that."

Back at Hogwarts, Snape reported to Dumbledore. _At least here, he thought, I don't have to kneel._

"So Riddle is separated from his snake," said Dumbledore. "That is most interesting news. I wonder what Nagini is doing."

Then came the Christmas break, and suddenly Hogwarts was empty.

In the days leading up to the end of term, Nigellus reported a change in Potter and Granger's actions. He'd noticed it because of Potter, who started waiting until Granger was asleep, then taking his rucksack out of her bag, sitting quietly for a while, then replacing the rucksack. At the same time, they acquired a new sense of energy in their voices, almost an excitement, but Nigellus was unable to get any clue of what they were planning.

Dumbledore began to instruct Snape about the sword. Not why Potter must have it, but how Potter must get it.

"The goblin-forged blade of Godric Gryffindor cannot be wielded by just anyone, Severus. It must be taken in an act of courage in a situation of great selfless need. Courage and chivalry, Severus. Only a true Gryffindor can use it."

Snape was fingering the ruby-encrusted hilt. "I suppose the touch of my loathsome Slytherin hands is polluting its purity."

The portrait peered over its glasses. "I doubt that very much. Think of the ideal of medieval chivalry – devotion to a lady, pure and unobtainable. I think we have that. And courage. Who else among us would have walked into Riddle's presence two and a half years ago, knowing he was about to face torment and possible death, forbidden to fight back? My dear boy, that is the kind of courage mere warriors never understand. You would have done well in Gryffindor."

With a snort of contempt, Snape laid the sword back on the table. "Can you imagine me sharing a dorm room with Sirius Black and James Potter? The thought makes my skin crawl. And what point is there to being a dunderheaded bully, smashing my way through life and roaring like an idiot on a overdose of testosterone?"

"You are right, Severus. You may be too intellectual for Gryffindor. Still, I think we sort too soon."

The most important thing, however, other than Potter's actually getting the sword, was that under no circumstances could he know that Snape was involved. Given Potter's feelings about Snape, it might interfere with his willingness to take the sword, but vitally more important was Potter's total lack of ability as an occlumens.

"If he ever comes face to face with Riddle, and Riddle sees the connection between you and the sword, then we are undone. Harry would have to vanquish Riddle at that moment, or you would die, Hogwarts would lose its protector, and I would be taking orders from Amycus Carrow. Not a pretty picture, that."

"No, sir," Snape agreed. "Not one I care to contemplate, certainly." He was working out how he might accomplish the task of giving Potter the sword, under conditions of daring and need, without being seen. He already had an idea.

Something had happened to Snape the night, a year and a half earlier, when he'd faced Sirius Black for the last time over the green Floo connection in Dolores Umbridge's office at Hogwarts. He could still hear himself pleading with Sirius not to go to the Department of Mysteries, and he could still hear Sirius's reply: "No! He's James's son! For Chris'sake, Severus, he's Lily's son! And he's the closest thing to my own son I'll ever have. Dammit, I love him!" And his own voice responding, _Good luck_.

Sirius Black died that night, and something inside Severus opened for the first time. For the first time he faced the possibility that what he felt for Lily after all these years could, in fact, be called love. He rejected the thought at first, refusing to admit that love existed, calling it friendship, affection, anything but the word that everyone threw around so glibly and so meaninglessly – but it would not go away.

It wasn't until well into that summer, when he wanted to send Dumbledore a patronus message, that the full import of what had happened hit him. His patronus had changed. Instead of the clever little fox that he was used to, his wand spurted forth an image he'd never seen before, the image of a beautiful fallow doe, dainty and graceful, that leapt and pranced around him playfully, as if joyful at finally being released.

_Where did you come from?_ Snape had thought, staring aghast at the lovely creature so unlike himself. Then it hit him. James Potter was 'Prongs' to his friends. His patronus must have been a stag. The doe, then, was Lily.

Instead of being pleased, Snape was horrified. True, the Death Eaters never communicated by patronus. Snape doubted if the majority of them could produce a patronus. But the fact of this patronus was now both a blessing and a curse. A blessing because he could conjure it, and it would skip about him, so full of affection that it made even Snape feel, well not tenderness exactly, but less alone. A curse because that patronus, produced in front of the Dark Lord, or Bella, or Macnair, was a death sentence. The only other person who knew of it was Dumbledore.

Now, however, he had a task, and Snape was, if nothing else, dedicated to the accomplishment of the tasks set before him by Dumbledore.

So, when Nigellus came tumbling back into his portrait the morning of Friday, December twenty-sixth, bellowing, "Headmaster! They are camping in the Forest of Dean!" Snape had already worked out the basics of what he was going to do.

It was cold in the Forest of Dean. It was bitterly cold, and Snape dared light no fire to warm his numb fingers for fear Potter or Granger might see it. He himself had not yet seen them. What he had seen, after several hours of trying to detect protection and concealment spells, was Ron Weasley.

_What is he doing back? And more to the point, if he is back, why doesn't he go right to Potter and Granger?_ The only possible answer was that Weasley had no way to communicate his presence to the other two. And yet he was here, amazingly, inexplicably, here. That must mean that Potter and Granger were somewhere near as well.

Night fell, and a soft light snow began to drift through the trees overhead. The cold was like a metal clamp around Snape's head, but still he searched until finally, mercifully, he felt the vague, insubstantial hum of a Muffliato spell. It was unmistakable, probably because it was a spell he'd invented himself. _The little monsters stole that from my spell book. Well, at least it has served a purpose and allowed me to locate them._

Snape retreated into the woods hampered by a pitch blackness that was partly due to the clouds that brought the snow, and partly because the moon was almost new and would not rise until well after five o'clock. Finally forced to use his wand, he murmured _"Quaero aquam!"_ and followed the resulting pinpoint of light to a pool of water, full from recent rain, that was already covered with a thin layer of ice from the cold. It was about four feet deep, shallow enough to stand in, but deep enough so that anyone wanting to retrieve an object from the bottom would have to submerge himself entirely.

_I know, Dumbledore, that bending down in chest deep water isn't normally considered the height of courage, but you have no idea how cold it is here. He could freeze to death before he got back to the tent._

Snape took Gryffindor's sword from his pouch and paused, considering how to get it to the middle of the pool. Simply throwing it wasn't an option since, besides being disrespectful to the sword (never be disrespectful to a goblin-made sword), he wasn't sure if the weight of the sword was sufficient to break through the ice. Instead he broke the ice with a spell, then levitated the sword into position and gently lowered it. _Now to get Potter!_

Almost as soon as he cast the patronus, Snape knew his instincts had been correct. Out of the thin air of a concealment spell, Potter appeared, attracted by the shimmering light. He seemed entranced by the image of the doe, and Snape had to admit that the patronus was softer, gentler, lighter than usual. Snape was at a loss to explain why this might be, unless the tiny vestige of Lily that must still animate the doe recognized the presence of Lily's son. It gave Snape a chill that had nothing to do with the exterior cold.

After a moment, Snape had the doe turn and lead Potter through the trees in the direction of the pool. After first calling to her to return, Potter followed like a man in a dream. Just beyond the pool, Snape slipped behind two oaks that grew closely enough together that, in his dark clothing, he would be able to watch unseen. He had to be sure Potter succeeded before he could leave.

The patronus and the boy reached the pool, Potter stepped forward as if to speak, and Snape let the doe vanish. There was silence, then the word _"Lumos!"_ and then the illumination of faint green light. Potter glanced around him, and saw the sword.

He stared. He knelt in the snow before it. He scanned the surrounding woods while Snape crouched behind his trees to avoid detection. He circled the pool like a stalking panther. Then he seemed to steel himself.

Dumbledore had been right. Potter knew exactly what to do. After a moment's understandable hesitation, he began to strip down to his underwear in the freezing cold. He laid everything aside, shoes, glasses, wand, a pouch he had slung around his neck, everything but his underwear and something that gleamed gold on his chest. A Diffindo spell broke the congealing ice and, not trusting himself to ease slowly in, Potter jumped into the pool. He stood shivering in chest deep water for a moment, then ducked under.

What happened next was so utterly unexpected that at first Snape couldn't react from the shock. Potter began to thrash and kick in the pool as if fighting an enemy. But there was no enemy there. The pool, as Snape knew, was empty but for the sword. _Could the sword have attacked Potter?_ There was no time to lose, or Potter would drown. Snape struggled to his feet, but someone else moved faster. Bushes crashing as he pushed them aside in his wild haste, Ron Weasley dashed from the trees and flung himself into the water. In a matter of seconds, Potter was back on the ground, clutching at his throat, and Weasley was back in the water groping for the sword, which he used to cut whatever was strangling Potter.

Snape waited only long enough to be sure Potter was alive and conscious, and then he slipped silently away from the oaks, obliterating his footprints as he went, and returned to Hogwarts.

Dumbledore had a fire roaring, and Snape crouched down on the hearth to warm his icy, numb body before saying anything. Then he stood and faced the portrait. "If I've been frostbitten and lose my toes, it's your fault," he snapped.

"Does Potter have the sword?" Dumbledore asked, ignoring the accusation.

"No. Something went wrong, and he almost died. Weasley saved him. Weasley's back, he saved Potter's life, and he retrieved the sword."

"Then Ron must wield the sword," said Dumbledore. "Dear me, I hope Harry is wise enough to realize that."


	63. Chapter 63 – Burning Bridges

**What of My Soul, Dumbledore?: Burning Bridges**

Dumbledore's tone made Snape suddenly angry. "Did you by any chance give him any information that would let him reach that conclusion? Because if not, the fact that he makes a mistake here lies solely on you."

"I beg your pardon, Severus. I have done what I could to prepare Harry for his task."

"What if it wasn't enough? What if you played your cards too close to your chest, and he hasn't got clue one what you expect him to do? What if you treated him like you treat me? He's got the sword, and he thinks he knows what to do with it, but oops! we left out that small but vital piece of information, and the whole plan goes down like a house of cards? I'm not wild about freezing my rear end off for nothing."

"I assure you, you did not freeze your rear end off for nothing. Harry has what he needs, if he remembers it, to use the sword."

"Right. I know the lesson well. It's number two hundred sixty-six. 'Oh, by the way Harry, if Ron should happen to retrieve a sword from a pool in the middle of the night because you were choking on something, please let him use it first.' A truly well developed lesson plan. I use the basic format all the time."

Dumbledore peered over his glasses. "You are becoming tiresome, Severus. You are assuming too much – or rather, too little. Harry knows what is expected of him."

Snape turned and swept out of the office. Behind him, as the door closed, he could just barely hear Nigellus say, "You know, Albus, the Potter boy isn't the only one with green eyes."

It wasn't until he'd stormed all the way down to the fourth floor that Snape realized he was heading for the dungeons and his old rooms. The headmaster's office, which had seemed a refuge in September, was a refuge no longer, and it was becoming clearer and clearer that contact with the portraits wasn't the same as human contact. Snape wanted to talk to someone, a person, even if it was just the meaningless banter of the staff room after a tiring day, but there was no one to talk to. McGonagall wouldn't talk to him; Sprout wouldn't talk to him; he doubted Hagrid would talk to him. No human contact at all. The headmaster's chair was an isolation booth. For the first time it struck Snape that when he died, he would probably be alone.

_I like being alone. I want to be alone._ Yet 'alone' was a relative term. It was one thing to seek solitude after a hundred student contacts in a day and the noise of the Great Hall. Being alone in his room with a book or a new potion at such times was a welcome relief. Now it was a constant state of being, and Snape missed betting on Quidditch games with McGonagall, or playing cribbage with Flitwick, or helping Sprout set out seedlings, or even having Hagrid fuss over his eating habits.

_All I have now is Dumbledore – and Nigellus, and the hunt for Potter. And until we bring down the Dark Lord, that's all I'll ever have. Even Amycus and Alecto won't talk to me because they work for Bella, and Bella thinks I'm her rival. And to think there were times in my life when I thought I could actually live like a human being in a normal world._

Truth be told, those times had been few and far between, and suddenly Snape wanted to get out of Hogwarts and go somewhere, anywhere, where he could be normal, do something normal, act human again. He trudged back upstairs into his office, and from there into his bedroom, and returned settling a warm cloak around his shoulders.

"Where are you going, Severus?" the portrait of Dumbledore asked.

"London," Snape replied.

"Whatever for?"

"I'm going to a movie, and then to a restaurant, and maybe I'll even buy a book or two."

"But Potter… They have the sword now. We may learn…"

"I already know the report, sir. They're camping. It's someplace quiet, rural, where there aren't any other people. Granger's doing the cooking. End of report."

"Severus, it is ten o'clock at night on Boxing Day. Nothing is open…"

Dumbledore was right, of course, but Snape didn't care. He stalked down the hill to the gates and disapparated.

He ended up in the pub in his home village. Men who'd known his father, and who'd tried to teach Snape to play darts, came over to wish him a happy Christmas. He had a pint, then someone bought him another, and he found himself pondering the mysteries of table skittles, in this case devil among the tailors, and the use of geometry in determining the arc of the ball. It was a good sight easier than darts. All too soon, the pub keeper shouted "Last call, lads," and then it was closing time, and a much mellower Snape found his way to his own home, from which he apparated to Hogsmeade. As he made his way back up the hill, Snape decided that it was good to have a home village. Something to remember in times when he was more alone than usual.

And naturally, it would be precisely that evening, when he'd run off and played truant, that the report would be different. "I told you, Severus," Dumbledore's portrait said the instant he set foot in the office. "Ron Weasley has used the sword. The locket is destroyed."

That night, lying sleepless in bed, Snape tried to work things through.

_Nigellus thinks I'm jealous of Potter. Is that true? Am I jealous?_ Much as Snape hated to admit it, when set the question, he had to acknowledge that since Lily's death the most important person in his life had been Dumbledore. Dumbledore had kept him out of Azkaban, provided a place and a purpose, and to some extent had given him trust and that indefinable sense that he belonged to a family.

Now, inexorably, it was all being whittled away. Dumbledore was dead, the shadow of his portrait presence the only consolation. Hogwarts was no longer a home but once more a prison where he barricaded himself in the middle, against both sides. And trust? In the last year Snape had come to realize that Dumbledore trusted him about as much as he trusted anyone – to perform certain specific tasks, but no further. _Am I exactly like Potter? Another pig being raised for slaughter?_

It was darkest, blackest night, the moon almost new, and Snape could not see the ceiling that he stared at. _What if I had done differently? What if I had not set things in motion? If I had been strong and withheld the prophecy from the Dark Lord?_ But that, of course, was silly. That night when he knelt before the Dark Lord to confess his failure and receive his punishment, the prophecy held no meaning, the child it referred to, if indeed it referred to a child, as yet unborn, as yet unconceived, but the pain of punishment was very real. _And I was no seasoned spy for Dumbledore. I was nineteen, and the Dark Lord's faithful servant. There was no cause to withhold the prophecy._

Still, if he had not chosen to climb those stairs and listen at that door, he would have heard no prophecy. _I would have had nothing to give him to turn his wrath from my failure. I would have died that night, but Lily would still be alive._ And yet, was even that true? The night Snape had heard the prophecy, the Dark Lord was at the zenith of his power. Opponents fell before him like flies, and Dumbledore and the Order of the Phoenix battled in hopeless retreat, already betrayed, as Snape now knew, by Peter Pettigrew. It was only a matter of time before both James and Lily, and in all probability their son as well, would have died. As Fabian and Gideon Prewett had died. As Marlene McKinnon had died. As one by one all Dumbledore's followers had been dying. Until a new and hitherto unused spy had provided the information to turn all that around. The spy who spied because of the Dark Lord's interpretation of a prophecy.

_No, Lily would still be dead, and the Dark Lord would have come into the fullness of his power sixteen years ago. The prophecy caused his downfall and gave Dumbledore time – time to learn more of the Dark Lord's plans so that now, even now, hope glimmers that the last item will be found, Potter will know of his role, and the Dark Lord will be vanquished forever. Maybe I don't stumble blindly in the darkness. Maybe instead of a blundering fool, I'm an instrument of fate, and my role in this is as important as anyone's._

The problem was, there was no way to know. Not until the last choice had been made and the last act played out. And maybe not even then. _The odds are that I'll die without learning if any of it was worthwhile._ But still, the idea of being an instrument of fate rather than of Dumbledore was somehow comforting, and at long last Snape was able to sleep.

He told Dumbledore so the next morning. "I've decided. You're not in control of the situation."

"No?" the portrait raised its eyebrows. "And who, Severus, is in control? Not you?"

"God," Snape said, and ordered breakfast from the kitchen rather than go down to the Hall to eat with the skeleton staff.

"You amaze me. Have you found religion at last?"

"Let's say I've decided that we're not leaves blown helplessly along by the winds of chance. Someone is guiding us. Call it fate if you like."

"This is truly astounding, Severus! You have taken a great step forward in the…"

"Don't patronize me."

"I beg your pardon?"

"You're acting like an instructor whose job is to inculcate an understanding of the seven levels of wisdom. As if you already know what the seven levels are, and your job is to help me find them. As if you're partly responsible for my groping my way up to level three. Like a dog trainer. Well that's male bovine fecal matter. I'm not following you in order to expiate my sins. I made the right choices. You just happen to be going in the same direction I am. I'm not sure I want to trust your compass quite so uncritically."

Dumbledore peered over his glasses. "You might want to work that out better, Severus. It was a bit hard to follow."

"There you go being patronizing again. I decided last night that fate does play a role in this, but that fate and the will of Albus Dumbledore are not always the same thing. I decided I need more information." Snape took a small handful of Floo powder and knelt in front of his fireplace.

"What are you doing?" Dumbledore asked.

"Flourish and Blotts," said Snape, throwing the powder into the embers. When a clerk responded on the other side, Snape said. "This is the Headmaster of Hogwarts school. I'd like to order a copy of _The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore_ by Rita Skeeter. Put it on my personal account."

Snape tried to ignore the portraits most of the morning, even though Dumbledore did his best to engage conversation. Of the two, Dumbledore was the more successful.

"You know, Nigellus says that you really gave those three a morale boost yesterday evening. They know now that someone is helping them. They do not feel alone anymore," he said around ten o'clock, after several failed starts.

"They're exactly as alone as they were before." Snape answered. "Only their perception of the situation has changed."

"But that is because of you and your actions. The patronus was a brilliant inspiration."

"And if they knew where it came from, they'd be equally horrified and unsure of themselves."

"It does not detract at all…"

"Yes, it does. I've been trying to protect that boy since his first year, and he hates me. If I told him London was the capital of England, he'd immediately insist it was Lincoln."

"You haven't exactly been the most loving of protectors."

"He hasn't exactly been the most endearing of students."

"You were comparing him to his father."

"I wanted to compare him to his mother."

"And how did you endeavor to do that?"

"When did Hagrid first take Potter to Diagon Alley?"

"On his birthday, wasn't it?"

"Right. July thirty-first. Then he took his books home and kept them for a month. A month. You would think he'd at least open them. The first day of classes, I asked him three questions. The answers were in the first chapter. He couldn't answer one of them."

"Which led you to the conclusion…?"

"Lily would have known the answers."

"And James would not have. I see. I had understood from Professor Slughorn that under a different teacher…"

"Now it's my fault? I'll remind you, sir, that the OWL scores in Potions have risen…"

"That was not my meaning…"

"And he was cheating!"

"You really do have to explain that to me, Severus."

"Slughorn let him use an older text until he got the new one. The book Potter got was my own, with all my notes and annotations. Potter was using my research, my experiments, to get good grades."

"Slughorn said he was like his mother."

Snape was silent.

"I see," said Dumbledore after a moment. "He was indeed like his mother, right down to the source of his inspiration and success."

"Lily was good at Potions!"

"But not extraordinary. No, Severus, that apparently took assistance. The assistance you gave to the mother, you also gave to the son. I see no cause to be bitter about it."

"When I gave him detention after Easter… The spell he attacked Draco with was mine."

"I see," Dumbledore repeated. "It was rather a… drastic spell."

"Sir, do you have any idea how long I worked with that spell, so that it could be wielded like a surgeon wields a scalpel, not like a lunatic with a meat cleaver?"

"I see the sins of Harry Potter are legion. He has taken after his father, has been insufficiently like his mother, and has benefited from your assistance, both intentional and unintentional, without showing the proper gratitude."

"You left out being an arrogant showoff."

"I thought that was covered in the 'take after his father' part," said Dumbledore with a sad smile.

Snape went to the Great Hall for lunch, and it was there that the owl arrived from Flourish and Blotts with the biography of Dumbledore. The staff was not together at one table, so Snape unwrapped the book then and there and began to read, quickly aware that the others had noticed and were… not happy.

After a few minutes, McGonagall joined Snape at his table. "You've actually given that woman money for writing trash?" she said.

Not looking up from the page, Snape remarked, "I thought you weren't talking to me."

"Don't flatter yourself, 'tis no conversation. I'm scolding you."

"Oh, well, that's all right, then."

They were both silent, then McGonagall took a deep breath. "Severus, I'd like a word with you, if you don't mind, in my office."

"It sounds like you're putting me on detention."

"This is no joke. There's something I want to say, and it wouldna do to say it here."

Snape rose, and McGonagall copied him. "I suppose," he said, "that I've no choice but to face the music."

She led the way out of the Hall, and all eyes followed them. It rather reminded Snape of an execution.

Neither spoke until they reached McGonagall's office, with its shelves of books and prim, academic decor. She ushered him in with a formal gesture, then closed the door and stood in front of it, barring his exit.

"Am I a prisoner?" Snape asked wryly.

"I don't know," McGonagall replied. "Are ye?"

It was a moment of clarity, clarity and sorrow for what had once been and could never be again. "You know why I'm here," Snape said.

"I know what was spoken of upstairs between ye, and Moody, and Dumbledore. But Dumbledore was already dead, and now Moody's dead, too, so there's just ye and me left to remember it, and I'm asking – Are ye a prisoner?"

Snape regarded her for a moment, his head cocked to one side. Fierce though she could be, confrontation was not McGonagall's strong suit, and he knew she was at least as uncomfortable about this as he was. "I come and go at my pleasure," he said at last, "but am always constrained to return, and the one who determines my actions is not always me. So you tell me. Am I a prisoner?"

McGonagall didn't blink. Instead she held out her hand, palm up. "I would take it as a very great favor, Severus, if you would be so kind as to allow me to look at your wand."

Knowing now what McGonagall wanted to do, and worse, knowing what she would find when she did it, Snape felt the blood drain from his face – and knew she would note that as well. He allowed himself to count silently to ten, then said softly, "I'm sorry Minerva, but I can't let you do that."

"Is it truly so bad as that?" McGonagall said, equally softly. She put her hand down. "Then there is nothing more we have to say to each other, is there?"

"Would you allow me to explain?"

"D'ye honestly think it would help?"

Snape turned away from her and went to the window, to look down onto the lawn in front of the castle, now covered with snow, and to the Whomping Willow and Hagrid's hut, from whose chimney a thin curl of smoke rose. The loneliness that had driven him from Hogwarts the night before filled him again. No matter what he did now, he'd lost McGonagall. Refuse or grant her request – either was equally damning. Yet in him was a desire, a longing, to have at least one person know his side of it, know what he'd gone through, to be able to say after it was all over – this is what Snape told me.

He turned to face McGonagall again and slowly drew his wand from his sleeve. "Promise me," he said, "that you'll let me explain. Promise that you'll listen."

She stepped forward and touched his hand. "How can I promise, laddie, when even you are so certain that I will not want to?"

McGonagall eased the wand from Snape's unresisting hand and took it to her desk. Clearing the desk of every item – for this was a powerful spell she needed to cast – she carefully laid the wand in the center as Snape watched, unmoving and impassive, from the window. Then, with a commanding upsweep and downward flick of her own wand, McGonagall ordered:

"_Prioris omnis incantationis!"_

In its place at the center of the table, the wand vibrated. There was a small, percussive pop, followed shortly by another. "Apparation," murmured McGonagall. "Ye went somewhere. Last night, maybe," but another pop interrupted her, and then the unmistakable wisps of ghostly silver that were the shapeless traces of a patronus spell.

McGonagall glanced up in surprise at Snape. "Who were ye contacting with a patronus?" she started, then had to devote her attention to the backward scan of the daily life of a school – Lumos spells, graffiti-cleaning spells, Evanesco spells, a spell that carried an injured student to Madam Pomfrey… all this interspersed with apparating – Snape remembered his trips to the Malfoy mansion, headquarters, Gringotts, and the Ministry, though the wand itself did not say where.

And then – "What were ye doing to Gryffindor's sword? Were ye daft, lad?" - followed by more routine until the unmistakable voice of Rufus Scrimgeour, Rufus Scrimgeour crying out in pain, emerged, and from that moment McGonagall could only stare speechless at the wand, stare and watch as, like bursts of color among the monotone of more mundane spells, she saw the Killing Curse that ended Alastor Moody's life, the slash of Sectumsempra that severed George Weasley's ear, the whiplash that struck Harry Potter's face and, finally, the twin curses that killed Albus Dumbledore and threw his body from the Astronomy tower.

At that point McGonagall stopped the Incantationis spell. There was nothing further she needed to see, and she sat down heavily in the chair behind her desk, her face a mask of shock and horror.

After a moment, Snape said tentatively, "Minerva?"

"Don't speak to me."

"You said you would listen."

"I made no such promise, and if I had, I would break it. There is nothing I want to hear you say."

"Minerva, please."

"That's what Albus said, isn't it? Harry heard it. Severus, please…"

"He was asking me to do it."

"I don't believe you!" McGonagall was on her feet again, an avenging fury. "What about Alastor? And Scrimgeour?"

"Minerva, I swear…"

"D'ye think I dinna remember what you hold against them? What you've held against them all these years? I watched them take ye off for a Death Eater, and I thought because ye were young, and a glib tongue in yer head, and a shy way about ye that maybe Albus was right and they were wrong, and no harm givin' ye shelter. And all these years ye've cozened me, and flattered me, and fooled me! Get out of my office ye snake! Get out! The sight of ye sickens me!"

Snape took his wand and left, and stumbled his way back upstairs to the seventh floor and the gargoyle. How could he possibly have miscalculated so badly? He'd considered McGonagall a friend, had assumed that even when faced with the worst she would at least think of him as a human being and hear his defense. How wrong he had been…. how wrong. And where he'd hoped to make things at least endurable, he'd only succeeded in making everything… everything… infinitely worse.

Snape walked straight past the portraits, ignoring portrait Dumbledore's calls of "Severus… Severus?" and up the short, spiral stairs to his bedroom, where he lay down on the bed and again stared at the ceiling. Below he could hear the portraits.

"Severus! Severus, what has happened?"

"I told you, Albus, we have been doing this…"

"We're supposed to help the Headmaster, Albus, not drive him…"

"Albus, this is too much of a burden…"

"Quiet, the lot of you," said Dumbledore's portrait, muffled through the staircase, but still audible. "He will be fine. He is one of the most resilient people I have ever met. He bounces back from adversities that would crush a normal person. And he knows that what we do is for the greater good of the wizarding world. He will not fail us."

For the greater good of the wizarding world. Snape lay on the bed and listened to the portraits discussing him. _If only I could believe that, believe that the pain and the suffering did serve some higher, better cause. If I believed that, I could keep going. If I believed that, I could accept even…_

But why not believe it? The fact of the Dark Lord was inescapable. Voldemort existed. Voldemort was driving everything before him, taking control, destroying opposition… Snape had been set a task, a duty, and that duty was to assist in the destruction of Voldemort. If that task was accomplished, then Snape existed for the greater good of the wizarding world. All pain, all heartbreak, all sacrifice, was worth it for the greater good. Snape rose and went back down the staircase to face the portraits.

xxxxxxxxxx

Snape did not go down to the Great Hall for supper; he could not face it. Nor did he order food sent up from the kitchens since he wasn't hungry, his stomach rebelling, as it usually did when he was upset, against food. There was no news of Potter and his friends, and the portraits slumbered quietly. Snape stood by the window and watched snow flurries reflect the light from the candles in his office.

The slam of the door being kicked open made Snape jump and spin around, his wand instantly in his hand, expecting attack. And after a fashion it was an attack, though not one threatening bodily harm. Hagrid stood in the doorway of the office, holding a tray loaded with food. "Sorry to startle ya," he said gruffly. "M' hands was full."

"I'm not hungry," Snape said, putting the wand back up his sleeve and turning again to the snow.

"Yeah," said Hagrid, crossing the room to put the tray on the desk. "I heard. Seems you got a knack for doin' stuff that gets other people's backs up. Figured y'd be off your feed. There's plenty here 'cause I figured I'd join ya." He pulled a huge chair over to the desk. "So whyn't ya just settle yerself and do as y're told 'cause I don't relish sittin' on ya and forcin' it down your gullet, but I will if I have ta." He set out two plates and glasses for wine, and began loading food onto his.

Snape turned, leaning back against the stone wall, his arms crossed on his chest, to watch Hagrid. "Am I to assume you're not as particular about the company you keep as McGonagall is?"

"Professor McGonagall," said Hagrid through a mouthful of potato, "is a woman o' high moral character. She sees as there's things ya just don't do, not for any reason. It were bad enough suspecting y'd killed Professor Dumbledore, but now she knows there's three murders, and y've gone along with the Ministry, and y've allowed corporal punishment dealt out t' the children, and she's got t' figure y've sold yer soul."

"Maybe I have."

"Don't think so. I ain't too bright, but I can still add two and two."

"Meaning?"

"Alastor Moody. I was there that night, remember. I knew it was you. Y'never were comfortable on a broom. I figured you'd figure I were the one with Harry, so it weren't no surprise ya didn't go after me. Ya went after Lupin and cut off George Weasley's ear. Lupin recognized ya."

"That was an accident. I was aiming at the Death Eater who was going to kill Lupin. I…. missed."

"I'm glad t' hear that. Didn't think ya had anything 'gainst George. Course, ya wouldn't've known it was George, would ya? Point is, ya didn't go after Moody. You-Know-Who went after Moody. Bill Weasley saw it. You-Know-Who hit Moody in the face with a curse, and he musta fallen fifty, sixty feet. So if you got a killin' curse in your wand for him, there's gotta be another story to it."

"Moody was still alive. He was dying – the fall – but it would have taken a couple of hours, and they were coming back. The Dark Lord's anger is both cold and cruel."

"Which o' you made the decision?"

"Moody."

"Tha's all right, then. And then there's old Scrimgeour. Ye were there?"

"Yes."

"How long did it take?"

"Twelve hours."

"There now! All that time and only the one curse outta your wand! They must notta been paying you much attention, ya get away with a halfhearted effort like that! Now you get over here and eat!"

"You haven't asked about Dumbledore."

"Don't have to. He told ya t' do it. I knew that the minute Harry said 't was you."

"How…?"

Hagrid put his knife and fork down and leaned forward, his fists on his thighs. "Now ain't I taken care o' you since you was twelve? Wasn't it me ya first came to when ya turned yer back on You-Know-Who? Not Dumbledore, me! And wasn't it me as grabbed yer coattails that night ya thought y'd go flying off the tower? How'd I know? I know you. Now you start eating before I have t' sit on ya."

Snape left the window and joined Hagrid, helping himself to the food rather eagerly, for he was suddenly hungry. The first bite was halfway to his mouth when another question occurred to him. "Hagrid, how did you get into my office?"

Hagrid grinned at the question. "There's a conspiracy below stairs, has been for decades."

"Below stairs? Servants? You mean the house-elves?"

"Got it in one! You always was bright. House-elves can go anywhere. Ya don't make yer own bed, do ya? Lay yer own fire? Nobody ever asks how the house-elves get by the passwords." He held up his pink umbrella. "Didn't ya ever wonder about this?"

"I know it's a wand you're not supposed to have…"

"Tha's right. I got kicked outta Hogwarts when I was thirteen over that Chamber business, and they broke my wand. Ever hear of a broken wand that still works? Ever hear of a broken wand that can be fixed proper?"

"Now that you mention it, no. I do remember the damage caused by Weasley's wand, and it hadn't actually separated."

"Mine wouldn't work either, but then Headmaster Dippet gave me the job. Well, that put me on staff, too, not like a teacher, but like them elves. Servants. They fixed my wand and put it in the umbrella. It still ain't real powerful, but it can do elf-type things, like get through doors."

Snape nodded. It was amazing the things that happened every day in the school that he never noticed or knew about before. He and Hagrid continued eating in comradely silence, but just as Hagrid was leaving, Snape had another thought.

"It's probably best if you don't try to defend me to anyone. There's a long road still ahead of us, and if the Carrows ever get the idea I'm not on their side, I may not make it to the end."

"Gotcha," said Hagrid. "Y're a deep-dyed villain."

"Thank you, Hagrid," said Snape. "And thank you for supper."

The next day was Sunday, the twenty-eighth. Snape went down to breakfast and endured the ostracism of his erstwhile colleagues. The Carrows weren't down yet, and Hagrid was obeying orders, so Snape ate alone, reading the biography of Dumbledore that he hadn't had the heart to pick up again the day before, after his encounter with McGonagall.

The book gave him a lot to think about. That the young Dumbledore had been friends with Gellert Grindelwald was a surprise, but that he'd dabbled in questionable, elitist philosophies didn't bother Snape at all. It was part of youth to stretch out and try things that appealed to the heart as well as the head, and to think that you had the secret for saving the world. Snape had dabbled in questionable, elitist philosophies, too, and had the mark on his arm to show for it. _The key is whether or not you grow and learn and change. Anyone who has exactly the same principles at forty that they had at twenty just isn't doing any thinking._

After breakfast, Snape continued to read in his office, taking notes from time to time of things he wanted to ask portrait Dumbledore about, though he wanted a clearer picture in his own head before he actually broached the topic. He was so deeply engrossed in the subject that when the mark on his arm started to tingle, he absent-mindedly scratched it. The tingle grew stronger and became an itch, and then he was staring at his arm as if it was a monster rearing up to strike him. He ran for his bedroom, grabbed a cloak, and raced out again, crying to the portraits, "He's calling me!" as he bolted out the door and down the stairs.

The Carrows had been called, too. Snape wasn't happy at the idea that the whole staff would guess that the three of them were dancing attendance on the Dark Lord together, but there was nothing else he could do. They could not disapparate from Hogwarts. They had to go down the hill and out the gate, and leave for the Malfoy mansion from Hogsmeade.

The call was not from the Dark Lord. The call was from Bella. This in and of itself was a shock, since Bella had never dared usurp the Dark Lord's prerogatives before. The cause, when she told them however, was sufficiently important that Snape understood, and felt the Dark Lord would likely not be angry.

"Potter's been seen," Bella announced as soon as most of the inner echelon had arrived and were seated around the meeting table. Bella sat between her husband and brother-in-law, leaving the Dark Lord's seat empty. "Travers and Selwyn saw him escaping from Lovegood's house this afternoon. The mudblood girl was with him."

"Did they apparate?" Rookwood asked.

"Selwyn tried tracing them, but it looks like they put up protective spells at once. He couldn't get a fix, so he contacted me immediately."

"What did they want from that nut case Lovegood?" Avery asked. "He has trouble getting the time of day right."

"We don't know," Bella replied. "They Obliviated him just as they were leaving. Luckily they trusted him at first, otherwise they'd never have given him the chance to contact Travers and Selwyn."

Rabastan smiled. "I told you he'd be more reasonable once we had his daughter in our power." At Snape's look of surprise, he elaborated. "We took her off the train at the beginning of the Christmas break. She's a prisoner in the cellar of this house right now."

_Say something, Severus,_ Snape thought. _Something that a person in your position should say, would say…_ He gazed blandly back at Rabastan. "How long were you planning on keeping her? She is, after all, a student under my jurisdiction."

"I think your jurisdiction can take second place to stopping the articles her father was printing. She'll probably be a guest here for a while." Rabastan exchanged a smirk with Bella and Rodolphus while the others around the table waited in silence. Macnair was practically salivating.

"In that case," Snape said calmly, "I'll have to insist on evidence that the girl is unharmed."

Bella gasped. "You have to insist? Keep your nose out of Operations, Headmaster. You haven't got any authority here."

"Oh, but I have," Snape replied. "The girl is enrolled at Hogwarts for the entire academic school year which will not end until June twenty-eighth. I am legally responsible for her since she has yet to return to the protection of her family. Now if you had waited until she had gotten back home…"

"Don't prat to me about legalities, Snape!" Rabastan spat at him. "The reality is…"

"The reality is that you're blundering ahead without the authorization of the Dark Lord, and may be rudely awakened when he finds out you've angered his old Head of house and his Charms professor. But if you want to take that chance…"

"What are you talking about?" Bella snapped, her eyes narrowed and dangerous.

Snape calculated the odds and rolled the dice. "How much has the Dark Lord told you of his time at Hogwarts, Bella?"

Her eyes widened. Snape's gamble had paid off. "He has… hasn't… I…" she faltered.

"Nothing, I take it," Snape said. "You are completely unaware that the Dark Lord remembers his old school with a fondness he reserves for few other things." In this, of course, Snape was relying on information passed to him by Dumbledore, but it was better than anything anyone around him had. ""I have already mentioned this," he nodded to the Carrows, "but it is worth repeating. We are supposed to be winning hearts and minds to the Dark Lord's cause. If he held ill feelings towards his former professors, people like Slughorn and Flitwick, or against former classmates, people like McGonagall, would he not have sought the Board of Governors to have them removed and replaced with others? That he did not should be a warning to you to treat them with care. Now you tell me that you are holding a girl of impeccable blood purity who is in the house of the Dark Lord's former Charms professor and in the Potions classes of his former Head of house. A girl who is respected and well-liked –" This was an exaggeration, but they would not know it. "– a girl after whom they will inquire. All I wish to be able to say is that she is safe and well treated. I do not consider that an unreasonable request."

Bella eyed Snape shrewdly, then called, "Wormtail!" When Pettigrew responded, she ordered, "Take the Headmaster to see our prisoner and show him she's safe. Don't let her see him."

Snape would have preferred staying at the table until the meeting was over, but took what he could get. Rising, he followed Pettigrew out of the room, down a corridor toward the kitchen of the manor house, and then down a spiral staircase to the cellar. It was a large area, with several storerooms. Pettigrew walked over to one whose door was both padlocked and sealed with charms and tapped on the wood.

"Who's there?" said a soft, gentle voice that Snape recognized as Lovegood's.

That's none of your business," Pettigrew said. "There's someone here who wants to hear you."

"Oh, how lovely!" replied Lovegood behind the door. "So many people just want to see you. But if someone wants to hear you, then you have to talk, and that's a certain amount of interaction."

"Tell him that you're okay, that you haven't been harmed."

"HIm?" Lovegood asked. "Father, is that you? I am sorry I didn't have a chance to give you my Christmas present…" She paused. "Not my father? An admirer, then? Someone who read my article on the Crumple-Horned Snorkack and wants an autograph? I knew I would be famous for that."

"Tell him everything is fine. You haven't been hurt."

"Oh, but I have! I have been hurt. Let's see. They twisted my wrist, and they pulled me by the hair. And then they used ropes to tie me up. And I was blindfolded when I so wanted to see the snow crystals on the trees. And I missed Christmas. And I haven't had treacle tart even one time. And they won't let me take proper care of Mr. Olliv…"

"Shut up!" Pettigrew yelled at her. Then he turned to Snape. "Satisfied?" he asked, rubbing his hands together, the flesh one and the silver one.

Snape nodded. He would have liked to have assured the girl that her captivity was under surveillance, but he didn't dare as that would have made the situation worse and jeopardized his own position. Still, she seemed perfectly normal – for Lovegood at least – and she'd thrown out a piece of information. Ollivander was also in the cell. Perhaps he was even the prisoner who'd been in the cellar during the meeting in July. When the Dark Lord asked for Malfoy's wand.

"Well?" Bella asked when Snape returned to the meeting room.

"She seems well enough," Snape replied. "Make sure she stays that way. At least until you have orders to the contrary."

"Now," said Bella, "we need to talk about the rest of the school."

"I beg your pardon?" said Snape.

"We've been having a discussion. It seems you've been hampering your new professors."

Snape spared no glance for the Carrows. "The new curriculum for Muggle Studies has been implemented as fully as can be expected considering that there is no approved text. Professor Carrow is aware of the need for her to provide supplemental material. I have denied none of her requests…"

"I was thinking more about Dark Arts."

"The curriculum for Defense against the Dark…"

"No, Snape! You're not listening. I'm not talking about defense. I'm talking about Dark Arts."

"The Board of Governors hasn't…"

"But you don't really work for the Board of Governors, do you?" Bella looked around the table, and Snape followed her gaze. Sharks was the word that again came to mind. Blood in the water. Jackals. Hyenas.

"Technically, I do," Snape said.

"But in reality, you don't. I think I'm going to have to remind you, puppy dog, that the Dark Arts class is part of Operations. We're training people, new operatives. They need to know the material. Unforgivables is part of the material. Amycus needs to teach it."

"Neither the Board of Governors nor the Ministry has…"

"But the Dark Lord has. Who do you work for, Snape? We're all friends here." Her gesture was meant to take in the whole table, but seemed to point to Macnair more than anyone. "You're not talking to the Board or to the _Prophet_. You're talking to the Dark Lord's servants. Don't you want to implement his will? Don't you want to train operatives for him?"

"Of course I do," Snape answered, there being no other acceptable answer.

"Then you should be finding ways to help, not looking for excuses to defend inaction."

"I'm still answerable to the Board. If they don't like what I do, they'll fire me. My replacement might not be as acceptable to the Dark Lord."

"You're a bright boy," said Bella. "You'll figure out something."

Snape looked over at Amycus, who was grinning. "I'm sure we'll be able to work out an acceptable solution," he said.

The return to Hogwarts took place in total silence. As they were walking back up the hill, Amycus finally spoke. "Cruciatus curses," he said. "That's what they really need to work on. Cruciatus curses. Only experienced people can handle Imperiuses, and killing is on special orders, but even the kids can help with interrogation."

"I'll keep your views in mind," said Snape, and left them in the entrance hall.

The portraits debated long into the night.

"Teaching students Unforgivable Curses," lamented Headmaster Dippet, shaking his head sadly. "What has Hogwarts come to?"

"I myself gave similar orders three years ago," said Headmaster Dumbledore, "though I admit the professor I gave those orders to was not who I thought he was."

"But that case was not at all similar," insisted Headmistress Derwent. "That was information. These students are being asked to practice the spells."

"And if they do not," interjected Headmaster Fortescue, "we will lose Headmaster Snape and acquire someone new who will not have Hogwarts's best interests at heart."

"And what do you have to say about this?" Dumbledore asked the hitherto silent Snape.

Snape was staring into the fire. "Potter has not yet," he said, "been given the information he needs to ensure the defeat of the Dark Lord. I understand that only I can give him that information. Is my remaining in a position where that might happen of sufficient importance to warrant causing students to suffer temporary pain? I don't have the answer to that question."

"Then let me ask you another, Severus," said Dumbledore. "If you were one of those students, would you be willing to suffer the pain in order to destroy Voldemort?"

Snape looked up at him, all that he had lived through glowing bright in the anger in his black eyes. "That, sir," he said, "is a question you already know the answer to."

The first one Snape had to talk to was Flitwick.

"Not coming back?" said the Charms instructor. "Detained? I don't understand."

Snape tried to chose his words with care. "Miss Lovegood's relations have been publicly attempting to undermine observance of laws. Her presence was required to assist in showing these relations the lack of wisdom inherent in these actions."

Flitwick refused to discuss the matter in a calm or rational manner. "She's been kidnapped to force her father to stop publishing! That's what you're trying to say, isn't it? They're using the children to coerce the parents! How can you go along with this, Severus? I thought you were a decent human being! How can you go along with this?"

_Because of the consequences I cannot live with_, Snape thought, but did not voice this thought to Flitwick. Instead, he concentrated on the practical. "I saw where she's kept," he said. "She spoke to me. She's well – unharmed. Just detained. I'll do what I can to get her back, but you have to understand that I don't have a lot of authority in this."

"Well you'd better find some!" Flitwick bellowed in a voice much too large for his tiny frame, and stalked out of the office.

The meeting with McGonagall was equally tense.

"I'm denying them permission to go to Hogsmeade," Snape said for about the dozenth time. "I have good cause, and nothing you say will change my mind."

"Then why won't you tell me the cause?"

"I can't. Minerva, please…"

"It's petty vengeance, it is, Severus Snape! These children – Weasley, Longbottom, Finnigan – they won't bow to your rule like sheep, so ye take away one of the few pleasures they have. It's mean, it's cruel… It's action I'd have said was beneath ye a year ago."

_It's protecting them from kidnapping, Minerva,_ Snape thought, _but I can't tell you that. It's as much as my position's worth to tell you that, and I have to keep my position at all costs, at least until Potter's informed and the last scene is being acted._

McGonagall, like Flitwick, stomped down the stairs in rage.

The last straw, naturally, was the implementation of Amycus Carrow's plan to have detention served by being the subjects of the upper years' Dark Arts exercises. Snape actually found out about this in a backhand way since it was not school policy, just Amycus's idea of detention.

"Do not be hasty," cautioned the portrait of Dumbledore in the second week of January with the school humming again with students. "We are not talking about a large number of students. What is it now, three? And the students casting the curses… they are not hardened Death Eaters. Have you known one of these curses to cause even as much pain as… as dropping a copy of _A History of Magic_ on your toes?"

"That can be pretty painful," Snape answered.

"Yes, that is true… Did you really once drop _A History of Magic_…?"

"No," said Snape. "Never. And McGonagall doesn't agree with you about the mildness of the spells. The fact that students are encouraged to curse other students is more than enough for her."

"I recall she got considerable amusement from James Potter and Sirius Black cursing you."

"Did she! The old witch! Not as pure as she makes out! I'm going to use that, sir. I mean it. I'm going to use that."

"Just," said Dumbledore, "don't tell her you got the idea from me."

And in the midst of the turmoil there was Hagrid. Three or four times a week, Snape crept out of the castle after curfew to sneak down to Hagrid's hut for a cup of tea and a chat. He usually did most of the talking. Mostly against McGonagall.

"Doesn't she understand it's for their own protection? Does she want them held hostage for their families' behavior? Does she want Arthur Weasley knuckling under to the Ministry because his Ginny's locked up under the floor of the Malfoys' dining room? Does she?"

"Probably not," said Hagrid, pouring more tea. "Have ya put it to her like that?"

"I can't. If I say anything and it comes back to me…"

Hagrid shrugged. "This thing Dumbledore wants ya t' do, is it really that important? Is it important enough t' wager yer soul on? 'Cause it seems t' me that's what y're doin'.

Snape thought about this for a moment, "Yes," he said finally. "It's that important."

And then there was the long wait.

One of the great mysteries in all of this was the continued absence of the Dark Lord. Clearly he was off somewhere doing something that was vital to his closely held plans for success, but informed no one of his whereabouts or intentions. Even Bella had no idea where he was.

Equally mysterious was the continued lack of information about Potter, though here Snape was a little bit less in the dark than other people because of the continued reports of Phineas Nigellus. At least Snape knew of a certainty that Potter was with his friends, camping in a new spot every night, and lying low.

With the new year, however, others were not lying low. An underground resistance had sprung up all over wizarding Britain. It started with part-bloods, half-bloods, and purebloods giving shelter to fugitive muggle-borns. A clandestine radio station began giving reports of Ministry clampdowns and Death Eater attacks, and encouraging discontent. The hundreds of students going home for the holidays in the middle of December, revealing what was happening at Hogwarts – the new classes, the corporal punishment, the outbursts of rebellion against the regime of Snape and the Ministry – had added fuel to the fire.

Now, as the new year advanced, Bella took more and more control, sending operatives out on missions to crush opposition, round up rebels, and shut down the broadcasts. There were weekly reports of attacks and deaths, and no one was willing or able to curb Bella and her department.

At the beginning of February, Snape was called into his laboratory at headquarters to make more potions for the infirmary and Operations. It took the better part of two weeks, and Snape was constantly apparating between Hogwarts and the lab.

"I thought you'd been promoted while we were away. Guess I was wrong."

Snape didn't turn at the sound of Macnair's voice in the doorway, but continued decanting a wound-knitting brew. "Only to fill the vacuum until you got back," he said quietly. "You know I could never replace you."

"No stomach for it, eh?" Macnair laughed. "Or maybe you just prefer to be in the other role."

"Right," Snape said sarcastically. "The light touch of your wand at the base of my skull was one of the high points of my existence."

Macnair crossed the room easily and stood, a head taller than Snape, watching over the potion master's shoulder as he stirred the now clear medicine and poured it into a large flask. "Admit it, Severus, it's moments like that that let you know you're really alive."

Snape wanted to step away; Macnair's presence made his skin crawl. And yet, the ghost of an idea had formed. Macnair had information. "Walden," he said, and felt rather than saw Macnair's smile at the use of his first name. "Why was the Dark Lord so angry that night? He knew I couldn't come right away. What happened before I got there?"

"The Potter brat got away. You know that."

"No, I mean the details. What happened?"

"He was already angry when he called us. He was furious that the only ones who could answer were the ones who turned their coats, renounced him, wiggled out of Azkaban. He Cruciated Avery. I thought he was going to do the same for me since I was even working for the Ministry. But what he really wanted to do was duel Potter."

"Duel, not kill?" Snape was certain now that Potter had given all of this to Dumbledore, but that Dumbledore had kept it to himself. He also knew instinctively that a duel with wands must be connected to Lucius Malfoy's wand that the Dark Lord still carried, and with the old wand maker in the Malfoy cellar.

"Yeah. It was fun to watch at first, how he toyed with Potter. Forced him to bow. He was going to win, too, just playing with Potter before the kill, except something happened between the wands. The spells met in midair, and the wands couldn't separate, couldn't break away, and the Dark Lord's wand started giving up its spells."

_Like McGonagall did with mine. Only this wasn't because of a spell. It has something to do with the wands._ "So there was a duel and Potter won. He didn't just escape, he won."

Macnair stepped quickly back, distancing himself from Snape. "Don't say that, Severus. The whining little rat didn't win, he just ran. Running isn't winning."

"Of course not. I was being foolish for a moment. The boy ran. He didn't win." But it was not Potter's wand that had been forced to give up its secrets. Was that the reason the Dark Lord took no part in the fight in the Department of Mysteries until forced to in order to salvage Bella from the debacle? Why he didn't come through the vanishing cabinets himself to preside over the taking of Hogwarts? Why he took Malfoy's wand that night…? That night…

"Walden," Snape turned to face Macnair. "Did you follow the Dark Lord in July, that night we tried to take Potter?"

Macnair frowned, puzzled. "Not me. I followed the thestral. Selwyn was with him, though. Why?"

Snape shrugged. "All these potions for all these operations got me thinking, remembering. That was the only operation I've ever been on and I found it all very confusing. I'm still not sure what happened that night."

"That's what you get for not socializing. You should hang around with me more – you'd pick up all the news. The Dark Lord got Moody, then he went after Shacklebolt. That's who I was after. Selwyn says they were following Hagrid when the Potter kid used a signature spell – he's too nice for his own good, that one, and they called the Dark Lord in for the kill. But something was wrong with Malfoy's wand, so the Dark Lord took Selwyn's and then they ran into a protective charm and Potter got away."

"Something wrong with Malfoy's wand? Isn't the Dark Lord still using it?"

"Who knows?" said Macnair. "Selwyn just said the Dark Lord was using Malfoy's wand until Potter got off a crack backhand shot, and then the Dark Lord ask for his, Selwyn's, to keep fighting with. Selwyn's got his wand back, but Malfoy hasn't."

"It still sounds confusing," said Snape, turning back to the counter and his potions work. "I think I'm not cut out for operations. I'll stick to what I'm good at."

Back at Hogwarts, Snape confronted Dumbledore's portrait. "What else are you keeping me in the dark about?" he demanded, furious and letting it show.

"In the dark? Severus, what ever are you talking about?"

"You've known for two and a half years that the Dark Lord is concerned about the wand he uses to fight Potter with, and you haven't mentioned it to me once!"

"Has this come up for some particular reason?" Dumbledore was peering over his glasses again, a mannerism Snape was beginning to find immensely irritating.

"Nobody knows where he is. He's looking for something. Did you know he borrowed Lucius Malfoy's wand the night Potter left his old home? At the time I thought he was just being mean to Malfoy, who still doesn't have it back…"

"How would I know this, Severus, unless you told me? Who is keeping whom in the dark now?"

Snape stared at the portrait. "Oh, right," he said after a moment. "Macnair tried to… well Macnair referred back to the night of the Dark Lord's return and told me what happened when his wand met Potter's. Nobody told me that before. Then I thought about his keeping out of Potter's way when there was fighting, and kidnapping Ollivander – I'm sure now it was Ollivander we heard in the cellar the night we went after Potter, and he didn't want to use his own wand to fight Potter, so he borrowed Malfoy's except he didn't say that was the reason, but he was perfectly willing to use his own on Scrimgeour. I thought he still had both wands, but Macnair says Potter was able to get off a backhand shot that made the Dark Lord take Selwyn's wand and…"

Snape was perfectly aware that he sounded barely coherent, but the thoughts and images were connecting so rapidly in his brain, streaming in from all sides to form one suddenly clear picture, that for once he could not control the words that tumbled from his mouth. The portrait of Dumbledore remained silent, listening.

"Sir," Snape exclaimed, "could that be what the Dark Lord is doing? Looking for the right wand to fight Potter with?"

"It is very possible," Dumbledore replied. "And I wish to point out to you that it was wise not to entirely rebuff Macnair's advances. He has proven an excellent source of information."

"But why does the Dark Lord have to look for a wand? He has Ollivander. Can't Ollivander just make him a new one?"

"An excellent question," said Dumbledore, though he made no attempt to answer it.

Both were silent for a while, and then Dumbledore asked, "Do you remember the fairy tales, Severus?"

The question was so far off the topic that Snape opened his mouth, had nothing to say, and closed his mouth again. After a moment, he said, "You mean like 'Sleeping Beauty?' 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs?' You know neither of my parents ever told me stories. I used to get sent to a neighbor's house when my father wasn't… feeling well. Mrs. Hanson told me a couple of stories. I always liked 'The Steadfast Tin Soldier.' I could see myself in that little paper boat, heading for the ocean."

"Yes," said Dumbledore, "it does seem to fit you. Rather a sad tale for a little boy, though."

"Really? I thought he was noble." Snape realized then what he'd said, and reddened. Both he and Dumbledore allowed the subject of fairy tales to drop for the time being, though later Snape wondered if Dumbledore might have been referring to Beedle the Bard.


	64. Chapter 64 – The End of All Things

**What of My Soul, Dumbledore?: The End of All Things**

With Snape away so much of the time taking care of Bella's business, the Carrows began to flex their muscles at Hogwarts. Amycus's plans to use students on detention as targets for curse casting was hampered by the fact that the other teachers suddenly stopped giving out detentions, and so the numbers were kept very small. Other students began getting in the way of the curses, and secret meetings were held to plan strategies.

Neville Longbottom was turning into a ringleader. Dumbledore's question to Snape – If you were one of those students? – was also being answered in the affirmative by Longbottom, who had uncovered an important weakness in the position of the Ministry and the Carrows – there were very few truly pureblood families left. Truly pureblood students were precious, and not to be placed in serious danger. And if any family was purest of the pure, it was the Longbottoms.

Longbottom was immune. Not immune from punishment, but immune from serious physical danger. He therefore took it upon himself to deflect punishment away from others onto himself, and at the same time encourage defiance. He challenged authority and insulted the Carrows in their classrooms. He helped hide students who were in trouble, and Snape had no idea where he was putting them. He was, truth be told, acting quite heroically, though Snape could never say so to anyone but the portraits.

It was the meetings that threatened to bring down everything. Students who met in twos and threes, then regrouped in other sets of twos and threes, were one thing. When they started coalescing into groups of six, ten, and fifteen, it was a problem.

The problem centered on Slytherin house. Larger than the others, Slytherin was also the Death Eater house. The parents, uncles, aunts, cousins, siblings of the Slytherin students were the operatives that Snape was making potions for in his laboratory. While opposition to Snape and the Ministry were covert, Slytherin was a minor problem. When it came out into the open, students began sending home owls with messages that the headmaster wasn't acting loyal enough.

Snape clamped down on the school again.

Then there was Hagrid. Snape, on his way to visit Hagrid the evening before Easter break began, was surprised when Hagrid met him halfway up the hill. "Tonight ain't a good night," Hagrid said. "I'm busy working on something."

Snape nodded and started to go back, when a burst of faint laughter erupted from the hut, then died away. "Hagrid," Snape asked, "why are there students in your hut?"

"Tain't nobody there, sir," Hagrid replied shiftily. "I'm just… eh… hatching pollikaps."

Snape found out about the pollikaps two days later when the first of the owls from irate Slytherin parents began coming in. It seemed that the story was the first thing out of the mouths of their sons and daughters as they stepped off the train.

"Support-Harry-Potter parties!" Snape screamed at Hagrid, waving the letters under his nose. "Do you want to go to Azkaban! Do you want me to go to Azkaban! I'm walking a bloody freaking tightrope here and you're holding Support-Harry-Potter parties!"

"I just wanted to give 'em a bit of a boost. Keep up their morale." Hagrid shifted uneasily in Snape's office, looking around at the slumbering portraits as if hoping for support.

"What about MY morale? I'm already being accused of lack of sufficient zeal in carrying out Ministry orders, and Bella Lestrange is breathing down my neck! Do you want Rabastan or Rodolphus in this office? Because you've been working at it pretty hard!"

"I'll stop 'em right away, Professor. No more parties."

But it was already too late. The next afternoon Snape got a Floo message from Law Enforcement at the Ministry. Headmaster Snape was requested to open the Hogwarts gates, as a special team was apparating into Hogsmeade to apprehend and arrest the dangerous dissident known as Rubeus Hagrid, who was also known to be on Hogwarts's grounds.

Snape stared at the fire. _What am I going to do? I can't let Hagrid be arrested, but if I warn him, they'll know it had to be me. It's so obvious. They tell me they're coming and Hagrid immediately runs. They'd arrest me on their way out._

And yet, he couldn't let them take Hagrid. Not Hagrid. Sending Filch down to the gate, Snape walked to the edge of the cliff and looked down at the lake. He had a little time before Filch reached the gate, and a minute or so after that before the Ministry team would be able to see the hut. With a whisper and a prayer, he sent the delicate, beautiful little doe down to Hagrid, then reentered the castle. He had to be far away when events unfolded. He watched from a first floor window.

At first Snape wondered if Hagrid had even understood the message. The doe was unfamiliar to him, and there was no movement around the hut. Then Hagrid appeared in the rear, sending Fang into the Forbidden Forest. Snape breathed a sigh of relief. Hagrid was going to pretend he saw the arresting team coming.

The drama was short, but well-played. Hagrid walked out of the hut, reacted in surprise to the advancing team, seized a log and, roaring defiance, hurled it at them to make them scatter, then raced toward the forest. Once he was inside, they would never find him.

It was a terrible thing to know that Hagrid was gone, that now nothing remained except the cold company of the portraits. For three and a half months, only the silent sympathy of Hagrid had stood like a wall between Snape and crushing loneliness. Now that was gone. Snape locked himself in his office, the stillness of the nearly empty school like a tomb around him.

For hours he stood at the window, looking down at the lake. Supper time came and went, but Snape didn't notice. He wasn't hungry, and now there was no Hagrid to see that he ate anything. The sun set shortly before eight o'clock, and the long northern twilight stretched out, and finally Snape went up the short spiral staircase from his office to his bedroom and lay there, facing the wall.

After a while, Snape slept.

The voice that woke him in the small hours of the morning was shrill, desperate, and panic-stricken. "Snape!" it screamed. "Snape! For God's sake, Snape! Please, come! Please, answer me! Please, Snape!"

Snape scrambled off the bed and rushed down the stairs to the fireplace. The pale green light of Floo communication illuminated the office, and even before he saw the heavy-lidded eyes, now wide with terror, and the mass of dark hair, Snape knew that it was Bella calling him, and that something was horribly, horribly wrong.

Dropping to his knees before the remains of the fire, Snape spoke quickly. "It's me, Bella. I'm here. What's happened? Bella, are you all right?"

Instead of answering, she screamed. Snape watched in horror as her face twisted and writhed before his eyes, and he knew she was being tortured with a Cruciatus curse. Then it stopped, and with a sob, she spoke.

"This is what happens to all who displease the Dark Lord. He will crush the proud and the ambitious and all who presume to substitute their will for his or detain him on the path he has chosen."

"Lord," Snape gasped, himself now terrified, too, "tell me what you wish, and I will do it!"

Bella paused, listening for instructions on her side of the fire, then she looked Snape in the eyes. "Would you execute this miserable slave who has failed me?" she asked.

"Yes," Snape replied at once, and Bella closed her eyes in fear.

A moment later she was speaking again. "Here are your instructions. The Dark Lord goes now to the gates of Hogwarts. You will let him in. You will speak no word, and you will cast no spell. You will return to the castle and await the Dark Lord's coming. The Dark Lord's business is not yours." Bella opened her eyes again. "He is on his way. Go now, Severus, quickly. Do not make him angrier than he is."

Snape was on his feet at once, racing for the door, the stairs, pausing only to grab a lantern in the entrance hall and then heading out onto the lawn. The quarter moon had set three hours earlier; the sun was not even a faint promise on the horizon. Snape had to slow his speed for fear of missing his step in the wavering light from the lantern, and it bobbed up and down in his hands as he moved down the hill toward the gate, his heart fluttering like a caged bird in his chest.

The Dark Lord was back, back and raging in anger. He'd tortured Bella… Bella and who else? And for what offense? And his first stop was Hogwarts. Why? Why?

Snape forced himself to act calmly, for the Dark Lord already stood cloaked at the gates. He fumbled a little as he opened them, and bowed the Dark Lord in, locking the gates again afterwards. The Dark Lord did not speak, and Snape, too, was silent as they moved along the path into the grounds. Then, where the path divided, one side up the hill to the castle, and the other around toward the lake, the Dark Lord turned the slits of his crimson eyes on his servant.

"We shall join you in the castle shortly. Leave us now." His voice was high and cold, and full of menace.

Snape bowed and walked up the hill, not once glancing back. The Dark Lord's business was not his business, and he still did not know if Bella's crime included some action of his own. He reached the great oak doors and stepped into the entrance hall. There he waited.

Minutes passed, a quarter of an hour, and then the Dark Lord glided into the entrance hall, and Snape once again bowed. "Your office," the Dark Lord said, and the two climbed the long staircases to the seventh floor and the gargoyle staircase.

Once inside, the Dark Lord looked around. "It is unchanged," he said, seating himself behind the headmaster's desk, "except for the new portrait of an old fool."

Not sure how to respond, Snape asked, "Does my Lord wish refreshment?"

The Dark Lord chuckled, and it might have been the pleasure of an event remembered, or anticipation of pleasure soon to come, still no clue to what Snape might face in the next hour. "Yes, Headmaster, we are pleased to accept refreshment. This night, that started in disappointment and anger, will end in victory and the destruction of those who oppose our will. You may pour us a glass of mead, and then you will stand before us and answer our questions."

Snape waited, as the Dark Lord sipped the mead in lingering appreciation, and watched his nervous servant. Finally tipping back his head, as if sniffing with his slits of nostrils, the Dark Lord said, "Tell us who among our servants is loyal."

Quicksand… gaping pits… an open mine field… "Lord, forgive me if in ignorance I displease you, but I know of no disloyal servants. All who…"

The Dark Lord raised his hand, and Snape stopped. "Wormtail is dead," the Dark Lord said with a sneer.

Snape said nothing.

"Does this news please or displease you?" the Dark Lord asked.

"I don't know, Lord," Snape answered. "If he died for transgressions against you, then I'm pleased. If he died in your service, I'm not pleased."

"He failed us," the Dark Lord said, "and his punishment was deserved."

"Then I am pleased," responded Snape. His defenses were going up, and his feelings were locking down.

"Bella, too, has failed us. This very night she called us, summoned us from our task to give to us the person of Harry Potter, but allowed Potter to slip through her fingers before we arrived. Summoned us in order to present us with failure. Not only that, but she has lost our other prisoner, too. She has lost us Ollivander. It matters not. He was of no further use to us, for we have progressed far beyond his poor knowledge, but the failure to guard was a grievous fault in Bella."

The pause seemed to await an answer. "Then she deserved her punishment, Lord," Snape said.

"And now, Severus, we will discuss your failure."

Snape slipped instantly to his knees, his heart in his throat. "Lord," he gasped, fighting to control his voice, "punish me for my failure, but I beg you also to enlighten my ignorance, for I do not know wherein I have failed."

The Dark Lord chuckled again. "You amuse us, Severus. So different from Bella. She tries to push blame and punishment onto others. You cry, 'punish me, punish me.' Yet which of the two is more successful at avoiding punishment? Still, we must be fair to Bella, who at least did have the person of Harry Potter in her possession when she called us, whatever may have happened after that. What have you done to secure the person of Potter?"

Not waiting for an answer, the Dark Lord pointed his wand at Snape and said lazily, _"Crucio."_ Snape doubled over in pain and lay on the floor, clutching at the carpet. Yet he had endured far worse, and this was a mere game. Still, it did not do to spoil the Dark Lord's pleasure by self-indulgent courage and endurance. He cried, and kicked, and whimpered in agony until the pain abated.

"Stand up," said the Dark Lord, and Snape struggled to his feet, trembling. "Is the old fool of assistance to you in your labor here?"

Snape didn't look at the sleeping portrait. "They are only shadows of the people they represent. They can be amusing, but they're not as much help as their reputation would have us believe."

"Require it to speak to us."

"Headmaster Dumbledore," said Snape formally. "I want to talk to you."

The portrait coughed, and blinked, and looked around as if befuddled. "I beg your pardon," it said, "I seem to have been dozing. How may I be of service?"

Snape looked at the Dark Lord, who merely nodded to him. "Dumbledore," Snape said, "we have a guest."

The portrait looked down. "Goodness me, it is Tom Riddle. You will not know this, Headmaster, but Riddle here was one of the best, most successful students Hogwarts has ever known. Why I remember back in forty-three when he was first made a prefect…"

"Thank you, Dumbledore," said Snape. "Do you have the information I requested about the Astronomy class?"

"Yes, ahem. Hogwarts acquired its first telescopes in 1732. About 1860, we suffered a severe setback when Headmaster Burke mistakenly replaced them with prism binoculars under the impression they would see twice as far. I remember as a much younger teacher running across…"

The Dark Lord laughed. "An old fool indeed. You will see us out, Severus."

Snape returned to the office fifteen minutes later. He was still trembling. "I still don't know what I did to make him angry," he confessed to Dumbledore.

"You did not make him angry, Severus. He wanted an excuse to try out the wand, and I commend your acting ability. You were a bit preoccupied so you probably did not notice, but the wand he used to torment you with was mine."

xxxxxxxxxx

"Where are they?" Snape demanded of Nigellus for about the hundredth time. "Something must be happening!"

"Albus," Nigellus said, pointedly bypassing Snape, "would you remind this importunate young man that I have told him repeatedly…"

"Phineas has told you repeatedly, Severus, that Miss Granger has not opened her bag in many days, and it has been a few weeks since she took the tent out. Since before they ran into Bella, in fact. We must only assume that they are staying with someone who is protected, probably by a Fidelius Charm. It could be anybody."

"Meanwhile, he gets stronger. Now that he's in Britain and has a new wand, he's getting stronger. And nobody knows where Potter is."

"I am certain someone knows, just not you. Now, Severus, if we could go over…"

"Why? We've done it so many times."

"Because you are the one who has to do it. You are the one who has to convince Harry that you really do work for me and that what you have to tell him is significant, of the utmost importance, in fact. Riddle's having the wand will play into our hands."

"How?"

"It will make him confident of success, and remove the last barrier to action."

Snape sighed and began to recite. "I tell Potter that you and he spent all last school year discussing Horcruxes. Horcruxes are items that contain a fragment of soul. Their function is to tie the soul to earth so that the person cannot be killed, as the Dark Lord was not killed by the ricocheting of his killing curse. I tell Potter that you showed him pensieve memories of the Dark Lord's acquiring of the Horcruxes. One commemorates his shrewdness as a student and the fact that he was Slytherin's heir – the diary that was already destroyed. Another commemorates the blood lineage of the Peverells, the one that somebody was stupid enough to try wearing – the ring of Marvolo Gaunt which has also been destroyed. Then there was something from each of the Founders – Slytherin's locket – destroyed, Hufflepuff's cup – not located yet, something of Ravenclaw's, but we don't know what it is..."

"Well that might also be Gryffindor's, Severus."

"I don't think so. I think it's Ravenclaw's"

"I would appreciate it if you would explain your logic."

"You told me that Potter is an unintentional Horcrux because the Killing Curse blasted away a fragment of the Dark Lord's soul and it attached itself to the only living soul left in the building – the child. But Horcruxes aren't usually living things. They're usually objects. Why couldn't that fragment attach itself to a chair, or a sliver of wood? I think it's because the Dark Lord intended to make a Horcrux of something belonging to Gryffindor, and a Gryffindor student belongs to Gryffindor, right?"

"Severus, I do not want to break this to you too harshly, but Harry was one year old. He was not yet a Gryffindor student."

"But his father was Gryffindor, and his mother was Gryffindor, and it was a foregone conclusion that he would be…"

"The Hat wanted to sort him into Slytherin, but he asked it not to."

Snape stared at Dumbledore in disbelief tinged with sarcasm. "I'll never believe that," he said at last.

"I fear you must. The Hat confirmed it to me."

"No. The Hat was fooled by the fragment of the Dark Lord's soul. That's the only reason it thought about Slytherin. That boy is no more a Slytherin than I am…"

"A Gryffindor? But if courage is the mark of Gryffindor, Severus, you really should…"

Snape slammed his hand down on the desk. "You keep this up, and I'm going to go into the lavatory and be sick to my stomach!"

"Shall we get back to the original topic, Severus? We have strayed somewhat."

"The point is, that when the Dark Lord realizes that the Horcruxes are in danger, he's going to become very protective of the snake. That's when things have to happen in the right order, and Potter has to know about it. The rest of the Horcruxes have to be destroyed, including the snake, and then Potter has to let the Dark Lord destroy him. After that, the Dark Lord can be killed. For the last two years the Dark Lord hasn't wanted to duel Potter because of what happened to his wand, but now he has a wand that gives him confidence that he'll win the duel, so he won't hesitate to kill Potter. He won't be expecting Potter to just let him do it – and that's what I have to get Potter to believe."

"Perfect, Severus. You always were a quick study."

"Yes, but I'm making book right now that Potter will kill me before I get to that part. And then where will we be?"

All through April the situation deteriorated. Bella and the Malfoys were under house arrest, and the Carrows became terrified that they weren't showing sufficient enthusiasm for their job. Their intimidation tactics against the students expanded to include incarceration and torture. Neville Longbottom disappeared, but from the reaction of the Carrows it had nothing to do with them. Other students began disappearing as well, and when Snape tried to rein the Carrows in, they threatened him.

"Can't you get it through your head, you fool," Amycus yelled at Snape in the headmaster's office, "that Potter got into the Malfoy mansion and helped prisoners escape! These little rats in this school will do anything to help him. We have to break them! crush the life out of them! or we'll end up like Bella and Lucius! Do you want to be screaming on the floor while he Cruciates you!"

"I thought I was here to protect Hogwarts!" Snape in his turn yelled at the portrait of Dumbledore. "To protect the students! How am I supposed to do that if I can't even control Amycus Carrow!"

"Easy, Severus. Easy. Your primary function is to make sure that Harry knows what he has to do when he meets Riddle. Everything else, yes including the temporary welfare of the students, is secondary. Riddle loved Hogwarts as much as he can be said to have loved anything, and I am sure one of the items is here. It may all come down to here, and here you must remain, even if sacrifices are made."

Snape was now sleepless most nights, rolling everything over and over in his head, trying to find an answer that would lead to success without at the same time destroying everything else. It was at this point that he became convinced that he was going to die.

_A pig raised for slaughter. Dumbledore's known for years that Potter has to die; has he known about me equally long and with equal certainty? And what a death for Potter, the little hero, the pinup boy of half wizarding Britain. To be able to stand there and know – know – this is the moment of victory. This is the moment the Dark Lord falls. And then a painless Killing Curse. And my death? Tortured in a cellar? Killed by someone I used to think was a friend in the middle of a fight? And not one person will know. Not one will mourn me._ The nights filled with those thoughts were very bitter.

Worse, if anything could possibly be worse, was that more and more he was beginning to distrust Dumbledore._ On the Astronomy tower, I did what he asked me to because I believed him. I trusted him that it was the right thing. But does he, in fact, want the right thing? Some of the things in that biography make him sound as bad as the Dark Lord. What if telling Potter to allow himself to be killed is the wrong thing, and only makes the Dark Lord stronger? Am I so sure that Dumbledore is right?_

A memory surfaced then, as disturbing as any thought Snape had ever harbored. It was the memory of the night that Dumbledore had told him that Potter himself was a Horcrux, that Potter had to die. They were sitting there in Dumbledore's office and… Dumbledore closed his eyes! Snape sat up in bed. He focused his thoughts and brought the image back. It couldn't be right. He hurried down into the office, though it was two in the morning, and opened the cabinet where Dumbledore kept his pensieve.

"What are you doing, Severus?" the portrait said, but Snape ignored it. Placing his wand to his temple, he pulled out a thin filament of thought and let it swirl in the bowl. He gazed at it for a long time. He had not been mistaken. All during the time that Dumbledore was talking about Potter being a Horcrux and having to be killed by the Dark Lord – his eyes had been closed.

Snape looked up at the portrait in horror. He was shaking like a leaf, and his breathing was shallow and fast. _He didn't want me to read him. He didn't want me to see the thoughts behind the words. Because the words were lies. I'm supposed to tell Potter what to do, and I'll be telling him lies._

The portrait continued to question, "Severus, what is wrong? What is upsetting you?" but Snape wouldn't answer. Carefully replacing the thought into his head, he put the pensieve back in its cabinet and went up to his bedroom. For three days he spoke to no one, no person, no portrait, and was utterly, utterly alone.

In the clear light of day, Snape could see that he was overreacting. There was no doubt that the Dark Lord was evil, and must be destroyed. There was no doubt that Dumbledore and the Dark Lord were enemies. There was no reason for Dumbledore to lie to him about the manner in which the Dark Lord had to be destroyed. But then why be so careful to shut him out? Why shield his thoughts?

In the clear light of day, Snape believed, but in the cold dark watches of the night, doubt and fear filled his soul, and Snape thought of all he'd been asked to do, and had done, for the man he'd once trusted so completely – of the murders of Dumbledore, Moody, Burbage, and Scrimgeour, of the students he could not help and the boy he would lead by the nose to his death, and Snape knew himself lost. Lost and damned. And he hated Dumbledore for what he had become. And he stopped eating altogether.

Then, at the beginning of May, the portrait of Nigellus brought news. "They took out the bottle of Polyjuice potion. Today. They're doing something today."

What that something was, neither Snape nor the portraits knew, and they could only watch and wait, and hope for the best.

That night, all hell broke loose.

It started at dinner, so Snape, who no longer sat in the Great Hall at mealtime, didn't hear it. What he heard was a nearly hysterical Alecto Carrow screaming at the gargoyle, "Let me in! Let me in, do you hear me! Snape! Snape!" He admitted her at once, and she crashed into his office in panic.

"Something's happened," Alecto shrieked. "Something terrible's happened! The kids are yelling it all over the Hall. Amycus shut up the Boot rat, but now the others are… They say Potter robbed Gringotts today!"

"Robbed Gringotts? Nobody robs Gringotts! Calm down Alecto. Tell me everything you heard."

"This little rat, Boot, comes running into the Hall just as dinner's started waving a piece of paper and yelling about Potter. He says Potter's robbed Gringotts Bank and that he and his friends got away on a dragon… and then Amycus got to Boot and slapped him silly, but now they're all yelling…"

"Shut up!" Snape yelled at her. "I don't care how many people are yelling! They were down where the dragon is?"

Alecto nodded, Snape's more focused fear affecting her now, too. "They unchained a dragon and rode it out of the bank."

"I saw that dragon in September," Snape said, feeling the adrenaline pour into his system. "That's where Bella Lestrange's vault is. That's where Gryffindor's sword is." _But Potter wouldn't be after the fake sword because he has the real one. And Bella's been known to keep things for the Dark Lord before…_

Snape wheeled and grabbed Floo powder. "Headquarters!" he cried, "Infirmary!" and looked around for any of the healers. "This is Hogwarts school!" Snape called, aware that his voice was unusually loud. "Shane! Nugent! Is anyone there?"

A healer's face appeared in the flames. "Hogwarts," he said, "watch your back. He got bad news a few minutes ago. They're sending in the bodies now."

"Bodies? What bodies?" Snape called back. "What's happened?"

"Haven't you heard about Gringotts? They stole something of the Dark Lord's. He killed the goblin who brought the news, then started killing everyone in the room he could reach. They've already brought in Barrows and Quinley. Most of the dead were lower echelon. I have to go. There may be wounded as well."

Snape closed the connection and stared in shock at Alecto. A second later he was paying no attention to Alecto, for the Dark Lord was on the Floo network and asking for him, coldly and insistently. "I'm here, Lord," Snape stammered.

"Good. One at least is at his post. You must be alert this night. Potter will try to enter Hogwarts. He must be stopped. He must not be killed, but he must be stopped. He will go to Ravenclaw tower. Wait for him. Notify me when you have him."

"Yes, Lord," said Snape, but the Dark Lord was already gone.

Quickly Snape hurried down to the Great Hall. "Heads of houses!" he bellowed above the noise, and there was a lull. "Students will proceed at once to their houses. Prefects, see to it that there are no stragglers. Heads, I want a roll call and a report on anyone missing. If students didn't get a chance to eat, send up food from the kitchens. When all students are accounted for, I want all staff back here. Go! Now!" The fury, the urgency, radiating from his thin body was intimidating. Only McGonagall stood up to him.

"Ye'll not be punishing the whole school for a wee bit of gossip!"

Snape whirled on her, "Professor, you know nothing of what's happening. Do as I say, and do it now!"

"Ye'll not talk to me like that!"

"Woman! Look to your house!"

McGonagall paled, but held herself with great dignity and shepherded Gryffindor house from the Hall.

Snape waited until the teachers, with the Heads of houses, had reassembled. As the time passed, he began to calm down. The students were protected – it was the first, the most important concern, regardless of what Dumbledore thought. The next important thing was that Potter, Harry Potter, might be coming to Hogwarts, perhaps that very night. Snape's two masters both wanted him to meet Potter, the Dark Lord to take him prisoner, and Dumbledore to give him instructions. And if Dumbledore was right, both masters would get their wish. Snape longed to know how much of his mission Potter had already accomplished, but that might not ever be his to know. Now he could only do what was set before him to do.

It had been Snape's first intention to patrol the corridors and stop Potter. Now, on reflection, he did not want to do that. To the staff he said, "There is potential for trouble tonight. Students must stay in their houses. Teachers will walk their normal patrols. If anything unusual occurs, notify me at once. Professor Flitwick, it will be necessary for Professor Carrow" – he indicated Alecto – "to spend the night in Ravenclaw tower. You will admit her." He did not explain.

Then came the tense calm of waiting. Snape talked to the portraits for over an hour.

"Did he say anything about the snake, Severus. Has he started protecting Nagini?" It was not the first time the question had been asked.

"I don't know. It was short and concise. He would never tell me something like that anyway."

"It is vital that all the Horcruxes, Nagini included, be destroyed first. If that doesn't happen, all is in vain."

Snape looked at the portrait and sighed. "Did you tell him the snake was a Horcrux?"

"Yes, well that I thought it might be. Harry listens quite well."

"To you he listens. He's never listened to me. What if he won't listen, or won't believe. My telling him could cause him to do the opposite." Was that why you closed your eyes, Dumbledore, because you want him to do the opposite and do not want me to know?

"I wonder," said Dumbledore, "if Harry knows he is looking for something of Ravenclaw's."

"If he doesn't, I can tell him. I can at least tell him that the Dark Lord expects him to go to Ravenclaw tower and plans to capture him there."

"If Harry can get in, destroy the Ravenclaw Horcrux, and get out without being discovered," said Dumbledore, "it will be a good thing. We will have time to plan our next move."

Snape jumped then, shock adding to the violence of his reaction, and stared down at his left arm." She's called him," he gasped. "Alecto's called the Dark Lord. She has Potter. How did he…" He was on his feet at once, heading down the spiral stairs.

"Severus," Dumbledore called after him, "Severus, good luck," but by that time Snape was too far down the steps to hear.

He walked, as McGonagall had noted so many years ago, as quietly as a cat. There was nothing in the corridor near the gargoyle, but then Alecto was in Ravenclaw tower, so Snape made his way through the seventh floor corridors and was stopped by the sound of voices. He slid into shadow.

Amycus was talking. "Go and get Flitwick! Get him to open it now!"

"But isn't your sister in there?" came McGonagall's voice._ Drat!_ thought Snape. _Trust her to be prowling around trying to find out what Alecto's doing._

Snape listened to the two argue, then McGonagall agreed to open Ravenclaw door. Amycus's howl of shock and anger reverberated through the floor. "What've they done, the little whelps? What's the Dark Lord going to say? She's gone and sent for him, and we haven't got him!"

McGonagall's voice came again, calm but somewhat exasperated. "She'll be perfectly all right."

"Not after the Dark Lord gets hold of her! He thinks we've got Potter!"

"Got Potter?" Enlightenment swelled in McGonagall's voice.

"We was told he might come in here. We can push it off on the kids, say Alecto was ambushed..."

McGonagall was on her high horse again, talking of truth and lies, of courage and cowardice… "You are not going to pass off your many ineptitudes on the students of Hogwarts. I shall not permit it."

"It's not a case of what you'll permit. It's us what's in charge now."

Snape could not see what was happening, but what he heard next sent a tremor through him.

"You shouldn't have done that," and the voice was Harry Potter's. It was followed immediately by the shout, _"Crucio!"_ and the sound of a falling body.

Snape waited for McGonagall's explosion of righteous anger, but the ensuing exchange made it clear she only objected to Unforgivable Curses when they were cast by people she didn't like. She had no problem if it was Harry Potter. _And I'll make sure she never forgets it,_ Snape thought.

There was quieter talking, harder to hear, but Potter mentioned the Diadem of Ravenclaw. That was the Horcrux, but it was equally clear that Potter did not know where it was. Then McGonagall was talking about barricading the school against the Dark Lord while Potter searched for the Diadem.

_No_, thought Snape. _That puts everyone in danger. You have no idea of the forces he can move against the school. And what of the children? You may think it anathema to kill an eleven-year-old, but he wouldn't bat an eyelash_.

They were coming. Snape saw only McGonagall, who conjured three patronus cats to summon the other Heads, but he was sure Potter was under the Invisibility Cloak. He followed softly behind them until McGonagall heard his steps, turned, and said, "Who's there?"

McGonagall's wand was up, pointed chest high at her unseen opponent. Snape let his own slip from sleeve to hand, ready to use it if necessary, but still relaxed, pointed at the floor. He took a deep breath and stepped around a suit of armor that blocked her view.

"It is I," Snape said, but he wasn't paying as much attention to her as he was to the air around her. Potter was here. The primary reason for Snape's being at Hogwarts was standing in this corridor, and Snape couldn't see him because of the hated Invisibility Cloak. He couldn't speak to him either, or both Potter and McGonagall would know he was looking for Potter, and the way things stood now, that would guarantee her keeping Potter away from him. She had that fierce air of a lioness protecting her cubs. Snape stalled.

"Where are the Carrows?" His voice was calm, as if this were a perfectly normal situation, standing there with her wand pointed at his heart.

"Wherever you told them to be, I expect, Severus."

Slowly, not wanting to provoke a reaction, Snape eased forward, trying to identify the spot where something magic didn't block his view. He kept talking, distracting, "I was under the impression that Alecto had apprehended an intruder." I came because of that, not because I'm spying on you.

"Really? And what gave you that impression?"

The tingle from Alecto's call was still there, and Snape moved his left arm as an answer to McGonagall's question.

"Oh, but naturally. You Death Eaters have your own private means of communication. I forgot." There was scorn in her voice, and Snape registered that this was the first time she'd ever flatly called him a Death Eater. It was a wall between them when he needed a bridge. The air vibrated with the unseen presence of Potter.

Snape changed the subject. "I did not know that it was your night to patrol the corridors, Minerva."

"You have some objection?"

"I wonder what could have brought you out of your bed at this late hour?"

"I heard a disturbance."

It was good. She was defending her actions. He might yet talk the situation down to a lesser confrontation. "Really? But all seems calm."

And then, maybe because they were standing so close, and he needed the information so desperately, maybe because this might be the only chance he ever got, Snape made a fatal mistake. He looked into McGonagall's eyes and made a suggestion, hoping to see her response before she was aware of what he was doing. Ready now to take the chance of explaining to her, because Dumbledore required it, and he was running out of time. The Dark Lord was already on his way.

"Have you seen Harry Potter, Minerva? Because if you have, I must insist…"

The lioness attacked, and the only thing that saved Snape was that he saw the Stunning spell in her eyes before it reached her wand. He staggered back, his Shield Charm a reflex so automatic after all these years that he was hardly aware he'd cast it.

Snape didn't want to hurt her, but McGonagall had no such qualms about hurting him. She lashed out with a rope of fire that he transformed into a cool snake to avoid being burned. The snake dissolved and reformed into daggers and Snape, horrified now by the realization that McGonagall was actually trying to kill him, knowing himself outmatched in a battle of transfiguration, flung the suit of armor between them and let it absorb the force of the knives.

There was a clatter of feet on stone, and the three Heads of house that McGonagall had summoned rushed onto the scene. "Minerva! No!" Flitwick screamed, and Snape crouched behind the armor, making no attempt to use his wand, hoping Flitwick would reason with McGonagall. But that was not Flitwick's intent. As Flitwick yelled, "You'll do no more murder at Hogwarts," the armor came suddenly to life, throwing its heavy arms around Snape and squeezing the breath from his body. Frantic now, he flung it from him against an empty wall, dove for the floor to avoid the deadly spells shot at him by people who had once been his colleagues – his friends – scrambled to his feet, and ran.

There was an open classroom door, and Snape lunged for it, intending to seal the door behind him, but McGonagall and the others were too close. His task remained unaccomplished, and Snape was cornered. If they took him now, they might kill him. At the very least, he would never be allowed to speak to Potter. He saw one way out and, forgetting he was on the fifth floor, took it. Spells streaking past him, he leapt for the outer wall of the room, twisting to hit the leaded casements with his right shoulder. His body curled for the impact, arms wrapping his head, Snape crashed through the window in a shower of shattered glass and broken lead, then plunged a hundred and fifty feet to the ground below.

Suddenly, miraculously, the fall slowed, and Snape was drawn, pulled, summoned toward the gate and Hogsmeade. Powerful wizards cast powerful charms, and it does not do to allow a servant to fall to his death before you have the chance to extract information from him. The Dark Lord had arrived at Hogwarts.

xxxxxxxxxx

Snape knelt, trembling, in the common room of the Three Broomsticks where the Dark Lord had temporary headquarters. Death Eaters were apparating in from all corners of Britain. Bella and Lucius were there - and Macnair, too, who had been given the privilege of reminding Snape of the consequences of abandoning his post. Now, waiting for the first of the Dark Lord's questions, Snape was unable to straighten his doubled-up body for the pain that cramped his stomach.

"We were summoned here," said the Dark Lord, and even in his torment, Snape noted the great snake that curled beside him.

"Alecto Carrow, Lord," Snape gasped. "She was stationed in Ravenclaw tower according to your will, and caught Potter as he entered, but was attacked by other students."

"So he is there."

"Yes, Lord."

"You have seen him?"

"No, Lord." Snape hurried his answer forward, to get past the renewed pain. "He wears an Invisibility Cloak, but I heard him speak and recognized his voice."

"Why has he come?"

"He seeks something of Ravenclaw's. He doesn't know where it is."

The Dark Lord smiled, a cruel smile. "He will never find it. Take us into the castle, and we shall dispose of the 'Chosen One.'"

"Lord," Snape said, "they are already fortifying the castle against you. Amycus Carrow told McGonagall that you had been summoned. They are prepared for an attack."

This was not welcome news, and Snape collapsed as the Cruciatus curse hit him. When he was released, his brain was racing. For now, finally, all actions converged on the same consequences, and now, finally, there was a semblance of choice. Casting the fears and doubts of the last few months aside, Snape chose Dumbledore. _How do I manage to contact Potter? How can I find a way to let him know? I can't go back in, but Potter can come out._

"Lord," he said, "Potter has never been able to let others suffer for him. He can be persuaded." _And I'll be there. I'll find some way to tell him and some way to get him back into the castle. I will. I'll think of something._

"Yes," said the Dark Lord. He turned to his lieutenants. "Bring reinforcements. Everyone we can pull in. Our large friends from the north, the evil things of the forest. Everything that can break down the defenses and force Potter to be noble. Inform me when it is done."

The snake draped itself around the Dark Lord's shoulders and he left, going, as everyone knew, to gaze at the castle through the ironwork of the great gate. Snape remained kneeling in the circle of Death Eaters, for he'd not been given permission to stand. It was Bella who dragged him to his feet.

"You're on probation, puppy dog. Mr. I-stayed-at-my-post-through-thick-and-thin finally turned tail and cleared out as fast as he could go. But answer one question…" Bella's voice surprisingly held just a tiny note of admiration. "Whatever possessed you to jump out that window?"

"I don't know," Snape admitted. "At the time it seemed like the logical thing to do."

"You'd better get out there and dance for him. He's going to have questions."

Snape went out to the gate and stopped a respectful distance away. There he remained as the forces gathered, a roar far to the left indicating that there was even at least one giant. When the Dark Lord moved, Snape moved. When the Dark Lord stood, Snape stood. He was a shadow, a shackled slave, a dog on a leash, constrained to stay at his master's side in case he might be wanted.

At eleven o'clock, the Dark Lord was ready. His voice, when he spoke, was amplified, magnified, projecting everywhere and through everything so that Snape, standing so close, clapped his hands over his ears.

"I know that you are preparing to fight. Your efforts are futile. You cannot fight me. I do not want to kill you. I have great respect for the teachers of Hogwarts. I do not want to spill magical blood. Give me Harry Potter, and none shall be harmed. Give me Harry Potter, and I shall leave the school untouched. Give me Harry Potter, and you will be rewarded. You have until midnight."

_An hour,_ Snape thought. _An hour to find a way to leave the Dark Lord's side. An hour to figure out which exit Potter will use. An hour to pass on Dumbledore's message._

He didn't get the hour for, all that time, Snape remained tethered to the Dark Lord, desperate and anxious as the minutes ticked by and Dumbledore's task slipped through his fingers. But in the end he needn't have worried. For once, Harry Potter chose not to behave like an idiot Gryffindor. Potter did not come walking out of the castle, and the Dark Lord ordered the attack to begin.

Spells shot from the perimeter to shatter against the defenses of Hogwarts, and simultaneously Snape's very being was pierced by a scream, a wild, keening wail of rage and frustration. Snape dropped, shattered by the sound, then realized as he lay on the ground that it had come from the Dark Lord.

Hope leapt up and burned fiercely, for Snape knew at once what had happened. A Horcrux had just been destroyed and now, so close and so sensitive to his danger, the Dark Lord had felt it and recognized it. _How many left?_ Snape thought. _Was that the fourth or the fifth? Was Dumbledore right? He was right! This is really going to happen!_ He looked around. The Dark Lord was gone. He'd retreated into the night, and Snape was free, free to join the other Death Eaters and try to find a way into the castle.

All of McGonagall's and Flitwick's skill was no match for the Death Eaters. Protective spells were crumbling like ancient masonry, curses and hexes shooting into the castle through broken windows and cracked stone. Snape aimed his wand at the castle, too, striking out with nonverbal blasts of red and green light, sparks and blue flame, his spells doing surprisingly little damage, for in the confusion of battle, who would notice if the bolt of red was a stupefying spell or a charm to clean away mold?

The defenders did damage, too, and around Snape the explosions, bursts of roaring flame, crack of sundered trees, and the cries and screams of wounded Death Eaters was deafening. Eruptions of explosions lit up scenes out of a nightmare as a hooded figure staggered by clutching blackened hands to its hidden face, and another tried to staunch the flow of blood where an arm had once been.

And through it all, Snape was driven by one thought – Get into the castle. Get into the castle, find Potter, and give him Dumbledore's message.

They breached the doors and poured into the entrance hall. Far above Snape's head the giants battered the walls with enormous stones, huge spiders scurried by, and Snape elbowed his way through the press, shoving others aside, parrying blows, looking, always looking, for Potter.

Then he shuddered as the distant echo, faint and almost missed, of the Dark Lord's wail of fury lanced through him. No one else seemed to have noticed. _Because it was so faint. Because they don't know what it means. Do I know what it means, or did I imagine it?_ The thought that another Horcrux was gone blazed through him.

The world was shattered suddenly by an explosion of such force that the fighters in the entrance hall were knocked to the ground, great stones shook loose from the ceiling and walls and fell to crush those beneath. Dust from masonry and plaster rose in a billowing cloud, and Snape struggled back to his feet coughing and wheezing.

They were making no headway in the entrance hall. The defenders were shooting from doorways, behind pillars, shielded by the sweep of the great marble staircase, and the attackers were unprotected on the wide, open floor. Snape dodged spells and tripped over bodies, trying to find a way upstairs. A way to locate Potter.

Someone grabbed his arm and he spun, wand at the ready, to find himself facing Lucius Malfoy. Malfoy's mouth was moving, but in the din of battle Snape couldn't hear what he had to say. Malfoy leaned closer, his mouth next to Snape's ear. "He wants you!" Malfoy cried. "He wants you now. Go, please. He's in the Shrieking Shack."

Snape shook his head and tried to break away, pretending he hadn't understood, but Malfoy wouldn't let him go. "Severus, for God's sake, he's asking for you! Go to him! Go now!"

It was over. That bid to accomplish his task was over. Snape followed Malfoy out of the castle and began threading his way through the dead, the wounded, the still-arriving reinforcements that crowded on the lawn. He looked up at the castle and saw that part of one wall had been blasted away entirely – the effect, probably, of the Dark Lord's rage.

_The snake_, Snape thought as he hurried down the hill, leaving Malfoy behind. _If that was his anger at the destruction of the fifth Horcrux, then only the snake remains. I can't kill the snake. I have to give Potter his instructions, and I can't do that if he destroys me for killing the snake. Please let me have another chance to talk to Potter. Please…_

Snape made his way through the deserted streets of Hogsmeade. The Shack was oddly quiet, an island of calm after the storm of battle. Its enchantments had been removed, allowing Snape to walk to the door, lift the latch, and enter. The Dark Lord was in the room on the ground floor, the one where Snape and James Potter had managed to escape the werewolf Lupin.

"Severus," the Dark Lord said as Snape entered. "Has Hogwarts fallen?"

"No, Lord," Snape said, bowing. "When you summoned me, we had taken the doors and were inside. The entrance hall will soon be in our hands, and we'll be able to isolate pockets of them and defeat them piecemeal. I greatly desire to give you this victory, my Lord, if you will permit me to return to the battle."

"I think not, Severus. It is something else we need you for now."

Snape was shutting down, locking and sealing the doors of his mind. _I can't let him see how much I need to go back, to find Potter. I can't let him suspect._

"Lord…" Snape paused, not wanting his desire to be too strong, too suspicious. "I can still help in this battle. I am a good fighter. I wish to see your will accomplished in this, my Lord. Their resistance is crumbling…"

"…and it is doing so without your help. Skilled wizard though you are, Severus," and something in the cold, high voice turned Snape's veins to ice, "I do not think you will make much difference now. We are almost there… almost." The Dark Lord was not, Snape realized, talking about the battle. He noticed the snake, wrapped in a protective bubble, like a cage. He was slowly filling with a deep, nameless dread.

_Potter. I have to tell Potter. It's the only thing left that matters._ "Let me find the boy," Snape tried to keep his voice low and calm, not to let the Dark Lord hear his fear. "Let me bring you Potter. I know I can find him, my Lord. Please."

The Dark Lord rose from the table where he had been sitting. He was fingering a wand. Dumbledore's wand. Pieces began to click into place in Snape's head. The Dark Lord's voice was gentle. Gentle and dangerous. "I have a problem, Severus."

"My Lord?" Snape said. He looked at the wand and thought of Dumbledore, eyes closed, telling a story that Snape had to believe because Harry had to believe, eyes closed to conceal the part that Harry couldn't know.

"Why doesn't it work for me, Severus?"

Snape's face was a blank, his mind closed tightly now to block the anger that sprang up inside him. "My Lord," he said, "I do not understand. You… have performed extraordinary things with that wand." The anger was building. Anger against Dumbledore. _You knew. You knew it would come to this, this last step needed to give him the confidence to use the wand against Potter. You knew. All that talk about sparing an old man pain and humiliation – an act to trick me into doing your will. Another pig led to slaughter_.

"No, I have performed my usual magic. I am extraordinary, but this wand… no. I feel no difference between this wand and the one I procured from Ollivander all those year ago." The Dark Lord paused. "No difference."

There was nothing to say. Dumbledore had fooled him, and now Dumbledore would reap the penalty of his lies, because the crucial, vital task had not been accomplished. Snape knew that he was about to die, and Potter had not been told. Hatred flared against Dumbledore, and Snape felt a certain satisfaction that the old fake had failed. And yet…

The reality of the Dark Lord was inescapable. He was altogether evil. He had twisted and blighted Snape's life, destroyed everything that gave it meaning, brought cruelty and death, and turned Snape's friends into enemies. He had killed Lily, and now he would kill Lily's son – and suddenly Snape had a glimmer, an inkling, of why Dumbledore's eyes had been closed, and he knew that in a choice between the Dark Lord succeeding and Dumbledore succeeding, he would follow Dumbledore, because there are worse things than being led like a pig… no, like a lamb… to slaughter.

He had a task. "My Lord… I beg you will let me return. Let me find Potter. He might be killed accidentally by one other than yourself…"

The Dark Lord spoke of his wand, dragging out the moment, toying with Snape who saw where this was leading and could think of no way out. He couldn't even try to kill the Dark Lord, for the soul fragments in the snake and in Potter would anchor him, keep him alive. He could only wait and watch his own death approach. And still he tried, "My Lord… let me go to the boy…"

"The Elder Wand cannot serve me properly, Severus, because I am not its true master. The Elder Wand belongs to the wizard who killed its last owner. You killed Albus Dumbledore. While you live, Severus, the Elder Wand cannot be truly mine."

"My Lord!"

"It cannot be any other way." The Dark Lord moved the wand and hissed a command, and suddenly the meaning of the snake's bubble, its cage, became horrifyingly clear. It detached itself from its moorings and rolled across the room to encase Snape's head and shoulders. His hands were now helpless to defend himself from the great serpent.

Snape's fingers clawed desperately at the outside of the bubble, powerless to protect his neck, powerless to even touch the snake as Nagini's fangs sunk again and again into his throat. At first he screamed, but then his throat clogged with blood and the scream would not emerge. He fell to the floor, kicking against the boards, against the air, as he fought to break through the bubble.

The Dark Lord's last words to him were a mockery, something that Dumbledore would have said as well – "I regret it."

Through the transparency of the bubble, the still-conscious Snape watched as the Dark Lord moved the wand again and the bubble that supported his head and shoulders vanished. Snape slumped on his side, his hands finally able to reach his throat.

The Dark Lord looked down, and then his footsteps moved away, and the snake went with him, and Snape was left alone. Alone – pressing his hands against the gaping wounds in his neck.

At that moment there was total clarity. Life was neither love nor duty. Life was not friendship or loneliness, pleasure or pain. Life was red, liquid, and sticky, and it leaked through Snape's fingers as he struggled vainly to stem the exodus of life from his body.

But he had to stop it. He had to stay alive. Potter didn't yet know what he had to do when he met Voldemort. Until Potter knew that, the task was not fulfilled, the duty was not done. But life was slipping through his fingers, and with every passing second he became weaker, less able to concentrate, less able to fight for his own survival, less able to stop the outflow of life.

Light was fading, too. Around the edges of vision, darkness thrust its way forward, and Snape strove to stay conscious, to focus on the narrowing window of light – light hemmed now by a growing border of black – because if he gave in to the blackness, he would no longer be able to hold life in his body, and the task would be unfulfilled.

The task. He knew he had something to give, and someone to give it to, but as the red, viscous life leaked through his fingers, he found that words left him, and he could no longer recall what it was he had to give or who the gift was for. Only that he had to stay alive to finish it, and so he clutched his neck and willed life to stay, stay, until he did the thing he was supposed to do.

And then, in the collapsing frame of light, there was a face, and he knew the face, and he knew he had to give the face the thing he held, but he no longer remembered what he held. There were no more words, only images, and he couldn't remember which images he had to give to the face.

There was no other choice. In a life stripped of choices, in the end choice itself was stripped away. In the place of choice there was only need, and he began to claw at the doors that barricaded his mind. Something was in there that he had to give, and if he no longer knew what that was, then he had to give everything. The face drew him up into the light, and he ripped and shredded the locks and the seals because giving was all that was left, and he had to give – a rending every bit as painful as the rending of the fangs that had ripped open his neck.

Nothing was more important. The hands that blocked life from leaving left their struggle, and life poured forth even as the hands gripped fabric and the mouth found words "Take… it… take…" and the gushing forth of his soul, his very being, as fatal as the gushing forth of his blood, drowned the last of the words.

Then she came. He had missed her for so long. "Look… at… me…" he whispered through the blood in his throat. Her eyes smiled down into his, and he knew that he had done what he was supposed to do, that the task was accomplished, the duty fulfilled, and he was forgiven. He gazed into the peace of the well-loved eyes and relaxed, and let go, and let himself sink into the warm, welcoming darkness. And then…

…there was nothing.

xxxxxxxxxx

McGonagall and Hagrid came for him after it was all over. She removed the barriers Voldemort had replaced around the Shack, and the two of them entered. Entered to clear away the cloying red blood that clotted in his dark hair, to straighten the contorted limbs, and to close the black eyes.

It was McGonagall who conjured the stretcher onto which they lifted his body, thin and scrawny, always off his feed, and small, the smallest ever sorted. And somehow he seemed younger, for he was only thirty-eight, and death had relaxed the tension in his face and let the youth shine through at last.

And McGonagall conjured the sheet, pure and white, that shielded the gaping snake wounds in his throat, and let this last public view be dignified and seemly.

They went through everything he left behind to see if there was a will, but there was nothing, for he was the last of his line, and there was no kin to be notified. His books and his papers went to Hogwarts, and it was fitting.

Thus it was that without warning there appeared at the modest home of Mrs. Hanson in a small mill town in the Pendle region of Lancashire, an aging, dignified witch and a huge shaggy man who might, in another age, have been called a giant. And they told her that Eileen's son was dead, and asked her help in arranging his last journey.

It wasn't a big funeral. Mrs. Hanson was the chief mourner. The lads from the pub were there, as well, to say farewell to Toby's boy, who never could learn how to play darts. The checking girls from the market where he bought the ingredients for beef stroganoff came, and Bill from the village over the hill, the one who'd fallen from the roof twenty years earlier, and now lived to have a wife and two sons.

There were others, too. The boy with the spiky dark hair and glasses, and the odd scar on his face. The little group of teenagers, awkward and shy in their strange clothes. The tiny, wizened dwarf, and the woman with the patched hat and flyaway hair. And, of course, the older woman and the giant who'd brought Russ Snape home.

It wasn't legal exactly, but they buried him in the lee of Pendle hill, there where he'd snagged conies and gathered herbs. There, where the sky stretched free over the moors from horizon to horizon, and at night you could see all the stars.

Because, for time out of mind, there have been witches in Pendle.

xxxxxxxxxx

Here ends the story.


End file.
